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This is Fresh Air.

I'm Dave Davies and today for Terry Gross.

If you follow cable TV at all, you probably know that Fox News host Tucker Carlson is one of the most

influential commentators in conservative media and one of the most provocative.

He's known for praising authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban

and warning his viewers about the dangers of foreign immigrants and elites who want to control their lives.

Our guest New York Times reporter Nicholas Confessori recently wrote a series of articles about Carlson

drawing on an analysis of more than 1100 episodes of his show, Tucker Carlson tonight,

conducted by Confessori in a team of Times reporters, as well as interviews with dozens of current and former Fox executives,

producers and journalists.

Confessori concludes that Carlson has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news

and by some measures the most successful.

Confessori's articles include some surprising details, such as the fact that Carlson hosts many of his shows from a town in rural

Maine, where he has a home in a studio. Nicholas Confessori is a political and investigative reporter for the Times and a staff

writer at the New York Times magazine.

He's won or shared in a host of journalistic honors, including a Pulitzer Prize and the George Polk Award.

His series called American Nationalist is available on the Times website.

Nicholas Confessori, welcome back to Fresh Air.

It's great to be here. Thank you.

You've done a lot of political reporting campaign finance reporting.

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