Who is Tucker Carlson? Flash Uganda Media looks at his biography, age, wife, family, tribe, achievements, and relationship with Lisa McNear Lombardi, Dick Carlson, Henry Miller, and Cesar Lombardi, Massachusetts legislators Ebenezer R. Hoar, George M. Brooks, the early life and education of the American conservative political analyst, author, and internet and television celebrity.
Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson better known as Tucker Carlson, is an American conservative political analyst, author, and internet and television celebrity.
From 2016 to 2023, he hosted the Fox News nightly political talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Tucker Carlson is also known for authoring; The Long Slide (2021), Ship of Fools (2018), and Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites (2003).
Early Life and Education
Tucker Carlson was born Tucker McNear Carlson on May 16, 1969, at Children’s Hospital in San Francisco, California.
He is the elder son of artist and San Francisco native Lisa McNear Lombardi (1945-2011) and Dick Carlson (1941-), a former “gonzo reporter”.
Buckley Peck Carlson, subsequently Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson, Carlson’s younger brother, is nearly two years younger and has worked as a communications manager and Republican political operative.
Carlson’s father was adopted when he was two years old by upper-middle-class New Englanders, the Carlsons, an executive at the Winslow Brothers & Smith Tannery in Norwood (America’s oldest tannery) and his wife.
The “Cattle King” Henry Miller was Carlson’s maternal great-great-great-grandfather and Cesar Lombardi his maternal great-great-grandfather.
Carlson is also related to Massachusetts legislators Ebenezer R. Hoar and George M. Brooks. He is of one-third Italian-Swiss descent.
His parents split in 1976 after their nine-year marriage allegedly “turned sour.” Their father was granted custody of them.
Carlson’s mother abandoned the family when he was six years old and relocated to France. She was never seen by the boys again until her death in 2011.
Carlson’s father moved Tucker and his brother to the La Jolla neighbourhood of San Diego, California, when he was in first grade and raised them there.
Carlson grew up in a house overlooking the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club and attended La Jolla Country Day School.
Carlson’s father married Patricia Caroline Swanson, the daughter of Gilbert Carl Swanson and the niece of Senator J. William Fulbright, in 1979.
Swanson was married for the third time, and he legally adopted Tucker Carlson and his brother.
Carlson claims he was “kicked out” of Collège du Léman, a residential school in the canton of Geneva in French-speaking Switzerland.
He completed his secondary education at St. George’s School in Middletown, Rhode Island. While there, he met his current wife, Susan Andrews who was the headmaster’s daughter.
After that, he spent four years at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Carlson, despite being identified as a member of the class of 1992, did not graduate and did not receive a diploma.
Carlson tried to join the Central Intelligence Agency after graduation, but his application was denied, so he decided to pursue a career in journalism with the support of his father.
Susan Thomson Carlson, frequently referred to as Susan Andrews, is Carlson’s wife. On August 10, 1991, they got married at the school chapel. They have four children: Lillie, Buckley, Hopie, and Dorothy, the youngest.
Carlson was baptised as an Episcopalian but has stated that he grew up with secular ideals; he attributes his religious faith to his wife.
Journalism Career and Professional Work Experience
Carlson began his journey in journalism as a fact-checker for Policy Review, a national conservative publication owned by The Heritage Foundation and then acquired by the Hoover Institution.
He then worked as an opinion columnist for the Little Rock, Arkansas-based Arkansas Democrat-Gazette until joining The Weekly Standard news magazine in 1995.
Carlson served as a columnist for New York magazine and Reader’s Digest later in his career, as well as writing for Esquire, Slate, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times Magazine.
From 2000 to 2005, he was a CNN analyst, and from 2001 to 2005, he co-hosted the network’s prime-time news discussion programme Crossfire.
The political right was represented by Carlson and Robert Novak, while the left was represented by James Carville and Paul Begala, who alternated as hosts.
In November 2003, Carlson was hired to host Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered for PBS, which ran concurrently with Carlson’s Crossfire position on CNN.
Carlson announced his departure from the show on June 12, 2005, over a year after it premiered, despite the Corporation for Public Broadcasting approving funds for another season.
CNN president Jonathan Klein informed Carlson on January 5, 2005, that the network had decided not to renew his contract. CNN announced the end of its association with Carlson and the cancellation of Crossfire.
Carlson’s early evening show, Tucker (formerly titled The Situation With Tucker Carlson), debuted on MSNBC on June 13, 2005.
The network cancelled Tucker on March 10, 2008, due to low ratings; the final episode aired on March 14, 2008.
For the 2008 election, he continued with the network as a senior campaign journalist.
He joined Fox News as a political commentator in 2009, appearing on a number of programmes before hosting his own.
Carlson joined Alisyn Camerota and Clayton Morris on Saturday and Sunday mornings as a co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend in April 2013, replacing Dave Briggs.
On November 14, 2016, Carlson began hosting Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News.
By January 2019, his show had fallen to third place with 2.8 million nightly viewers, a 6% decrease from the previous year.
Carlson announced a multiyear deal with Fox News in February 2021 to host a new weekly podcast and series of monthly specials branded Tucker Carlson Originals on Fox Nation, which launched on March 29.
He began anchoring Tucker Carlson Today on Fox Nation in the spring of 2021.
Fox News fired Carlson and the executive producer of his evening show on Monday, April 24, 2023.
Carlson announced in a video on his Twitter feed on May 9, 2023, that he will relaunch his show on Twitter, which is now named Tucker on X.
Media Career outside journalism
In 2006, Tucker Carlson competed on season 3 of Dancing with the Stars.
He was paired with professional dancer Elena Grinenko and he prepared by attending four-hour-a-day ballroom dance courses. However, on September 13, 2006, he was the first candidate to be eliminated.
Carlson appeared in the Season 1 episode “Hard Ball” of 30 Rock and a Season 9 episode of The King of Queens as himself.
He had a cameo appearance as himself in the 2008 film Swing Vote.
On January 11, 2010, Carlson and Neil Patel (a former advisor to Dick Cheney and Carlson’s former college flatmate) started The Daily Caller, a political news website.
Carlson was the editor-in-chief and occasionally collaborated with Patel on opinion pieces. Foster Friess, a Republican activist, funded the website.
Carlson sold his one-third ownership in The Daily Caller to Patel for an unknown sum in June 2020.
Writing Career
Carlson wrote the memoir Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News, which was released by Warner Books in September 2003.
It earned positive reviews from Publishers Weekly and the Washingtonian, both of which praised the book for its wit.
Carlson, who is represented by the literary and creative agency Javelin, got a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster’s conservative label, Threshold Editions, in May 2017.
His first book in the series, Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution, was published in October 2018 and it debuted as No. 1 on The New York Times list of Best Sellers.
The Long Slide: Thirty Years in American Journalism, his second book, was published in August 2021.
Tucker Carlson’s biography, was published in 2023. Chadwick Moore wrote the book with the assistance of Carlson, who provided the author with over a hundred hours of interviews.
Moore noted that the book was written to recount the narrative of Carlson’s departure from Fox News from the former host’s point of view.
However, the book did poorly, selling little over 3,000 copies in the first week after its release.
Achievements and Awards
Carlson has been “recognised for his success in helping to bring far-right viewpoints and vocabulary into the mainstream of American politics,” according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Carlson’s 2003 Esquire story about his trip to Liberia with Reverend Al Sharpton and other civil and political rights activists earned him a National Magazine Award nomination.
Controversies
Tucker Carlson has supported conspiracy theories on themes such as demographic replacement and the January 6, 2001 attack on the United States Capitol, and has been criticised for making inaccurate and misleading assertions on these and other matters.
Carlson is a frequent critic of immigration, and some writers have accused him of demonising both legal and illegal immigrants.
Carlson’s discourse is replete with references to white grievance politics. According to CNN and The Washington Post, Carlson encourages racism, which he disputed, stating in 2018: “I’m not a racist.”
Carlson is also a critic of Islam and has had guests on his show that do so. He has portrayed an “Islamic cult” and “Islamic problem” as a threat to the United States.
In 2019, the advocacy group Media Matters for America published recordings of him making racist remarks in 2006 against Islam.
He criticised the Obama administration’s terrorist policy, claiming that Islam should have been treated as a cause of terrorism.
A “Smash Racism D.C.” activist group affiliated with Antifa protested outside Carlson’s Washington, D.C., house in November 2018. Carlson’s driveway was spray-painted with an anarchist symbol.
Carlson said that “someone started throwing himself against the front door and actually cracked the front door,” but neither police nor Washington Post columnist Erik Wemple saw any damage to the door when he visited the Carlson house the next day. Carlson had not been at home when the incident occurred.
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