First a confession. This blog is based on three showings of Tucker Carlson Tonight (TCT), rather than the four to which I committed in my previous blog. Somehow, I don’t think anyone reading this posting will hold that against me. So is Tucker Carson really that bad? I’ll address that question at the end. To begin, I’ll offer some general observations based on what I saw during the three TCT showings of Thursday, August 26; Monday, August 30, and Tuesday, August 31.

Tucker Carlson’s interviews with guests on his show are not designed so much to elicit information as to reinforce or reaffirm partisan views he holds.

Carlson’s guests included Jim Hanson of the Center for Security Policy, journalist-lawyer Glenn Greenwald, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and political commentator and TV journalist Brit Hume. For the most part, Carlson brought these people on to support and elaborate on his views. He followed a format where he would state an opinion and then ask if the guest agreed with him — which inevitably they did. Rarely did any kind of disagreement arise. The closest thing to an argument occurred when Greenwald reminded Carlson that both parties — not just Democrats — were responsible for getting the U.S. involved in Afghanistan.

Carlson and many of his guests have a deep-seeded hostility and anger toward “corporate propagandists” and “deep-state operatives.”

If there is one group of people who Carlson and his guests detest even more than Biden’s people it’s the career government operatives and their compatriots in left-leaning think tanks. Carlson refers to these folks as “deep-state operatives” and “corporate propagandists.” He holds them responsible for getting and keeping the U.S. involved in Afghanistan for such a long time. In the shows I watched, he was especially mad at them for installing Ashraf Ghani as president of Afghanistan. Carlson noted Ghani was an academic like the “deep-statists” and possessed no demonstrable leadership ability. With the Taliban closing in, Carlson claimed, the prime minister started acting “erratically” and then “took our money and ran.”

Sometimes Carlson presents valid facts but then draws a questionable conclusion from them that ignores other facts.

I thought Carlson made some good points challenging the Administration’s rather rosy assessment of the evacuation from Kabul. He noted the huge amount of military hardware that was abandoned. He pointed to the terrorist attack that left 13 American service members dead along with dozens of Afghans.  He took the Administration to task for leaving behind several hundred Americans, including a group of California students. So far so good. But then he declared the evacuation a disaster, one of the worst in American history. That was as inaccurate as the glowing picture painted by the White House. After all, despite some confusion, chaos, and initial mismanagement, about 55,000 Americans and a far larger number of Afghans were flown beyond the reach of the Taliban. Carlson could have called the evacuation a “qualified success” or granted that it had mixed results. That would have been much more accurate and fair.

One more example here. On the day that NBC’s Lester Holt interviewed Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt, Carlson also took up the question of Byrd’s innocence or guilt. After acknowledging Byrd took the initiative in identifying himself as the man who shot Babbitt, Carlson presented a series of facts strongly suggesting Byrd was wrong to have fired his weapon. These facts included Babbitt’s small size (5’2″ about 125 lbs.), the absence of any weapon in her possession, and the presence of other armed Capitol guards only a few feet from her. Carlson also said Byrd gave her no warning before shooting, which may be true but can’t be established beyond a doubt just by viewing the video of the incident. The video confirms the first three facts cited by Carlson, but it also shows something he didn’t mention, specifically Byrd pointing his pistol at Babbitt for at least eight seconds before firing. As for Byrd shouting a warning to Babbitt, none can be heard on the audio portion of the clip, but the surrounding noise might have drowned it out. What can be heard, before the shooting, is another rioter exclaiming that a gun was being pointed in their direction. I wish Babbitt (who Carlson mischaracterized as a “protestor”) had heeded those words.

Sometimes Carlson and his guests engage in some pretty wild speculation.

Carlson and his interviewees let their imaginations run wild sometimes. At one point, Carlson and one of his guests speculated that the evacuation from Kabul had been deliberately botched so as to create a reason for the United States to stay in Afghanistan. They admitted they had no evidence to back up that idea. On another occasion, Carlson and Jim Hanson from the Center for Security Policy agreed that Biden’s fellow Democrats didn’t like VP Kamala Harris and that was why they were going soft on the President despite him now appearing to be “a weak, pathetic-looking thing on the world stage.” Speculation through the roof! But to be fair, it should be noted that when engaging in speculation, Carlson and company made it fairly clear they were not presenting facts.

Carlson and his guests, with occasional lapses, avoid ad hominen attacks.

For the most part, Carlson and those he had on his show avoided name-calling, personal insults, and attacks on the characters of the people they criticized. There were a couple of exceptions. On the August 26 show, Jim Hanson referred to President Biden as a “doddering, drooling fool.” On August 30, Carlson himself described Jennifer Rubin “as the dumbest person ever to work for The Washington Post.”

It is often difficult to fact check much of what Carlson and his guests say.

I found it challenging to do any independent fact-checking on many of the claims that were made on TCT. On the Thursday show, conservative radio commentator Glenn Beck talked about the Nazarene Fund, which he claimed had arranged for some 5,100 Christian Afghans and other vulnerable people to be flown out of Afghanistan. This had been accomplished, he affirmed, despite efforts by the State Department and White House to block him “every step of the way.” Was this true? I found some corroboration for the number of Afghans taken out by the Nazarene Fund, but I couldn’t find anything to either support or refute Beck’s claim that the State Department and White House were hindering this initiative. Similarly, a member of Blackwater Security who appeared on the Tuesday show said he helped rescue Joe Biden and two other senators, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, when bad weather forced their helicopter to make an emergency landing in Taliban territory in 2008. Was this guy telling the truth, exaggerating, or making the whole thing up? I was never able to find out for sure.  A photo of the three senators standing in a snowstorm alongside fatigue-clad men with a helicopter in the background gave a modicum of credibility to the rescue claim. It’s worth mentioning that someone with a better knowledge of Internet information sources might have had more success with their fact-checking.

Now and then, his arguments are persuasive.

Some might say it’s a case of a broken clock being right twice a day, but every now and then, Carlson makes valid arguments. He properly noted a contradiction between the Biden Administration bargaining with the Taliban barely a day after saying the Taliban couldn’t be trusted. He also justly criticized a foolish comment by former Education Secretary Arne Duncan, comparing anti-vaxxers with the terrorists who attacked people at Kabul airport. And while my love of animals probably biased my judgment, I felt myself agreeing with him that at least some of the dogs left behind at Kabul should have been taken out in the evacuation.

Conclusions

So what are we to make of Tucker Carlson? Obviously, he is not the worst person in the world; probably isn’t even in the top 100. He can best be characterized as a right-wing ideologue who avoids outright lying but – more often than not — presents facts in a slanted, disingenuous manner so as to support his point of view and to denigrate opposing points of view. There can be no doubt Carlson has little or no interest in persuading liberals to “change sides” and embrace his arguments. He isn’t even much concerned with winning over people who are “on the fence” on key issues. Rather, he seeks to energize, encourage, and inspire those who already agree with him. Whether, off camera, he is a “good person” or “bad person” is something on which I’d rather not speculate. I’ll leave speculation to Carlson and his friends. I suspect they’re much better at that than I am.