Series Review: Tucker Carlson Today on Fox Nation

Carlson’s Serious Broadcast Journalism’s the Reason to Stream Fox Nation

Tucker Carlson’s been around for decades. I remember watching him for the first time years ago on cable news when he was a bow-tied, conservative pundit. As I recall, he’s hosted his own program on all three major cable news stations, Microsoft’s channel with NBC News, MSNBC, Fox News Channel (FNC) and Cable News Network (CNN). This month, he started hosting a new show on FNC’s streaming app, FoxNation. It’s titled Tucker Carlson Today.

This is Carlson’s best work. The format, set and editorial standard is simple, direct and clear. The approach is the opposite of today’s dominant, dumbed-down, perceptual-based, audio-visual driven media; it’s entirely intellectual, not merely a disjointed cluster of fragments shoved into a package of pictures, noise—such as Fox News’s cranked up gong on its news alert—and blaring guitars in flashes, bursts and oppressive graphics. I’ve watched most of the episodes, which typically run for 50 minutes. Each episode is interesting, informative and distinct from today’s groupthink.

This is not to say that I agree with Tucker Carlson, whom the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recently called upon Fox News to fire for being what the ADL calls a “white supremacist”, a claim for which I’ve observed not a shred of evidence (on the contrary; his denunciations of racism are repetitive). In fact, groupthinkers, anarchists and other leftists, such as Apple’s adopted charity, the Southern Poverty Law Center, target Carlson because he breaches today’s anti-conceptual orthodoxy. Comparatively, Carlson’s a freethinker, which is why he’s reviled. Carlson’s positions, which have always been rubbery, not part of a principled system of thought, range from advocacy of government intervention in economics to opposing a woman’s right to abortion. Whether you agree with his commentary, Carlson, who studied history, co-founded a conservative website and wrote for a conservative publication, is a serious and thoughtful journalist. 

Tucker Carlson Today offers serious and thoughtful broadcast journalism. The commercial-free program generally unfolds without filter or editing. Carlson interviews an intellectual for the duration of the show; that’s it. So far, he’s interviewed a doctor against lockdown, a United States Marine and bestselling author who’s considering a run for the Senate in Ohio, a black Chicago college professor who opposes groupthink and racism, a British author opposed to woke-ism and cancel culture, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who warns against food companies and seeks government regulation and a British tabloid TV journalist who was vilified and cancelled for explicitly doubting an American actress who married a prince and complained to Oprah Winfrey about alleged royal racism. Each interview is serious and absorbing. Each episode is both relaxed and intense. Carlson favors conversations with writers and these exhaustive interviews evoke the old Dick Cavett show on PBS.

It’s nearly impossible to find objective news sources in today’s market for dreadful, biased and subjective media. FoxNation as an application for streaming original programming is a welcome alternative in certain respects. The app’s bias for traditionalist, religionist conservative programming is plain and clear. But, with this self-described “sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness and groupthink” as its leading broadcaster, he’s why to pay to subscribe and watch. Tucker Carlson Today exclusively streams on FNC’s FoxNation app. To learn more about Carlson, with whom I fundamentally disagree on political philosophy, visit his website.