Rachel Maddow exposed the power of Tucker Carlson and the conservative media by never naming the former Fox News host.
Maddow’s video:
Mr Maddow said:
You can tell the difference between them in terms of style, the kind of charm they have, the kind of stuff they sell, the way they try to make Americans hate each other and resent each other, especially the way they do things. Trying to get Americans to hate minority groups, but I also think that might be exaggerated, like Charles Coughlin, who was his father in the 1930s. Do not become dominant.
As you know, the 80’s and 90’s stations were massive.
They never competed with Coughlin, and in the ’80s and ’90s the giant stations were more dominant than the flavored stations of the month, so we have a dominant figure. In the case of , there is someone…dominant, but the extent of that control, the overall importance to the media, and the right-wing media ecosystem is that the right-wing media has diversified over time and existed on many different platforms. Shrink as many different things. Someone as big as the biggest men of all time.
Secondly, what you see over and over again, I don’t know why this didn’t sink in and we made fun of these guys, but when you actually see , whose dominance becomes very clear inside the conservative media, does not tend to influence other kinds of major influencers.
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Rachel Maddow nailed it on both counts.The true power of Tucker Carlson was not across America. Carlson’s real power lay in how he held the initiative within the Republican Party.
Carlson only drew around 3 million viewers on his best night. Although his audience was less than his 1% of the U.S. population, he wielded great influence over the Republican Party.
The surprise of Tucker Carlson’s dismissal was that it robbed the person who was the voice of the dominant conservative media in command of the Republican Party. Eventually someone on the conservative media side will get the idea that they can move from leading the Republican Party from a media position to leading the Republican Party politically.
Tucker Carlson was not as powerful as media power. Carlson will be replaced, and the next person will be a Republican media influencer, albeit with an even smaller audience than Tucker Carlson.
What Maddow suggested was that Tucker Carlson would be gone and eventually forgotten.
Jason is the editor-in-chief. He is also a White House press pool and a congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a BA in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy with a specialization in the social reform movement.
Awards and Professional Membership
Member of the Association of Professional Journalists and the American Political Science Association
