“Our system is collapsing in real time,” Tucker Carlson told the Swiss media group Die Weltwoche in an interview earlier this week. And that was before teenage gangs caught the national media’s attention by rampaging through downtown Philadelphia, two nights in a row.

We’ve never paid any attention to Carlson any more than we have to Sean Hannity or Megyn Kelly. Will all due respect to our friend Jud, who likes to quote from Carlson and Fox in particular, we have never trusted Fox News.

Or Rupert Murdoch for that matter. We respect the Aussie as a businessman. Who wouldn’t? But we recognize Fox, for what it has historically been: a guilty pleasure… raw entertainment for conservatives who don’t like CNN.

There’s nothing wrong with that. Let the market decide.

For the record, I don’t trust CNN, either. Cable news is what it is. You watch at your own risk.

All of that said, we Mr. Carlson has caught our eye on a few occasions since he was very publicly fired from Fox, despite allegedly having the highest ratings for a cable news show.

When he left Fox he was courted by Newsmax TV. And reportedly turned down $100 million from MSNBC to bring his viewers to join NBCUniversal – one of the Comcast cabal of cable entities.

Some news leaked that Carlson had a non-compete with Fox, so his next move seemed kind of brilliant – with or without Elon Musk’s consent he launched “Tucker Carlson on Twitter (Now Known as ‘X’)”; the first episode of which whooped up 120 million tweet views.

The show was then panned because the second show only got a little more than 60 million views. Ha. Only 60 million. What a loser.

Wait, according to the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Wikipedia page the highest number of views he ever got on Fox was 4.3 million. Wiki:

In July 2020, Tucker Carlson Tonight broke the record for highest-rated program in U.S. cable news history, garnering an average nightly audience of 4.33 million viewers. In February 2022, Mediaite reported that “in the month of October, Tucker Carlson [was] the number-one watched host among Democrats.

Sixty million, if I’m doing my math right, is a skosh higher than 4.3 million.

To Jud’s chagrin, I still didn’t watch. Frankly, like you I suspect, I don’t like my opinions spoon-fed. I’d rather take the steak raw and see whatever I can do myself in the open fire pit of free thought.

The publisher in me is darn well impressed with those viewer numbers. Holy b-geezus.

Tucker subsequently flew to Argentina to interview the “libertarian” Javier Milei, who shocked conventional political wisdom by winning a primary and a spot in the upcoming presidential election there.

We have more than a few friends who live in Argentina, Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman of Bonner Private Research among them. One of Joel’s neighbors, Federico, whom I’ve met, is friends with Milei.

Miliei apparently cobbled together a new voting bloc made up of all kinds of people – from all ages, both political left and right – who are disillusioned with politics in Lionel Messi’s home country.

That Tucker Carlson made the time and put in the effort to load his crew on a plane and fly to Argentina to interview Milei is, well, interesting.

When Urs Gehriger the writer from Die Weltwoche caught up with him, Tucker was on his way back from the United Arab Emirates where he met with its president, Mohamed bin Zayed.

Carlson told Gehriger the sheik is “the most interesting, wisest leader I’ve ever spoken to”. We’re not sure if Tucker meant to contrast his interview with the sheik against the one he gave to Trump opposite the first Republican primary debate or not. But “of the Arab leader,” Gehriger writes “Carlson enthuses, ‘I’ve never met a more humble leader, ever — and I believe humility is a prerequisite for wisdom’.”

What really has caught our attention about Tucker’s career pivot has been sitting at the back of my mind all week in the context of the series of missives I’ve been sending you recently. (See: Clusterf*ck Nation, My Fellow Liberal and/or Leaving the Party.)

You’ll recall, we’ve been talking about the ‘truth’, as it’s perceived in public discourse; how badly it gets tortured by politics and the legacy media. This week’s mayhem in downtown Philadelphia is a good case in point.

The sheer scope of the looting made national news for several days. There was a Black Lives Matter protest earlier in the day because a policeman was acquitted of shooting an unarmed black man. The media, however, downplayed the protest, and blamed two days of looting on individuals “committing crimes of opportunity”.

Not too long ago San Francisco was being highlighted as the symbol of inner city decay with Nordstrom and other mainstays of American retail culture shuttering stores there. Then suddenly that story disappeared. Or morphed into an inner city revival theme.

We’ve been bumfuzzled by the media’s lack of concern at how widespread wanton crime has become.

“Corporate media is seemingly ignoring the spike in out-of-control youth nationwide,” ZeroHedge writes, sharing our confusion.“Nonetheless, we have been closely monitoring the situation:

• April: Baltimore Mayor Calls For Citywide Curfew After All Hell Breaks Out
• April: All Hell Breaks Out In Chicago As Hundreds Of Teenagers Wreak Havoc
• May: Dramatic Video Shows Rogue Pack Of Teens Beating Up Marines In California
• August: Shocking Video: Gun-Strapping Kids Roam’ Grand Theft Auto’-Style Around St.Louis Suburb
• September: “Murdered That Man For Laughs”: Shocking Video Of Out-Of-Control Teens In Vegas
• September: “They Were Laughing”: Rogue Gang Of Teens Brutally Beat Gas Station Clerk In Lawless Seattle

“Meanwhile,” ZeroHedge’s fight club avatar Tyler Durden concludes, “elite billionaires and the radical left do little to revive law and order. They’re more focused on disarming law-abiding citizens while metro areas implode.”

Hmm.

Why is it that corporate media fails to cover these “random” acts of violence?

People don’t protest en masse, or take to organized looting and vandalism… they don’t livestream it as one participant in Philadelphia street-named “Meatball” did… if they have good jobs and families to take care of.

So why don’t news anchors, even those who write their own scripts, have opinions about desperate people doing harmful things?

“They’re all fearful,” Tucker tells Urs Gehriger, speaking of his former colleagues in the corporate press. “Instead of holding the powerful to account, they do exactly the opposite. They do their bidding.”

The truth is, I’m still not likely to watch ‘Tucker Carlson on Twitter (Now Known as ‘X’)”, but for some insight into what the corporate refugee is up to now, and what he thinks the state of the union is in going into the primary season, the write up in Die Weltwoche is worth a few minutes of your time.

So it goes,

Addison Wiggin,
The Wiggin Sessions

P.S. Feel free to disregard Tucker’s comments on Barack Obama’s gay trysts or why Hunter Biden called his dad “Pedo Pete”. We assume those are more sweet candy for the Fox crowd…

P.P.S. Our buddy Jud is well aware of our position on the media, conservatives, “libtards” and the consumption of new ideas. So no harm here using him as a straw dawg, right (Jud)?

P.P.P.S. Our favorite reader response to recent themes in the Missives this week:

“Truth in politics and the media” plays a large role in our current video project: The Great American Shell Game. Naturally, we appreciate any and all responses.

Please, write your own comments here.