Do we like Tucker Carlson?
Our score: 2 out of 10. A long run of on-air words about immigrants and trans people, with only a recent apology and an anti-war stance to set against it.
Carlson was one of the biggest names on cable news until Fox fired him in spring 2023. That was days after Fox paid $787 million to settle Dominion's defamation suit over 2020 election claims, with evidence from the litigation showing contempt for his viewers and colleagues. He has since gone solo, with his own subscription network and a podcast, and has interviewed Vladimir Putin, Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The workplace trouble is on the record too. A former producer on his show alleged in two lawsuits that she was harassed and made to take the fall over Dominion, and Fox settled for $12 million in 2023, which ended her claims against Fox and Carlson. A judge threw out Karen McDougal's slander suit over his “extortion” remark in 2020, calling it rhetorical hyperbole, so that one he won.
On the harm test, his own words are the problem. In July 2022 he said on air: “The great replacement? Yeah, it's not a conspiracy theory. It's their electoral strategy.” The Wrap called that an endorsement of a white supremacist conspiracy theory, while the article notes he denies being racist. In 2021 he agreed with a guest that rising numbers of trans people were a challenge to the perpetuation of the species.
The recent turn is the odd bit. In April he called Trump's Easter post “vile on every level”, said threatening Iran's civilian infrastructure would be a war crime, and was called a low-IQ person by Trump for it. Days later he told his brother “I'm sorry for misleading people, and it was not intentional.” That is a public reckoning of sorts, but it is about Trump, not about anything he has said about immigrants or trans people.
As for the good stuff, we found no charity work, no honours and no record of him standing up for LGBTQ+ people or migrants. The nearest thing is his anti-war stand on Iran, which cost him his place in Trump's circle. That's honestly the whole list, and it doesn't outweigh the rest.
So: he's a genuine break-with-the-boss story, and the apology is more than most in his game manage. But the harm test asks what he has said about people, and that record, in his own words, is long and it includes trans people and migrants. A fight with Trump doesn't change that.