Tucker Carlson, Famed Truth Teller, Says He Was Mauled by a Demon

Tucker Carlson, professional charlatan and alleged collector of Kremlin cash per the Canadian Prime Minister, is carving a new path for himself. The lifelong chameleon first tried the normal mainstream media shtick and became known as the jackass bow tie guy who Jon Stewart beclowned on live TV in 2004 during a famed Crossfire segment that still stands as one of the best summaries for why the media is the way that it is. At a certain point, Carlson knew there was no juice left to squeeze in playing the respectable conservative in the Very Serious Beltway landscape, and he pivoted his brand.

A guy who grew up in a house overlooking the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club saw gilded architecture enthusiast Donald Trump command populist attention unlike any Republican politician of our lifetimes, and he decided to hop on the salt of the earth gravy train. Carlson became the highest-rated cable news host on TV, playing his version of Joseph Goebbels every night on Fox News, trying to launder white supremacist tropes as normal politics. Given how widespread and normalized the Great Replacement Theory is within the right-wing, you can only call Carlson’s Fox News career a wild success, no matter how messily it ended.

But he definitely lost the battle at Fox News, and as I wrote in the piece about Justin Trudeau accusing him of being a Russian agent, landing at freaking zombie Twitter is proof that Carlson’s brand as a Republican Kingmaker is tarnished. He needs something new now. This is…new, I guess.

I will admit to feeling a touch hypocritical pointing and laughing at this. As I detailed in my two-part series on UFOs and Chuck Schumer’s “non-human intelligence” legislation he’s trying to pass through Congress (Part 1 and Part 2), diving into the deep end of that opaque subject made me more amenable to stories of the paranormal. Jacques Vallée, a famous scientist who helped develop NASA’s map of Mars and the early ARPANET and was the inspiration for the character Lacombe in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, has spent an entire lifetime subjecting UFOs to scientific inquiry, and he convinced me of his belief that the paranormal, UFOs and stories from religion and ancient human lore about metaphysical beings and other realms are all related to each other, and likely explained by the broader mystery of consciousness we are only just beginning to probe the literal weirdness of.

This has led me to listen to podcasts like Otherworld, which the New York Times described as This American Life for the paranormal, where I have heard bizarre stories similar to Carlson’s from people who sound just as bewildered about what happened to them as Carlson does in that clip. If you presented this story to me on Otherworld and masked Carlson’s very distinct and grating voice, I would listen to it with an open mind.

But you cannot separate the man from the story. Carlson has spent decades proving he is anything he needs to be—a willing weathervane for power, trying to tilt in whatever direction he sees the wind blowing.  There is no reason to interpret anything this man says as genuine or honest. In the Obama years, he aimed to be a walking platonic ideal of a George Will column, fancyboy dress and all. Once Trump revealed the true nature of American politics and the right-wing donors Carlson has been dancing for forever were able to indulge their worst instincts, he echoed Der Stürmer and pushed explicit white supremacist rhetoric to mimic the sounds coming out of the White House.

Now that conservatives are supposedly out of power and have accomplished the religious right’s signature goal of restricting a woman’s right to healthcare, killing women across the country after the fall of Roe, their prophesized return to a White House they were supposedly robbed of in 2020 is adopting explicit religious overtones. Russell Brand, famed alleged sex criminal and ex-proud atheist, has now found right-wing God who apparently needs him to sell a “magical amulet” to protect people from “corrupting” WiFi and “other evil energies” that you can buy for the low price of $250 (proving that the lone constant on the right-wing other than hatred is grifting). The right is adopting more and more religious rhetoric in their self-serving politics of revival, as the notions of things like demonic possession take greater salience in a right-wing becoming more detached from reality each and every day.

I am increasingly convinced that corporate ESG is the Devil Incarnate

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2022

So of course Carlson is going to roll in this shit and pretend he had a religious experience—one that paints him as an important target. He didn’t tell a more classic story of Jesus and love, but one of darkness and the Devil. He was attacked by a demon, so he must be important to the fight against the forces behind it. This story is silly, a little sinister, but primarily instructive as to where the American right-wing is currently at. Bending to their illogic is the only consistent trait that Carlson has ever demonstrated in his public life.