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April 25, 2023 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
48:26
Tucker Carlson Is Out At Fox. What Does He Do Next?

Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman go over the shocking news that the biggest host at Fox News has been summarily fired. They then discuss the recent poll that asked people who they would rather not see run again, as Biden leads Trump in that contest. To support the show, subscribe to our Patreon at http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
Hey everybody.
Welcome to the McCraig Podcast.
I'm Jared H. Sexton.
I am sitting in Nick Haussleman's studio across from the table looking at you if people want to go to YouTube and watch the live action replay of this thing as he moves a monitor in front of my face aggressively.
Nick Haussleman, great as always to be with you and so happy to be in person.
Oh yes, I cannot wait.
This has been really great.
It actually almost feels sort of the same as when we do it virtually.
It feels nice.
There's something to be said about video call technology.
But here we are.
As this always is the case, I don't know if this happens for you when you're like traveling for business or you're out and about.
Something huge always happens.
Always!
Yeah.
Always.
And so here we are taping the Tuesday edition of the McGreg podcast.
Right now it is Monday, April 24th.
Literally a couple of hours ago, a bombshell came out that Tucker Carlson, the highest rated news host, well, I put quotes around the news, On Fox News is out.
The details are sparse so far.
There's a lot that we have to get into, including what has happened here, what the implications are, where this thing is going.
What are your initial reactions, Nick?
Absolute and utter shock, because they had settled this case.
You would have thought that it's possible that because something came out with the case, as the, you know, Dominion, more and more information came out, more and more damning, clearly, you know, Tucker doesn't look good from what they've leaked so far.
So the timing is weird, right?
In my mind, maybe they got rid of him when the text came out about how he can't stand Trump, but I don't know.
The reporting is starting to say that Murdoch forced him out, and is this the kind of thing where Trump calls Murdoch and says, I can't have this guy who's talking to me, saying all these horrible things about me behind my back.
Now that I'm thinking about it, he was just on Tucker's show.
Yeah, I don't think this is Trump forcing anything.
I think this is more of a rupture between the world of Trump, MAGA, and the far right, which I want to get into in detail, and Fox News.
Making a business decision.
I mean, it's not coincidental this came after the Dominion settlement.
700 million plus dollars.
I think that this is a corporate restructuring.
It is a decision to go in a different direction.
There's a lot at play here, whether or not this was about Fox making a business decision.
We can't have this guy on the air anymore.
He's going to cost us more money, which I don't think is necessarily what's happening.
Other people are speculating this comes from the harassment allegations within Tucker Carlson's workspace.
We have a former producer who talked about going into this and it basically being like a totally offensive, uncomfortable, misogynistic space.
Shocker of shockers.
I know.
That's amazing that Tucker Carlson would create a space like that.
The speculation is running rampant, but when it comes to most of this stuff, I think the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle.
Right.
Like people like Rupert Murdoch.
And yes, he is an ideologue.
And yes, he has changed the world based on his own particular type of politics.
He is a corporatist.
They love making moves.
They love going in and having sacrificial lambs.
They love having moments.
You know, you're active in sports circles.
Sometimes there reaches a point where you're like, you say to your star, I think we're going in different directions.
And we're going to, you know, we're going to do this, we're going to do that.
There are a lot of implications within the political sphere, a lot of implications in the 2024 sort of idea, what happens now, where this goes, the details are sparse, but I think we can make a lot of really well informed assumptions.
Yeah, and so there's also calculations going on from Fox about, like, how are they going to continue programming that time slot?
It was so good for them.
And you think, oh, we can't afford to get rid of it because he's a cult of personality himself.
But they've gone through this already.
Bill O'Reilly was the Tucker Carlson of his era.
He was the initial Fox News foundation, right?
Yeah, and had as much of an audience as Tucker does and commanded as much power as anybody would in that organization.
Can we have a quick thing on Bill O'Reilly because I think this is really important.
So, I'm going to talk a little bit more about Glenn back in a little bit.
Fox News has a history of their main ratings earners.
Either going down with scandal, Bill O'Reilly, for anyone who isn't aware, of course, was alleged to have sexually harassed a member of his staff.
Now, looking back, that's almost quaint.
Yeah.
You know, I don't think if that would have happened now that he necessarily would have been out.
We saw how they protected Roger Ailes, one of the greatest serial harassers and assaulters in media history.
But you're absolutely right.
Bill O'Reilly was seen as completely indispensable and then shuffled offstage, left, pursued by Bayer.
Yeah, and by the way, Bill O'Reilly didn't really go away.
No.
He has a podcast or something, right?
He's got something out there.
Well, I don't know where it's at.
You don't know where it's at, but it's out there.
Yeah, he didn't like go to a cave and never speak again.
And I'm sure he's monetizing to some degree, probably making some money doing what he's doing.
Oh, he's a New York Times bestseller.
I mean, he's making an incredible amount of money because I think we do ourself a disservice.
And again, like one of the reasons we do this podcast is we have to go beyond initial assumptions.
Fox News is not the end-all be-all of, like, right-wing media.
In fact, Fox News is older.
It's declining.
And by the way, one of the reasons we do this podcast, too, is we also know that there is more of an audience and a demand than just these old systems.
Like, for me, when I publish on, like, some sort of an established platform, I often find that, like, my reach is larger than theirs.
You know what I mean?
So just to go ahead and think that everything originates from Fox News and that there's nothing outside of that, that obscures a larger lesson that both Bill O'Reilly and later on Glenn Beck have shown us, which is there is an appetite for this stuff that goes beyond this one channel on your cable news package.
Right, exactly.
And the fact that they continue to be a juggernaut throughout this era without having Glenn Beck or without having O'Reilly tells you something, that these guys are expendable to some degree.
And, you know, I bet you Tucker Carlson was a prima donna.
I bet you his demands were probably excessive, and he probably thought they were all warranted.
I'm trying to picture the average Fox viewer.
They go at, he's on at what, like 6 or 7, whatever it is, East Coast?
No, he's on at 8.
At 8?
It's like 8 o'clock?
Hey, come on, Mom, Paul, we gotta watch, you know.
It's the white rage hour, everybody.
So they sit down tonight, for instance, and it's not Tucker Carlson.
They might look confused for a few minutes until whoever has replaced him is saying the same stuff, right?
Well, the question here, okay, so for instance, and I hate doing this, but we have to put ourselves in a corporate mindset, right?
So, who was the main advertiser on Fox over the last couple of years?
Pillow.
It was my pillow!
It was Michael Lindell.
They literally created a source of information that was so toxic That the only thing they could do was get money from Mike Lindell, people who were selling gold, and catheters.
That was it, right?
This is a possibility for Fox to rebrand itself.
And there's a lot of Fox viewers who aren't going to go anywhere.
They went ahead, they basically got to the shibboleth after 2020, where they did the big lie, they made the calculation, and they decided $14 billion in profit is worth paying $700 million in the settlement, or whatever it ends up being.
There is a mindset now, in terms of like them saying they're calculating, you might get some old advertisers back.
And by the way, we have talked about on the show, how bad does Fox News and the traditional Republican Party want to move on beyond Donald Trump?
They want to move on beyond a lot of this conspiracy theory stuff.
It was really useful for them.
Now they want to supplement it, which by the way, is what Glenn Beck was good for.
Glenn Beck got on Fox News and basically just peddled old John Birch Society, New World Order, like anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
It was really useful for creating the Tea Party for billionaires like the Koch brothers, who then used it to, I don't know, try and cut taxes, you know, and try and sort of kneecap the federal government.
Eventually, they moved on from him.
Now they're looking at the possibility of getting more ad revenue by moving along and making decisions, which is they believe that Fox News will survive.
The question is, though, how many of those Fox News viewers, particularly Tucker Carlson viewers, how many of them already know that he's gone because they're active online, right?
They're on these social media sites.
I assume a lot of them are on Breitbart because Tucker Carlson has had breitbart people on he's had alex jones people on how many of them have been brought into the online space and already know and are already making you know choosing sides that's one of the big questions in all of this well here's what's troubling to me what you said is that it is you're trying to say that it's a sublimation of trump is why they're getting rid of tupper carlson i think that they are more than ready to put that whole unpleasant episode behind them which we've talked about by the way
and this is going to factor into something we're going to talk This is one of the reasons they wanted Ron DeSantis.
This is why they want to make Trump a non-person.
They didn't think that he was part of their project.
They saw the usefulness in him.
They created a cult of personality around him eventually whenever it showed that they needed to.
But yeah, I think that they're ready to move on beyond a lot of what they would consider unpleasantness.
Okay, so if that is the case, we now know that Tucker's real mindset is he hates Trump, thinks he's a scourge to the country, so why would they need to have fired him?
Yeah, but you and I are having a conversation about stuff that we know and we care about.
Right.
I mean, like, the average right winger does not give a shit about this.
I mean, a lot of them know that, like, it's like wrestling.
They know that it's fixed.
They know that it's not real.
They don't really care about who likes who and who doesn't like who.
Tucker is useful for Trump, even if he went out and said that he hated Trump.
So he just became the brand that just became toxic because of that, no matter what.
Because in theory, what I was getting at was that here's a guy that really knows how detrimental Trump is to the country.
Oh, sure.
So why wouldn't it have been harder for him to be like, yeah, I want to pivot too.
Let me help you with my built-in audience.
It's already there.
They're going to have to do this from scratch to some degree with somebody else.
So, you know, that is a little bit of a weird dichotomy to me.
And then do you make this move?
Well, I mean, you know, in classic Rod Blagojevich fashion, this is a hot fucking commodity and I'm not just going to give it away.
A lot of what's happening today, and this is over the next couple of weeks how this shakes out, is going to be wild.
Because one of the things that's happening with Tucker Carlson is that he was someone on Fox who was like a commodity that sort of straddled multiple worlds, right?
He is old school Republican.
You know, he used to work for all of the magazines, all of the publications.
He's a legacy guy, right?
He trafficked in all these circles.
He was on CNN's Crossfire, for God's sakes.
You know, and like eventually like he realized that there was this opportunity to go far right to embrace all this stuff and use it.
He's really dangerous because he understands this stuff more than he feels it, right?
Like he's really good at navigating it.
The question now is, will Tucker Carlson shuffle off the stage like Glenn Beck?
And Glenn Beck put together like a really sort of, I mean, at times influential media organization, but he didn't capitalize on what he had at Fox.
I think Tucker's smarter than that.
And I think that the right wing ecosystem, particularly with influencers, Ben Shapiro, any number of these assholes, right?
They go on Fox News, but they're outside of Fox News, right?
And in fact, they often have more viewers and listeners than Fox News has.
So they're backed by certain donors who have backed Fox at certain times.
By the way, Harlan Crowe is all over this.
People like him are all over this.
Are they now going to see an opportunity to challenge Fox?
And not as a cable news network, but the question is, can you get grandma and papa to download an app on their computer or to download an app on their TV?
And so you have a lot of people, and I'm sure Ben Shapiro, by the way, has had a call today, and multiple calls.
He's had one call that says, hey, what do you think about you and Tucker forming up a union and going after Fox News?
He's like, that's great, I love it, we'll talk about this more.
And then he gets a second call, and he's like, Hi Rupert, it's wonderful to talk to you.
How are things going?
What are you going to do at 8pm?
And so you actually have Fox News recognizing that they have to shore things up with Tucker leaving.
They have to create a new path for themselves, or else they'll get cut off like dinosaurs.
And how that plays out, I think is going to be both fascinating and telling for what happens with the right wing for decades to come, honestly.
Well, you know, I just noticed that, did you know that Dan Bongino got fired on Thursday?
And they're trying to connect that to the Dominion case and the embarrassment of all the things that came out of that, and then the fact that they had to settle.
Wouldn't it be amazing if one of the settlement agreement part of it was that Sucker had to quit?
That would be fascinating.
And you know, I think one of the things that we'll see in the next couple days, and this will also shake out and tell us a lot, which is, how are these people going to react to it, right?
Are the influencers and the right-wing sort of superstars, are they going to be quiet about this?
Because if they're quiet about it, it means that either there's an albatross of a sexual harassment thing to come after Tucker Carlson, or they recognize that their bread is buttered with this stuff and there's no way possible for them to go ahead and cobble something together.
Or are they going to say that Fox conspired with Dominion voting systems and that they went woke?
And then you have the branding of the ideological sort of like loggerheads at that point.
And if we start going in that direction, then we know that maybe Fox did work with Dominion or this was simply a corporate decision.
And either way, we start to see the opposition and the movement away from this stuff.
Which is good.
Yeah.
There's nothing much to say besides the fact that it's encouraging.
If Ben Shapiro takes over that slot, though, and legitimizes his position by traditional media standards, I will need to do something to cleanse whatever my brain will have to see.
I want to put something out there, because this is the type of stuff that we do that other people sort of shy away from in all of this.
Let's just do a hypothetical, right?
Let's say that Ben Shapiro decides that he wants Carlson's time slot, right?
Let's say that Fox News gets to him, they're like, this is the up-and-comer, this is the guy that's going to do it.
I have to tell you, that is going to be wild.
Because Ben Shapiro has invested heavily, both in his career and financially, with his little... I mean, they're making movies, they're making all kinds of content.
He basically has turned into a producer, which is what he has always wanted.
Right.
So, at that point, we're talking about Fox basically coming in and saying, hey, why don't we bring that whole operation in-house?
Like, somebody like a Ben Shapiro... and again, We are talking about business here, but we're also talking about politics because those two things are completely interconnected, right?
We forget that, that this is about profit as much as it is power.
So all of a sudden you have Ben Shapiro who comes in, you have a mainstreamed now basically production house that comes in and does all this stuff.
Well, here's the thing, Nick, and I don't have to connect the dots too much.
What's it look like if the most influential right-wing personality, who also happens to be Jewish, is brought in to replace Tucker Carlson?
Then all of a sudden, on the far right, outside of Fox News, the anti-Semitism, the extremism, all of that, it goes up.
Tucker Carlson moves over to this side of the equation, and that gets really weird.
Right?
And then all of a sudden, like, a lot of this sort of prejudice and stuff just, like, ratchets up to, like, 11 at that point.
For sure.
You know, what we need to do is go through, like, Ben Inscuro's timeline only because... So, Tucker Carlson on Friday's show said it, so you guys know Monday.
Like, he was also at the comeback.
He had no idea.
But I don't think you can be able to convince me that Rupert Murdoch decided to fire him this morning.
No, I don't think so either.
So, you know, you have to imagine it was last Monday and then they had to begin the process and they were, you know, making some calls.
So then, you know, somebody knew about this beforehand and somebody probably even had something out there that we can find that had a little indication.
Can I share something real fast?
Yeah, go ahead.
I just looked up Ben Shapiro to see what he has said about the Tucker Carlson situation.
There you go.
And I'm going to read this to you.
All right.
Tucker Carlson is immensely talented and one of the most important voices on the right and he's going to continue to be those things no matter what comes next.
This was an hour ago.
That is one of the most carefully worded tweets that you will ever see.
This is a man who took calls all day long and understands that his possibilities are all over the place.
That, to me, tells me that that chip, that time slot, that starring role is going to basically be thrown around left and right.
There are a lot of people right now who are keeping an eye on their bank accounts in their future and trying to figure out how this thing is going to shake out.
Right.
Well, there's no question.
Tucker calls Shapiro.
Shapiro, when he answers the phone, doesn't say hi.
He goes, 25 million.
And then Tucker Carlson's like, thanks.
And then that's it.
All he wants to know is how much can I make from Daily Wire or whatever that bullshit is.
By the way, Tucker Carlson is not crying right now.
Tucker Carlson, and I know that, and I hate doing this, man.
I'm so sorry that I have to be the person who always does this.
I understand this feels good to people.
You know what I mean?
It's like, oh my god, maybe the tide is turning.
Maybe things are getting better.
You have to understand that, like, Tucker Carlson knows what he's worth.
He knows what the possibilities are here.
He's not just going to just go into obscurity, right?
He's not going to necessarily, like, did he lose a platform?
Sure.
But he stands to make more money, gain a platform.
We haven't even talked about the political ramifications yet.
And he understands already.
He had an uncomfortable relationship with Fox.
He criticized Fox.
He didn't always fit in at Fox.
He actually raged against Fox multiple times.
Like, this is not a massive victory.
It's not, you know, pumper fist, Trump's indicted and Tucker Carlson's gone.
Everything's smooth sailing.
It's just not.
Right.
I mean, I think Rupert Murdoch being forced to sell would be more in line with that to some degree.
But yeah, I mean, I think, because here's the thing, the third call that Tucker Carlson is getting is from Trump.
Yeah.
And they just had a nice little tête-à-tête, you know, where Trump got to basically criticize Tucker to his face, right?
Sort of trying to blame what he blamed by Carlson criticizing North Korea on, like, making it hard for him to have that meeting.
But Trump, without a doubt, is going to say, hey, you should be my running mate, right?
Well, you and I were talking about this.
And by the way, it's been so nice being able to hang out in person.
We talked about this yesterday.
Everyone is always like, oh, that guy criticized Trump.
He's never going to work for Trump.
And it's like, no, that's what Trump loves.
He loves taking anybody who's ever said anything about him and just rubbing their face in the dirt.
Mitt Romney could not be reached for comment.
Also, Trump understands, and I'm sure the people around him understand, that it's always good to keep your enemies closer to your chest.
Like, the way things are happening right now, and this is such a weird moment, Ron DeSantis is fading.
Bad.
Like, the donors are terrified he's shown an inability to talk to voters and interact with people in social situations.
His manner sucks.
Tucker Carlson, if he wanted to get involved in politics, would be really good at it.
Like, he would be a really, really good opponent to Donald Trump.
And then the question there is, is that something he wants?
And Donald Trump has to understand that anybody out there who could compete with him, particularly as a media trained ideologue like Tucker Carlson.
So you're exactly right.
It was like, hey, how are you doing?
Maybe we should team up.
Maybe we should talk.
Right.
But it's also a thing where it's like, you know, trying to be like, hey, let's stay on the same team as opposed to sort of divergent paths.
Yeah, you know what would be amazing?
He'd be like, sure, yeah, let's do that.
He begins the process and gets a lot of support politically, which he might not have because of the Trump machine, whatever you want to call that.
And then like, you know, six months later, he goes, you know what?
I'm just going to run for president myself.
How amazing would that be?
And having just built the infrastructure, just sorting it from Trump and then going out.
He obviously has things in his past that I think he is very, very concerned about.
Uh, Tucker, it would be.
And I have no doubt that whatever we've heard whispered, or even just the audio tapes of him calling into that show, uh, you know, that either more probably, and at the very least, the ones that did come out that got no traction, uh, would get traction, I think, if he's on the ticket.
I think anybody who watched the Access Hollywood tapes, like, understand that those things go a certain degree.
Like, it'll piss us off, and it'll make us, obviously, hate it more.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Because when you really look at what Carlson offers, he sort of offers that electorate kind of the perfect scenario.
It is the sneering hatred of Donald Trump, right?
Because DeSantis just comes off as like a petty little tyrant.
I mean, you know, we were talking this morning about his reaction to a reporter asking about the polls and he's like, Who knows?
And that's not what happens.
These Trump supporters, they want a guy who will go over and grab you by the throat and be like, what the fuck did you just say to me?
You know what I mean?
Or just to bully these people.
That's who Tucker Carlson is.
Even the celebrated Jon Stewart appearance on Crossfire, it's remembered that Stewart beat Carlson on that, but if you watch it back, Carlson did not yield.
You know what I mean?
He stayed with him.
He didn't wilt.
And on top of that, he also has all the relationships with the donors.
He's a longtime GOP guy who has run in these circles all the time.
He could gain traction.
I mean, and that sort of conflict between a Trump and a Carlson in the political arena, it's really, really hard at this point to even sort of game theory out like what the results would be from that.
It is, it is.
And we'll find out soon enough.
We don't have to wait that long, I don't think.
I mean, months.
But if I had to make a prediction, yeah, he probably ended up on Shapiro's network and making a shit ton of money.
I know monetize his, you know, whatever his podcast was going to be, and then some video.
Well, do you, so Tucker, of course, has a history of starting his own sort of things.
Like he did like the Daily Caller there for a while.
He put together his own thing.
He obviously enjoys these enterprising ideas.
The question there, and this is another one of those things where it's like, you know, Shapiro calls.
He's like, hey, I'm calling from the Daily Caller.
You want to talk about opportunities?
And all of a sudden Tucker's like, yeah, I was thinking about you joining me.
Right.
Right.
And that's the other thing is like, how much of this is about egos and trying to bring people together?
I mean, I'm sure Alex Jones hasn't stopped calling Tucker Carlson.
You know what I mean?
He basically tries to flirt with Tucker on every episode of his show, and the idea that he could come over and borrow some of Carlson's legitimacy is not unheard of, because Tucker has borrowed Alex Jones's conspiracy theory and rhetoric for a while.
But that also hurts Tucker's brand.
My mind's eye, I can't picture Tucker interacting with Jones or talking about him.
Oh, they're very close.
They're actually very, very close, but Tucker also understands that if he's seen in public with Alex Jones, it hurts his brand.
But I have to assume, man, the calls that have taken place today, if we knew the extent of them, between who?
I mean, my God, I assume Tucker and his people have talked to Russell Brand.
I assume that they've probably talked with Joe Rogan.
I mean, Spotify probably got a hold of them immediately.
So what does Tucker want?
Does Tucker want to be the new Rush Limbaugh?
Does he want to be the new digital baron?
Does he want to basically destroy Fox News from the outside using like alternative digital means?
Or is he more interested in politics?
And like the decision that he makes I think is going to tell us more about his priorities than anything we've seen from him so far.
But to be the next Rush Limbaugh you have to be on the radio.
That's not true.
It's not an alternative digital distribution.
Now, there's still a little time for the age of the Fox News audience to find him on the radio.
I mean, that audience is very old.
They are very, very old.
Yeah, so that doesn't sound as violent.
If he did that, That would be the biggest mistake of all time.
He needs to find, you know, an ally.
And he will.
Yeah, I think it's fascinating.
I guess the question then is really about, also, what does he pivot to when he appears on this next venture?
Is he going to be a little bit of an anti-Trump guy?
Because it was revealed that that's how he really feels.
I don't think so.
I think, again, like, what he actually feels is, like, backstage stuff.
I don't think it ever comes front, because what is happening here, and this is something we've talked a little bit on this show, is that battle between institutionalist Republicans and upstart Republicans, right?
National conservatives, authoritarians versus your Mitch McConnells and all those people.
That part of the party is very old and is descending.
We even see what Kevin McCarthy does.
He constantly tries to make that relationship work, and it doesn't.
Tucker Carlson has been at the center of all that for forever.
The question now is, is he going to be one of the people who can start to change the momentum in what the Republican Party is and what it's going to become?
And I think he understands that you have to treat the Trump question very gingerly.
You have to be able to use it.
You have to bring over his supporters while also trying to talk sense to them, which that's a graveyard I think a lot of people have found themselves in.
Interesting.
I mean, I guess in theory, the more segmented this audience gets, the better.
Like, it just sort of provides more space in between them all and maybe like, Stretches it out more, makes it less potent, I suppose?
That's a hell of a way to look at it.
The best case scenario for us, I think, is if this fracture creates basically, I would say, two or three different segments, right?
If we have the Fox News people who are older white Americans who watch Fox News every night because they hate the culture, they don't want to watch anything else, and Fox News makes them feel both comfortable and terrified.
And they don't, you know, Mamaw and Pop Pop don't learn how to install apps.
That would be fantastic if we could get there.
So if Fox News becomes that, and then if you have this upstart, sort of right wing, illiberal group, which is just talking to an online audience, they're not getting Memo on pop up right if they if they don't get the mainstream Republican sort of orthodoxy, and they're just still talking to fire breathers who are on discord sharing state secrets, you know, for cloud, that's those two segments, if there's a wall between them.
The good news is that the economy will reward both of them.
You know what I mean?
They'll make money while they don't have to achieve their political goals.
That group doesn't have to take over the Republican Party.
That group doesn't have to deal with those people.
They keep losing elections and eventually the market and the political scene requires something else.
That's the best case scenario in this.
That's the good news if it happens.
And the further dilution, dilution, is that the word?
Yeah, diluting of this, of the power of misinformation, just like what they've been doing on Fox.
It's just like, I'm trying to envision this as a historical context of, it's just like Martin Luther.
It's a lot like Martin Luther at the Revelation.
Yeah, I mean, it's a really weird moment.
The most recent one that I would probably go ahead and sort of compare this to, I mean, the Tea Party was one of them, right?
I mean, Fox News recognized in 2010 that they were put in a corner.
And they either were going to start moving towards the Tea Party, or they were, I mean, even the Republican Party.
The Republican Party at one point looked at the Tea Party, and they're like, we could be screwed here if we don't play this right.
And even an old hand like John Boehner was like, let's go tea party!
And later on he's like, those people are fucking nuts.
I can't imagine that Fox News has so badly read this situation that they are punting away millions of people.
I can't imagine that they have.
They have to have some sort of a metric that tells them there's more money and more influence to be had here.
People have gone broke betting against Rupert Murdoch.
And I hate saying that, but it feels like somehow or another they're going to have control.
But another thing, is Tucker Carlson more valuable to Fox News out there campaigning for president than he is on their airwaves?
Like, you know, we were going to talk about this, this poll that came out from NBC News.
Joe Biden's going to announce his re-election bid here very, very soon.
Apparently 70% of the country would rather he didn't.
Over 60% of the country would rather Donald Trump didn't.
We're possibly looking at Biden versus Donald Trump round two.
And by the way, for anyone listening at home who just went, I share your feelings.
I think you do as well.
I'm kind of curious, okay, do you think that, you know, is this an obscure poll?
No, that's NBC News.
Okay, NBC News, we've heard of them.
Yeah, they get around.
Okay, so Biden, do you think Biden's run the poll?
Do you think he's seen it?
No, I don't think anybody has put that poll in front of Joe Biden.
Okay, so, but somebody in Spain hasn't seen it.
So, my question then would be is, if that's the numbers, and you have that many more, that way it's 10% more of the country that doesn't want Biden to run than doesn't want Trump to run, which is really, like, that's an underwater number.
Well, at that point, what you're basically getting in that poll is every Republican says, no, I don't want Joe Biden to run, and then it's a chunk of Democrats who are like, I kind of wish somebody else would.
Oh, okay.
I hear you.
Right.
But then, aren't they polling Democrats with a Trump question?
I think some Democrats want Donald Trump to run.
Oh, that's interesting.
Because going back to 2016, he's beatable.
Yeah.
Okay.
Interesting.
So, my question then would be is, if I were planning the Biden campaign, I would not announce in a situation where those numbers look that way.
And you know you can get a bump with something a little bit of a win here or there and then something right in some legislation that would get at least 60 60 you know even with trump you know you can't be behind so that would be my only that would be one thing where i'm like i can't quite understand why they would want to announce it that quickly if that's the numbers i i for me because here's the problem right now is there's not going to be any legislative wins for at least two years Like, it has been just completely taken off the table.
Like, there's nothing short of, like, a grand bargain for the debt ceiling facade that is going to get passed, right?
Something that gets rid of entitlements or anything.
Executive orders?
Maybe.
Or maybe even Biden going out and actually doing some battle, but that goes against his centrist campaign that we've talked about.
I think for me right now, if I was within Biden's team, I would feel like George H.W.
Bush's people looking at Ross Perot, you know, like looking around every corner and being like, what's that crazy Texas billionaire doing?
Right.
There is an opening right now.
And this goes back to Tucker Carlson.
This goes back to most people aren't paying attention to this.
The Noble Labels Party, which is funded, by the way, by corporatists left and right, including Harlan Crowe.
The centrist group, which, by the way, wants Larry Hogan of Maryland to be their nominee more than anything in the world.
All of these people are taking a look at the possibilities.
And I got to tell you, so if I'm Tucker Carlson and I'm thinking about the possibility of running for president, I don't think I'm running as a Republican.
You know what I mean?
I don't want to be on the stage with Donald Trump.
I want to let those clowns just do whatever they're doing.
I don't want to take the flak.
I don't want to take the abuse from Trump.
I'm over here as an independent.
The No Labels Party over here, which is a complete and utter fraud and corporatist front, they see an opening, right?
This is the ability to move beyond the duopoly here of the Democrats and Republicans.
I think that we are watching right now, and I think a lot of narratives are going to start developing, a lot of signals are going to be out there.
I think that if things broke the wrong way, we're looking at like a four candidate election.
And those numbers, I think, are just like giving more fuel to that possibility.
Are you buying into the whole theory that Ross Perot sunk H.W.' 's campaign?
Oh, I mean, he played a role in it, for sure.
I see compelling numbers today.
I want to say, well, that's the only reason why Clinton won, and I don't think that that's... I've seen numbers that are sort of...
Proved to whatever degree that it wasn't necessarily the case, but But yeah, I mean any kind of I think that's what they got to be worried about I mean, I know we saw it.
I don't want to mention today, but you know and JT MTG at first I was going through my mental Rolodex MTG said you know Exhoriating the Democratic Party for not having a primary because you know of course it's the it's the incumbent you don't have a primary and But meanwhile, they didn't have one for Trump, and I think Trump is going to end up facing some version of that if it's not in his party.
Oh, I think!
I think one of the funniest things that's happening in the Republican Party, and we talked a little bit about this this morning.
The Atlantic has this absolutely hilarious interview with Chris Christie, right?
And Chris Christie, and again, you can always tell when the strategists get their hooks in people, because they always start saying things like, things are going to be different this time.
It's like, yeah, they are.
Absolutely they are, Chris.
I think a lot of people, based on Trump's weaknesses and the polls like this and exhaustion over this, I think you're going to have a Republican feel.
I think you're going to have Eight to twelve people up on that stage.
And a lot of them have absolutely no viability whatsoever.
Meanwhile, little Mike Pence is just getting the shit kicked out of him the entire time.
Ted Cruz is getting it too, but he's enjoying it.
I think that this right now is one of the most volatile pre-presidential election periods that we are ever going to experience in our lifetime.
It's funny, because while it's volatile, it's also, you know, it's going to be Trump and Biden, right?
Like, it almost feels like that's inevitable, too.
How do you feel about that?
How do you feel about saying that out loud?
What's that make you feel?
Like, stasis?
Stagnance?
It sucks!
It sucks.
Yeah, it doesn't feel good.
Yeah, like, if at any time we were going to have, like, progression Forward somewhere.
The last thing I want to do is have that same litigation again within 2024.
So let me ask you a question, because I think you and I, the way we sometimes approach politics, it's very similar but sometimes different.
Let me ask you a question.
What would you do, and we're sitting here in the Republic of California, right?
I mean, we're sitting here in Newsome country.
So what do you, how would you feel If a few months from now, and I don't think this is going to happen, but I think this is useful as a thought experiment.
How would you feel if Gavin Newsom came out and said, you know, I'm a loyal Democrat.
I just don't think that Joe Biden is the right choice for the future.
I think I have something to offer.
And we're not even talking about actual politics, right?
But whatever the agenda is, it starts sounding pretty good to you.
Right, like he's talking to your concerns.
He's talking about things that the Democrats haven't been able to handle.
Biden-Trump is like materializing up in the future, right?
You're seeing this coming, the polls are starting to set, 45-45, you know what I mean?
Like it's a toss-up wherever you see it.
What does it take for you as a voter, Nick Hauserman, what does it take for you to start considering shifting over to an insurgent, independent campaign like a Gavin Newsom?
Probably just the right step up onto the podium as he goes to have that conversation or that press conference.
Listen, he's younger, he's mentally, the acuity there and his ability to speak.
Can I point out, you're already talking yourself into it.
I am.
That's what I think is interesting here.
Yeah, and by the way, you know what he could do?
He could triangulate this by saying, you know, there's a lot of people out there that really loved when a California governor became president in the past, and you wouldn't believe it, but here are some policies that are actually very similar to that governor, and he happens to have the same first letter and last letter of his name.
I gotta tell you, this reality that we just cooked up, I think the show would just become An absolute mess, because I would not support Gavin Newsom as a candidate.
If he did, I'd just roll your dice.
Oh, I really don't like Gavin Newsom.
Oh.
As a candidate, he's fine.
It's the Kimberle Guilfoyle.
No, it's not the Guilfoyle.
He's just, he's such a technocratic neoliberal.
But that being said, I think what we just watched from you, do you notice at no point in any of that did you make the comment that Joe Biden is the only person who can beat Donald Trump?
I did not make that comment.
It never even like registered on your face.
That's what made 2020 possible.
That's what got him the nomination.
Besides the fact that like Barack Obama and the Democratic Party swept in and said, this ends now we go behind Joe right to be Trump.
I think that this is a really weird moment where the gravity of the parties is up in the air.
I think.
I think a lot of different things could happen.
And the idea of Biden-Trump 2 strikes people with such a thud that alternatives are welcome at this point.
And like this Tucker Carlson news, I think, plays into that.
A lot of these challengers out there sort of like pretending like they're thinking about it or sort of flirting with it.
There's a ton of money to be had.
There's a ton of opportunity there.
I think that this is shaping up to be a really weird time.
I agree.
I mean, I think I'm just looking for that West Wing moment when you find the candidate.
And I just don't we don't get that with Biden.
He was always a placemark, a bookmark, just to kind of get us through 2020.
And, you know, listen, like your book that when you're writing about the sort of the rise of Christianity, it kind of makes sense.
People get wired a certain way and it lasts for it could last for centuries.
Right.
It's frightening.
You know, we are wired to like the good looking white guy.
You know, in that age range.
That's why Gavin Newsom kind of like just looks like what we would have seen from all, you know, in our past.
Well, he looks like Bill Clinton Mach 2.
Yeah, he's like, you know, better looking.
Yeah.
No, he presents something that isn't there already.
There's generational concerns.
There's there's all kinds of stuff.
And I mean, I think the Democratic Party in 2016 got scared shitless.
Like we can't get a woman elected, you know, like that.
And there's a lot of concern that went from there.
I agree.
I think that the way that we interact with politics is, we are, I mean, I'm sorry, but people are waiting on Barack Obama.
Barack Obama's not gonna walk through that door, you know?
And they're waiting for someone to come through, but Joe Biden basically said, I'm gonna return things to normal.
That's great when you're facing like an existential crisis that everyone understands.
That doesn't propel a party forward.
And people want somebody that's going to propel something forward, whether it's beyond Biden or Trump.
I agree.
And I feel like the damage that that Newsom would do to his position in the Democratic Party would be severe because I don't think that Biden is going to willingly, you know, like, for instance, we just had, you know, Draymond Green or the Warriors to start the game for a crucial game because he went to the coach and said, I don't want to start coach.
It made it make Seacrest's job a lot easier because I don't think he wanted to start it either.
But Biden's not going to do that.
Biden is not going to go to Newsom and say, you got to do it, man, you know, for the team, you know, I want you to whatever.
And that's the problem, even though he should do that, or he should do that with somebody.
And everyone's scared about that.
And at some point, it's almost like maybe you can force that.
And I think that's what Gavin Newsom was doing when he was doing his commercials against DeSantis.
He was like dipping his toe, maybe trying to shift the conversation, make himself a little bit more noticeable on the national stage.
And, you know, there are ways, though, that he could force this.
Biden can make some gaffes, you know, it could really turn bad in the next six months, and his approval rating can get even worse than it is now.
Well, somebody somewhere is going to have a meeting with Ron DeSantis.
the next six months could really be bad for sure.
Oh, yeah.
For sure.
And so that's why DeSantis, you can't count him out until he's lost that primary in Iowa.
Well, somebody somewhere is going to have a meeting with Ron DeSantis.
And to go ahead and give you a little bit of an idea how this stuff works, either Ron DeSantis is not going to last beyond Iowa, right?
And this whole thing has just been, you know, as useful as an Elon Musk rocket taking off and exploding before he gets out of orbit.
Or in the next few weeks, you are going to see him come out.
I mean, my God, one of their favorite things to do is dress guys like him in sweaters, you know, just to try and like remake his image.
Like something is going to change with DeSantis or this thing's going to flame out.
When it comes to Trump, you have to imagine how many people with bated breath are just waiting on like a Georgia indictment to come through or a Merrick Garland indictment to come through, which good luck holding your breath on that.
I don't know where this is going.
I'm not sure where this is going.
I don't know if somebody like a Newsom is waiting in the wings.
I think he is so ambitious.
There's the possibility for it.
I don't know if there's no labels parties.
They have all the corporate money in the world that they could ever want.
I don't know.
I mean, Tucker Carlson, undoubtedly, like I said, he's already talked to God, he's probably talked to 10 strategists and strategy firms today to understand what a run like that would look for, except for, and this is the big question that comes with it, is it more money and less frustration to not run for President of the United States now, right?
Are you going to leave billions of dollars on the table?
Can you actually do more if you're not President of the United States, which is largely a ceremonial position now?
And this, man, I saw this happen.
And it just felt like it was like one of those moments where you're like, oh, we're going to remember this for a while.
This is going to be a definitive sort of a venture point.
And what we're feeling already is sort of the static of it and the manicness of it and the uncertainty of it, I think, is going to bleed into our politics.
And again, I know that I'm not going to shock anybody here.
I think a lot of people think 2024 is going to be boring.
I don't think there's even a remote possibility.
I think this is going to be chaotic as hell.
Yeah, and in case you're wondering, I just called it up, there was a Republican aligned poll, you know, not too long, two weeks ago, it showed that Biden was leading both Trump and DeSantis by about three points.
And that's, you know, that's within the margin of error.
And it's certainly not enough lead to make me feel comfortable at all in what would happen in that if either of those scenarios happened.
So it boils down to the viability of this candidacy versus, you know, it's not Trump.
By the way, it's like, not Bush was supposed to work for Kerry.
He got destroyed, right?
And so, you know, it's a long time ago, it's a different landscape, but it's like, how many cycles we have to go through of not Trump that will actually be successful for the other side?
Well, and the Kerry thing is a textbook case of being too careful by half.
You know, the right choice and all that wasn't to say, I'd like George W. Bush, but Like, that wasn't the way to do it.
Like, the Democratic Party had to marshal some other stuff together.
There's also a lot of evidence that 2004 was just so over-determined that there wasn't any beating this wartime president.
That's really hard to do, even if he's a criminal who started the war himself.
I have to tell you, I think Biden stays in.
I don't think he goes anywhere unless there's some sort of a major health scare or some sort of a tumultuous LBJ, I will not seek, nor will I accept moment.
I don't know what that would be.
I'm at this point, I'm not really sure even what that would even look like.
But the Trump thing is so up in the air, it's so unpredictable what's going to happen there.
Again, if you came back from the future and told me that this is a five-person race, You know, for the presidency, I would, I would not be totally shocked at that point.
So you mean three independents?
I don't know.
I mean, if you told me it was Trump from a prison cell, Joe Biden, you know, from the White House, and then like, a Newsom, a Pritzker, and a Tucker Carlson, like, I would not, I wouldn't blink at this point.
I'd be like, wow, tell me how we got there.
I want to learn.
And in that scenario, it sounds to me like that Trump wins because Pritzker and Newsom will take votes from Biden.
I mean, at that point, do we have one president?
Do we have a president?
An anti-president?
Do we have three presidents?
You know, that's the whole point here.
It's like monoculture or homogenous culture, sort of a shared culture.
It's out the window.
Yeah.
Well, it's Kamala, his running mate.
Oh god, I couldn't even begin to tell you this.
Like, that's the thing.
This thing is so weird and messy.
I mean, it really truly is.
And I hate to... I just felt myself get a little bit giddy in this conversation because, from an analysis perspective, and this is something you and I, we've talked about a little bit on the show, this stuff is fascinating.
It's really, really dangerous.
But we're going to see, I think over the next year or so, We're going to see what a lot of our presumptions were, whether they were real or imagined, whether they held any heft or weight.
We're going to learn a lot about American politics and society, and it is utterly fascinating, is what it is.
All right, everybody, that's going to bring an end to the show.
A reminder, today, by the way, when you're listening to this, it'll be Tuesday, April 25th, which means that if you are around Phoenix, Arizona, if you are within driving distance of the Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix, Arizona, you can come see Nick and me in conversation at Changing Hands Bookstore, again, in Phoenix, Arizona, at 6.30 local time tomorrow night.
I guess tonight when people hear this.
This will be our first public appearance doing a live conversation.
We are going to try our damnedest to record this for the weekend or next week.
Thank you again for everybody who showed up for our live show and supports the show in general.
Yeah, thank you.
Y'all are the best.
We will be back with that recording or something else.
I've got notes at this point, technologically-wise.
In the meantime, everybody, you can find Nick at CanYouHearMeSMH.
You can find me at JOSAxton.
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