This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

When Tucker Carlson was fired from Fox News in 2023, he had the largest program on cable news. By far, Carlson could draw

around 3 million viewers on a given night way, way ahead of MSNBC and CNN. After Fox, Carlson

brought a new show to YouTube and his reach has grown. Some of his shows have as many as 7 million

views. Carlson has been a standard

bearer for the right. Many of us know about the racist conspiracy theory known as the Great Replacement

only because of Tucker Carlson. He's quite sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, too. He also celebrated

Trump's threats to seize Greenland by force, not because he cares

about Greenland, but because that would have wrecked the NATO alliance. And yet, Carlson doesn't

always stick to the Maga Party line. He called the shooting of Renee Good by an ice agent in

Minneapolis a tragedy. And he pointed out that the way people in MAGA were making light of it,

that was exactly what they had condemned after the shooting of Charlie Kirk.

Few people have thought more about Tucker Carlson in recent years than Jason Zengarly,

who recently joined the New Yorker as a staff writer.

Zengarly's new book is called Hated by All the Right People. And when Zengarly was first

coming up as a political journalist, Tucker Carlson was someone he kind of admired. Let's start at the

beginning. How did you first meet Tucker Carlson? What was your relationship? And what was he

like then as opposed to now? So I first met Tucker Carlson, what was your relationship, and what was he like then as opposed to now?

So I first met Tucker Carlson when I was an intern at the New Republic, and Tucker was working

at the weekly standard, which was kind of the conservative analog to the New Republic. These are

two, you know, small circulation, political magazines in Washington that, you know, I would say

...