How Tucker Carlson Went From Calling Trump a ‘Demonic Force’ To Helping Him Return to The White House

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

As America prepares for a second Trump presidency, one of his most powerful and consequential media allies, Tucker Carlson, has gone even further off the deep end – recently telling viewers he was attacked by a demon and blaming hurricanes on abortions.

While Carlson’s descent into Alex Jones territory becomes easy fodder for mockery, it’s impossible to overstate how crucial he was in rehabilitating Trump’s political fortunes after January 6, 2021. So much so, Carlson more than any other media figure deserves credit for absolving Trump, minimizing the events of Jan. 6th, and putting Trump in a position to be a coin flip away from the presidency yet again.

In late October 2021, Carlson released his highly controversial docu-series on Fox Nation called Patriot Purge. “The U.S. government has in fact launched a new war on terror, and it’s not against al-Qaeda, it’s against American citizens,” declared Carlson in a promo for the series, which argues that Jan. 6th was not a Trump-led attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop the electoral vote count, but a “false flag” operation conducted by the U.S. government.

“January 6 is being used as a pretext to strip millions of Americans – disfavoured Americans – of their core constitutional rights,” Carlson argued in the series, which was met with outrage and shock both inside Fox News and among those who follow the fever swamps of the far-right.

Carlson continued to host his prime time Fox News show for another year and a half before eventually being fired by the network in April of 2023, during which time he had some of the highest ratings on cable news. Carlson raked in a nightly audience of over 3 million people, making him one of the most influential voices not only in conservative politics, but in mainstream media as well.

Carlson used that powerful perch to work to undo the damage that January 6th had done to Trump. In March of 2023, after months of minimizing the attacks on Capitol Police, claiming that FBI agitators were in the crowd, and downplaying Trump’s calls for violence, Carlson told his millions of viewers:

The overwhelming majority weren’t [violent]. They were peaceful. They were orderly and meek. These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers. Footage from inside the Capitol overturns the story you’ve heard about Jan. 6. Protesters queue up in neat little lines.

They give each other tours outside the speaker’s office. They take cheerful selfies and they smile. They’re not destroying the Capitol. They obviously revere the Capitol. They’re there because they believe the election was stolen from them. They believe in the system.

Of course, this kind of revisionist history of that day seems laughable to most Americans or people around the world who have seen any of the violent footage from that day – including Trump’s own Vice President Mike Pence. But, to many of Carlson’s viewers and Republicans who went on to support Trump, it was the rewriting of the narrative that allowed for Trump’s return from the political wilderness to recapture his grip on the GOP.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told the Associated Press’s Michael Tackett, “I’m not at all conflicted about whether what the president did is an impeachable offense.”

“I think in his urging insurrection and people attacking the Capitol as a direct result is about as close to an impeachable offense as you can imagine, with the possible exception of maybe being an agent for another country,” McConnell said of Trump in a new book, out last month. Of course, Trump still had alliances in the GOP, and Kevin McCarthy’s visit to Mar-a-Lago weeks after Jan. 6th helped get the ball rolling for his return, but it was far from guaranteed.

Carlson himself was aware of the immense damage Trump had done to the GOP and potentially to Fox News. After the 2020 election, Carlson wrote his producer Alex Pfeiffer, and said, “We worked really hard to build what we have. Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.”

Carlson’s messages were made public during the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox, which the network settled for $787 million. According to a court filing, Carlson fumed about Trump and his team pushing election denialism at the time, which his network paid out for promoting:

He [Tucker] added that he had spoken with Laura [Ingraham] and [S]ean [Hannity] a minute ago and they are highly upset,” Carlson noted: “At this point we’re getting hurt no matter what.” Pfeiffer responded: It’s a hard needle to thread, but I really think many on our side are being reckless demagogues right now. Tucker replied: Of course they are. We’re not going to follow them.” And he added: What [Trump]’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”

After the Jan. 6th attack on the Capitol, Carlson again texted Pfeiffer and called Trump “a demonic force, a destroyer” and added, “But he’s not going to destroy us.”

Carlson was clearly aware of the job he had in front of him if he wanted to keep his audience and his powerful place in right-wing media. Carlson was eventually so effective at his task that by 2023 nearly 70 percent of Republicans believe President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was illegitimate, according to polling.

Now, on the eve of Trump possibly coming back into power, Carlson is publicly recalling the night a demon crawled into bed with him. “And I got attacked while I was asleep with my wife and four dogs and mauled, physically mauled,” Carlson told a documentarian recently, who asked, “In a spiritual attack by a demon?”

“Yeah, by a demon,” replied Carlson. “Or by something unseen that left claw marks on my sides.” The irony of Carlson having once called Trump a demonic force and publicly claiming he himself was attacked by a demon just days ahead of the election is impossible to miss. Should Trump end up back in the White House, Carlson will be both more powerful than ever and more dependent than ever on a man he once called a “destroyer.”

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.