Tucker Carlson is sorry for calling Nick Fuentes gay
A real enemies to lovers arc that could consolidate power on the right
If you RSVP to The Recount’s trivia night hosted at The Bench in Manhattan Wednesday night, maybe I’ll sneak you a couple of the answers to get you on your way to some very funny prizes for the winners. If HQ Trivia was your thing back in the day, you’ll find a familiar face in the mix 🤫
Were you really wondering if I was going to watch all 138 minutes of the conversation between Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson? Of course I did. Never doubt my intake capacity again. The take: It should’ve been sponsored by those wearable posture correctors — I had hunchback-by-proxy at the end of it.
I knew I would have a lot to say on that topic, and I found myself feeling pretty verbose on a particular path being carved on the left as well, featured in a conversation anchored by Anand Giridharadas. Elsewhere in here we’ll get to Karine Jean-Pierre taking the label “Independent” to new and desolate places, and Riley Gaines asserting her definition of motherhood early.
FROM THE LEFT WING:
DIAGNOSTIC SUCCESS: I am instantly wary of any piece of content that tries to find the solution to the Democrats’ many problems through a branding exercise. It’s how we ended up with earthly 74-year-old, spiritually 109-year-old, Chuck Schumer looking like he’s taking his first ever steps in TikTok videos about the shutdown. Similar indigestion flared up reading this Substack post from Jennifer Rubin urging people to give ICE the finger by calling them “‘goons,’ ‘storm troopers,’ or ‘street gangs’ (if you’re being kind).” The limitations Democrats face governmentally are clear and obvious. It’s why I suspect many of them are comfortable brushing off the difficult work of “getting deportation policy right,” in favor of the largely performative pursuit of “finding a message” — which Slow Boring laid out.
Here comes a duo that makes this kind of conversation look obvious, simple, achievable for Democrats. The.Ink linked up with More Perfect Union to offer the most targeted diagnostic and treatment plan I’ve seen for Democratic malaise in the Trump era. Two takeaways:
The understanding that voters want “integrity and vision” moving forward has not “pervaded the big D party ecosystem,” according to Shakir. How that’s possible? I truly don’t know.
A candidate with vision will have to execute in opposite directions: depth and scale, how detailed they illustrate their view of the future and how many people will buy in.
INDEPENDENT, BY DEFINITION: Karine Jean-Pierre, Biden’s former press secretary, is on a press tour that could be described as a faceplant … if faceplants were ever voluntary. The wince-inducing rotation started with her level-10 uncomfortable conversation with Tim Miller saying that her unflinching defense of Joe Biden’s cognition “is insane!!!!” And this is how she characterized her party affiliation flip to Don Lemon: “Let me see if I can help push the party forward by being an independent outside the two party system. It’s very nuanced.” Maybe it’s too nuanced for my smooth brain. There’s a larger issue of intellectual incompatibility I’ve found too: the reasoning “I can only speak for my truth and what I have seen” doesn’t interlace neatly with “I was only ever speaking on behalf of the president.” It’s that second deflection, in defense of the administration’s Gaza policy, that won her the ire of the left.
FROM THE RIGHT WING:
I LIKE YOU, I DON’T CARE: We officially have an answer on one of the biggest mysteries looming over the right-wing movement: what daylight actually exists between Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson ideologically. It can be distilled down to “not a whole lot,” proving true an old commitment Fuentes talks about in this interview: “The conservative movement’s gonna have to move to me, I will not move towards them.” Their main disagreement is over whether their shared Christianity discourages Fuentes’ efforts to target Jews specifically to be more “America First,” rather than, as Carlson argues, just having standards that apply to all Americans. Fuentes hangs tight on Jews being “a unique issue.”
A Fuentes finding: I’ve consumed a lot of Nick’s content over a long period of time1. He is intensely motivated by personal grievance, more than I understood. Withdrawing support from a congressional candidate who publicly disagreed with him. Turning on Marjorie Taylor Greene after she “pretended she didn’t know me.” Alluding repeatedly to imposing consequences on people who wrong him. Tracking personal stats in politics can leave you with a problem Fuentes hasn’t experienced yet: disconnection with and disillusionment of your base. What protects him? His followers (the groypers) are primed to be blind to any inconsistency due to their unconditional hero-worship — a concept Fuentes and Carlson disagree on in this episode.
A Tucker takeaway: His body language and volume revealed everything. He started wanting to project that this is an unfriendly conversation, yet slowly but surely his words and demeanor betray him. A whispery “me too” or “same” turns into firm encouragement: “You’re clearly ascendant … more talented than I am.” He even apologizes for calling Nick gay a couple months ago. Point being: this tells us a lot about which side Tucker is backing in this conservative “civil war.”
MAKING GAINES: Two hours after she called President Trump about vaccine requirements for Green Card recipients, former swimmer and current podcast host Riley Gaines saw a headline voiding the policy that was keeping her husband from getting a Green Card. She told this story on Jillian Michaels’ show this week, adding reps to her media blitz one month after giving birth. She’s recovered enough to fire off a challenge invitation, for a not-so-friendly debate, to none other than AOC, who, in response, made the mistake of tweeting: “I would like to challenge this person to get a real job.” Motherhood is a job Gaines and many women take as seriously as any other gig, something Moms 4 Liberty made clear in coming to her defense.
LOOSE ENDS:
📝 Word I learned today: statist
someone who believes that economic controls and planning should be concentrated in the hands of a highly centralized government — “When the primary started in 2015, I considered [Trump] to be a statist.” (via Nick Fuentes, The Tucker Carlson Show)
📰 Something you should read today: TrueAnon Saw How Twisted Politics Were About to Get. Here’s What They Say Is Coming Next — Kieran Press-Reynolds for GQ
🥹 Something to make you smile today: I famously don’t care about baseball. But my mom forced the World Series on me last night and I’m eating my words like they’re covered in chocolate. Shohei Ohtani did something no one has ever done before: made me want to watch a baseball game. Though I didn’t stay up til 3am watching (mom, I know you’re reading this, don’t do that again), I’m actually excited to watch Ohtani pitch tonight.
And before any of you call me a fair-weather fan, here are two images depicting my earliest addiction, doing whatever I had to do to get on the jumbotron at Dodger Stadium.
I happened to be at Boston University during his brief attendance … and I encountered him directly on more than one occasion. Not new to this, true to this.
I am 74 and stayed up to watch that 18 inning game! It was some game!!!