(2022-04-21) Siegler Phonies

M.G. Siegler: Phonies. I used to watch Tucker Carlson regularly. This is true!¹ He had a show called Tucker in 2005 on MSNBC

The most frequent regular contributor? A young Rachel Maddow.²

Anyway, I bring this up because Tucker Carlson is quite a different beast these days

Jimmy Kimmel made this point on Kara Swisher’s Sway podcast the other day: Now, do I believe that Tucker Carlson believes the things he says? I do not. I think he is a phony in every respect. I think he’s an algorithm. I think his audience created him. I think he started out as a fairly down the middle political broadcaster in a cute little bow tie with polka dots on it. And then Jon Stewart handed him his ass, and he had some kind of Lex Luthor moment where he, little by little, figured out what worked for him ratings-wise, which is primarily speaking to senior citizens like they’re kindergarteners and scaring them with garbage.

It would seem that he’s fully suckled on the popularity teet and there’s no getting him off it

Which would be fine — who cares, he’s just another soulless moron now. Except that people actually listen to and follow him. Including many politicians. It’s totally insane. He clearly doesn’t believe this shit, yet he peddles it. And it moves needles. Ratings and otherwise.

Speaking of politicians, J.D. Vance, currently running for the Senate from my home state of Ohio, is also clearly a phony. He was loudly against Donald Trump, now he’s taking his endorsement after months of groveling and tripping over himself to change his past statements and positions.

How about Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy? If reports today are to be believed, they were rooting for the “son of a bitch” Trump to crash and burn during his Capitol riot fiasco. Because of course they were. When he didn’t, they quickly pivoted to get back in line and kiss the ring.

But the biggest one of all is literally the biggest one of them all. Trump is and always has been a loser.

while many democrats are disingenuous, these people are something far worse: complete jokers who trick their constituents.

while the solution is obvious: to help people to wake up from this bullshit — sadly, the opposite is happening