CNN host Brian Stelter called Tucker Carlson the “new Donald Trump,” claiming that Fox News leadership encourages Carlson’s “radicalized content” to keep profits “flowing.”
“Every day, Carlson is throwing bombs, making online memes offending millions of people, also delighting millions of others, tapping into white male rage and resentment, stoking distrust of Big Tech in the media, generally coarsening the discourse, never apologizing for anything, and setting the GOP’s agenda,” Stelter said on his CNN show, Reliable Sources. “Sounds like a recently retired president, right?”
The CNN media critic argued that the Fox News host is the “new Donald Trump” and that Carlson has “taken Trump’s place as a right-wing leader, as an outrage generator,” and as a “firestarter.”
The 35-year-old host went on to compare Trump’s ubiquity to Carlson’s social media stardom, arguing that Carlson “stokes the same debates that Trump did, and it raises the same predicament that Trump raised five or six years ago, whether and how to cover his claims.”
Tucker Carlson Tonight, which has consistently been rated among the most-watched shows on cable television, came under fire last week after Carlson called Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “openly political.” Carlson also said Austin is “accelerating poisonous trends already in progress at the Pentagon, the worst of these being the use of irrelevant criteria in hiring and promotion.”
Stelter accused him of mocking soldiers and said Carlson “flipped out” after Pentagon officials hit back on the segment.
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The Murdoch family, which owns a variety of media properties including the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, was directly singled out by Stelter, who argued that not only does Carlson want “attention” but that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch want attention on Carlson and that Fox News is becoming the “Tucker Carlson Channel.”
“It’s ultimately all about the Murdochs and what they want, how they are going to keep the profits flowing by giving the viewers more and more radicalized content, led by Tucker Carlson.”
