Old Clip of Tucker Carlson Accusing Bill O’Reilly of ‘Deep Phoniness’ Goes Viral After Texts Showed Carlson Actually Loathes Trump
A 2003 clip of Tucker Carlson on C-SPAN-2’s BookTV went viral this week after it resurfaced on social media as text messages were revealed in the latest Dominion Voting Systems court filing showing Carlson claiming to hate Donald Trump. The clip showed Carlson warning that then-Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s success would immediately if ever his on-air persona was shown to be dishonest.
Among the biggest headlines to drop in mid-February from the unsealed court filings – part of Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News – was that Carlson called Trump “a demonic force” in a text to his producer on the night of Jan. 6. On Monday, another bombshell from Dominion included a text message in which Carlson said, “I hate him passionately” in reference to Trump. Notably, Carlson has long praised and defended Trump on his top-rated Fox News show.
While many critics and observers were stunned to see Carlson privately breaking completely with his public persona, the 20-year-old clip was shared and viewed over one million times on Twitter.
The clip begins with the show’s host quoting from Carlson’s book, Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites, in which Carlson wrote, “Bill O’Reilly’s success is built on the perception that he really is who he claims to be. If he ever gets caught out of character, it’s over.”
Carlson then discusses the quote a length, saying, “That’s right. I said before that that, you know, Bill O’Reilly is really talented, more talented than I am. You know, he’s got a lot more viewers, and I know he’s a better communicator than I am.”
“But I think there’s kind of a deep phoniness at the center of his shtick. And again, as I say, the shtick is sort of built on this perception that he is the character he plays,” Carlson continues, adding:
He is everyman, this kind of, he’s not right-wing. He’s a populist, this kind of Irish-Catholic populist fighting for you against the powers that be. And that’s great as a shtick. But I’m just saying, the moment that it’s revealed not to be true, it’s over. The moment he gets caught, you know, slapping a flight attendant on the Concorde for not bringing his champagne fast enough or barking at, you know, one of his subordinates to take the brown M&M out of my bowl and give me a bottle of Evian or something like that.
The second that makes Page Six, it’s over. Right? Because the whole thing is predicated on the fact that he is who he says he is. And just nobody is that person, especially not someone who makes $1,000,000, you know, many millions a year.
A lot of ink has been spilled in recent days commenting on the apparent hypocrisy of Carlson vehemently denouncing other media figures for harboring hatred of Trump to claim their coverage is biased, while himself privately blasting the former president in the strongest possible terms. However, the latest Dominion revelations do not appear to have hurt Fox News’s ratings, while Carlson’s audience remains large as ever.
Watch the full clip above.
