TUCKER CARLSON BECOMES DONALD TRUMP

Did you see Tucker Carlson's desperate bid for ongoing relevance yesterday? No, not the video -- I'll get to that later. I mean the transparently phony photo op he staged with the help of some accommodating pals from Britain's Daily Mail:

It's been barely two days since his brutal ouster from Fox News - but Tucker Carlson looks like a man without a care in the world.

The TV firebrand shrugged off the media storm and insisted he was more interested in enjoying a romantic date with his wife Susan as he broke his silence in an exclusive chat with DailyMail.com.

'Retirement is going great so far,' chuckled Carlson, 53, as he emerged from his $5.5 million beach home in Boca Grande, Florida on Tuesday night.

'I haven’t eaten dinner with my wife on a weeknight in seven years.'

Pressed on his future, the flame-throwing former host of Tucker Carlson Tonight flashed a broad smile and joked: 'Appetizers plus entree.'

This was accompanied by photos and a brief video of Carlson and his wife tooling around in a golf cart, presumably on their way to dinner. (Must be an early-bird special -- the sun looks awfully bright.)



Carlson even gave the Mail photographer one of his patented psychopathic forced laughs, just to show how totally not fazed he is by his Fox defenestration.

We talk about Ron DeSantis's mimicry of Donald Trump, but this seems like Carlson's version of a Trump-in-exile photo op, down to the golf cart, if Trump actually liked his wife and enjoyed leaving his own property once in a while: Look! I am the king of my domain, here in Florida, the sun-drenched oasis of freedom and adult play!

The couldn't-be-happier vibe Carlson tries to project in the Daily Mail story is, of course, completely contradicted by the video he released a few hours later:

Good evening pic.twitter.com/SPrsYKWKCE

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 27, 2023

Rolling Stone reports:

IN TUCKER CARLSON’S first on-camera appearance since being fired from Fox News, the former host did not mention his ex-employer at all. Carlson, filming in the one corner of his home studio not marred by Fox branding he’s no longer allowed to use, didn’t say anything to shed clarity on his situation — but he did suggest that his career infecting American minds with hateful poison is not over.

At 8:01 PM, the time when just last week he would have been introducing his primetime Fox show, the former host released a two-minute video via his Twitter account.

Carlson can't use Fox branding and he can't directly criticize Fox, probably because of a non-disparagement clause in his contract. Posting the video in his old time slot reeks of desperation -- I'm reminded of a schizophrenic I know who was fired from a job for erratic behavior just before a weekend and who had persuaded himself that he might get his job back if he just ... showed up at the office on Monday. (He didn't get his job back, needless to say.)

But as with Trump, the effort to remain relevant somehow comes off as a power move, even to Rolling Stone's reporter ("his career infecting American minds with hateful poison is not over"). And that's not completely crazy: Sometime next year, Trump could be the president-elect and Carlson could once again be a dangeous rabble-rouser as the host of America's most popular podcast.

Carlson, like Trump, is a sad man who's been forced out of a job he felt was his divine right, but millions of right-wing Americans wallow in grievance, so when their leaders are deposed, it somehow makes them look stronger. (Slate quotes a comment at a popular right-wing site: “Tucker was the closest to unadulterated truth we have ever had on TV. That’s why he was a massive threat that needed to be eliminated.”)

So what looks like failure is actually strength, because the apparent failure is actually the result of a frontal attack by the "deep state" or the "globalists" or the "uniparty." That's a major part of Trump's message, too. And it's plausible to far too many people.