Getty Fourth Estate How to Beat Tucker Carlson A step-by-step guide.

Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

Tucker Carlson's television career has crashed and burned all Halloween orange so many times in the past decade—The Spin Room; Crossfire; Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered; Tucker—and on so many networks—CNN, PBS, MSNBC—that it’s a wonder that the Fox News Channel has given him another shot with another nighttime show, Tucker Carlson Tonight.

And what a shot it is. The network recently moved Carlson from the 7 p.m. slot to the cushiest position in all of prime-time cable news—9 p.m.—following and preceding ratings-leaders Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Carlson’s ratings are up compared to the program his replaced, Megyn Kelly’s The Kelly File, which we can attribute to his perseverance and the audience-growth hormone drug that is Trumpmania. Like all of the prime-time Fox hosts, Carlson has drunk deeply from the Trump flask. He may not be completely in the tank for Trump, but the administration could run for a few weeks on the fumes Carlson huffs.


Carlson, who was previously the bow-tie wearing butt of Jon Stewart's 2004 barbs, has swapped spaces with his tormenter. Today, Stewart is that vaguely familiar bearded fellow who occasionally pops up on the tube, and Carlson is cable TV’s new prince.

The Carlson show, like most Fox nighttime fare, steers by the O’Reilly and Hannity compass, making him a ‘lil brother of the big boys. Tucker O’Hannity, if you will. Fox bookers recruit guests according to the day’s headlines, bringing in both conservatives who buy the Fox agenda as well as liberals, lefties and febrile loons willing to play the palooka for a couple of short rounds. Carlson, skilled at corroding a guest’s argument with sarcasm, rarely sprays them with the sort of vitriol Bill and Sean naturally secrete. His youthful, friendly countenance—I can attest from meeting him several times and attending a book party at his home—is genuine. But like any cable news guy, he’s a mortician: The other guy’s dying is his living. The best TV culminates not in gentle Charlie Rose patter but a well-placed kill shot.

Still, Carlson is not invincible. As illustrated previously in this series, gunslingers like O’Reilly and the late Tim Russert can be beat, so why not Carlson? If that’s your goal (only a dope goes on TV to lose), please do your homework! The Fox shows scour the past, looking for embarrassing info on their guests. You know your vulnerabilities better than Carlson—so have a killer return ready for his best serve. This seems obvious, but many guests invite blindsiding. If you’ve written or said it, it’s likely that that by show time Carlson will know it.

Everybody knows to avoid beaming in, split-screened, to interrogatory programs like Carlson’s. Split-screened, you’re isolated in a remote studio talking into a big camera. When the host barks questions in your earpiece, you can’t help but jolt to life like a puppet on a string. On set with the host, the dynamic changes. You become more of his equal, a co-creator of the conversational rhythm instead of a mere follower.

If at all possible, do your best to be a current or past government official of high standing. Carlson, like O’Reilly, respects authority and isn’t comfortable with ripping high-status guests. Robert Gates, former CIA director and secretary of defense, took a cakewalk through the show recently in an interview that couldn't have been more deferential had Carlson been applying for a job. “Who was the best defense secretary since the Second World War?” Carlson brown-nosed. Lefty professor of Russian studies Stephen F. Cohen, who in a previous Fox era would be considered prey, gets friendly and repeated roll-outs by Carlson, perhaps for supporting Trump-style détente with Vladimir Putin.

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich got the soft gloves recently, too, but for a different reason: Carlson’s aim was to out Reich as a Trumpite. “The smart people [in] the [Democratic] party like you, who have had a consistent populist economic message for all these years, also aren’t giving [Trump] a chance,” Carlson said. “He’s closer to you on some key issues—not peripheral stuff—like trade, than Hillary Clinton.” The comparison flummoxed Reich, who accepted it and appeared to be appalled by it. It was a boxing match, but the kind in which neither combatant suffers a nick. Similarly, Carlson drafted rabble-rouser Glenn Greenwald to testify about how the “deep state” citizens of the CIA and elsewhere have leaked to damage the Trump administration. It was a gentlemanly, if toothless, talk. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman got the same treatment when he appeared to plug his new book. See also, James Woolsey, who got an easy ride, as well as Lindsey Graham, whom Carlson tweaked but never tortured. Does Carlson defer out of respect or because their appearances convey status on the show and he seeks their return engagements?

My advice won’t work if you take your most untenable positions onto Tucker Carlson Tonight. Like other Fox hosts, he books obscure liberals and lefties onto his card to lose, and rare is the episode that doesn’t include at least one patsy. University of Connecticut professor of sociology Matthew Hughey stepped into Carlson’s electronic stump grinder recently to defend his thesis that Trump and Trump supporters are heteronormative, white male supremacists, a position for which there isn’t a fraction of a constituency among Fox viewers. Alex Mohajer, a Huffington Post contributor, wrote that Clinton is the rightfully elected president of the United States. For his pains, he got a Carlson dunking.

Carlson telegraphs an intent to butcher a patsy by letting his face go reptilian still, which makes him look both Botoxed and as if he’s caught Bell’s palsy. Next, Carlson’s right hand comes up—always his right hand—to karate-chop the air at chest level as he interrupts and reinterrupts his guest and disputes everything said. “Your facts are actually wrong, no-no,” Carlson said to Hughey, giving him the Tucker salute. If being cut short rattles you, get over it or don’t go on the show. Think in sentences, not in paragraphs. Work on your cardio-vascular stamina.

When Carlson catches a guest in his pincers, he squeezes ever harder if the guest tries to wriggle out. When refugee advocate Kevin Appleby made a moral argument for admitting additional immigrants in a recent appearance, saying it would make the United States safer, Carlson sprung what looked like a pre-scripted comeback. “Look, you’re basically saying we have to let more people in or else we’ll be hated more by Islamic extremists,” Carlson said. Seeing as they already hate us, he held, why bother? Always resist the temptation to duck or finesse a direct Carlson question, because he’s a very good listener. Stand up for what you believe without sounding stupid, and you might fight him to a draw. But duck a question, and you’re dead. Tattooed on Carlson’s corneas is the statement “Answer the question!”—which he’ll play at high volume in an endless loop until you break. Appleby got the “question” barrage, as did Obamacare co-architect Jonathan Gruber and Jehmu Greene, a candidate for DNC chair, and you’ll get it, too, if you try to slip his grasp.

Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald got the “Answer the question!” treatment in a December appearance. He tried to slay Carlson with preambles, posturing and a prop—a large binder labeled “Tucker Carlson Falsehoods” that he displayed for the camera when Carlson got under his collar. The bickering went on for nine minutes as Carlson submerged Eichenwald with an unending wave of “Answer the questions” over an ill-advised tweet the writer had published, then deleted, about Trump’s mental health history. Neither journalist came off well, but the day went to Carlson, who never let up from his opening attack of, “Do you believe that you are practicing journalism?” You can’t beat Carlson if you’ve decided to beat yourself.

The best-prepared guest to debate Carlson must be Teen Vogue contributor Lauren Duca. She fought him to a draw—many would say to a win—on the topic of Ivanka Trump’s feminism. Duca wasn’t just prepared—she also sounded like an experienced debater. At some points Duca sounded positively Tuckerian, a strategy I would never counsel, blasting him with, “I think your earpiece might not be working, because that is certainly not what I said” when he tried to put words in her mouth. “You’re actually being a partisan hack who is attacking me ad nauseam and not even allowing me to speak,” she accurately said. When Carlson gets mad or rattled on air—and that’s rare—he laughs semi-hysterically, which he did when it became clear Duca could not be cross-talked into silence. Duca fought with hot breath, which ordinarily triggers Carlson for the kill. But this time it worked, forcing Carlson to conclude with a final riff that was beneath him. “All right, I gotta go. You should stick to the thigh-high boots. You’re better at that.”

Another guest who dueled with Carlson and won was BuzzFeed News Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, who bravely sallied forth to discuss his site’s decision to publish the “dossier” on Trump's Russian visits. Smith was too grooved on the topic for Carlson to dislodge him, so Carlson switched to a strafing maneuver, claiming that “BuzzFeed News has a pretty open political agenda—masquerading as journalism.” Smith deftly blocked him—“Is it open or is it masquerading?” Carlson’s point was BuzzFeed is too LGBTQ-friendly to be considered a legitimate news organization. Really? Whatever you may think of BuzzFeed’s predilections, the site is nowhere near as partial as the conservative-tilting, Trump-thumping Fox. Instead of resisting Carlson, Smith wore the insult like a garland, confessing that the news site is pro-gay but adding that it covered the gay-marriage story aggressively and accurately, something Carlson couldn’t dispute.

When Carlson tried again, describing BuzzFeed’s affirmative action recruitment for minority fellows as “the textbook definition of racism,” Smith noted that affirmative action programs exist almost everywhere in corporate life, again checkmating his opponent. Carlson finally fired his magic bullet, “You're better than this. Just give me a straight answer.” Smith held his ground, kept cool as Carlson got hot and answered the questions with the sort of TV brevity and confidence that makes you think somebody should hire him to do a show. I doubt that any host could have gotten the better of Smith that night. Carlson ended the interview with a promise to resolve the dispute over a future lunch, all but conceding the match.

If my cheat sheet doesn’t fill you with optimism about beating Carlson when he finally invites you on his show, I understand. In the theater of cable news, somebody must suffer before the hour is over. Like O’Reilly, Carlson prepares for his guests but struggles when they surprise him by matching him for wit and interruption. The best advice for beating Tucker Carlson is this: Be unflappable. Be affable. Be Tucker Carlson.

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Send your favorite Tucker Carlson memory to [email protected]. Mine is the piece he did in 1999 on George W. Bush for Talk magazine. Will somebody please reprint it? My email alert wants you to unsubscribe unless you’re reading my pieces because you’re costing me money. My Twitter feed was detained at the border. My RSS feed subsists on death metal.

