Rachel Maddow Defends Tucker Carlson Against Criticism He Has Changed Beliefs: ‘He is Not Faking It’

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow spoke about Tucker Carlson — the controversial Fox News host who was once a close colleague of hers at MSNBC — in a new interview with Mediaite.

In this week’s episode of The Interview podcast, Aidan McLaughlin asked Maddow about her opinion of Carlson — given their history working together — a question that elicited a disclaimer from the MSNBC star.

“I don’t watch his show,” she said, joking that she sounds like Republican senators claiming they missed President Donald Trump’s latest controversial tweet.

“I think the thing that Tucker gets a knock for — that he doesn’t deserve — is this idea that he’s evolved and changed in some radical new direction,” Maddow said, speaking on a common criticism of the Fox News host. “Tucker has always been that guy. He is legitimately that guy. He is not faking it. He comes by his beliefs and his convictions and even his tone of voice quite naturally. He is not putting it on.”

Carlson hosted MSNBC prime time show Tucker from 2005 to 2008, before leaving the network for Fox News. Before landing in prime time herself, Maddow appeared regularly as a guest on Tucker.

Since 2008, The Rachel Maddow Show at 9 p.m. has grown into one of the top programs on cable news. Carlson was placed at 8 p.m. on Fox, drawing his own massive audience thanks to rhetoric ideologically aligned with Trump.

Maddow recalled being a guest on Tucker’s show at the start of her cable news career — calling it “crazy,” adding, “He’s just that guy.”

The anchor went on to guess that Tucker’s rise is cable news is thanks to shifts that led the Republican Party to be more closely aligned with his views.

“The Republican Party and conservative viewing audiences are latched on to that point of view now,” she told McLaughlin. “A president got into office who articulated many of the most controversial things that Tucker has long advocated and that were most sort of hot in terms of riling people up and attracting controversy and attracting attention.”

Maddow went on to note that Tucker has essentially been peddling a more articulate and erudite version of Trump’s ideas and beliefs.

“It’s a powerful thing to hear somebody with Tucker’s delivery and capability as a TV communicator articulating the same ideas that the president — forgive me — is sort of braying about on Twitter, all caps, misspelled, and all those things,” she added. “But you put those two things together and it can resonate in a way that moves people and becomes in that case, I think, a very powerful political force.”

As for her fellow rivals? Maddow doesn’t watch many of them either, largely thanks to her busy schedule, but also due to a fear she might subconsciously echo their arguments.

“I don’t read a lot of opinion columnists or people who are doing analysis of the same kind of news stories that I’m doing analysis of,” she added. “I try not to bury myself in the work of people who are doing similar work to me, because I would like to be original and I don’t want to get involved in any sort of groupthink cycle.”

Listen to the full conversation with Maddow on this week’s episode of The Interview, available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.