The scene seems almost impossible to believe.

Tucker Carlson is on the set of CNN's Crossfire.

His co-host Paul Baggalla is ribbing him about a bed he'd made, a bed that if then Senator

Hillary Clinton's memoir sold a million copies, he would eat his shoes.

The memoir hit the mark in just a month.

On to the set, walks Hillary Clinton, holding a cake in the shape of a shoe.

The audience laughs, Clinton and Carlson, gamefully ham it up.

Back in 2003, Tucker Carlson wore a trademark bow tie and had a provocative streak, but he

was really a run of the mill conservative pundit.

The kind of figure that C-SPAN would invite on for their open phone segment, and who would

proudly defend the American press when a caller criticized it.

Of course the press gets things wrong, and mostly there are sins of showleness, not going

far enough.

And putting stories into the appropriate context, sure there is some bias.

But there is no press in the world, a straightforward and accurate as the American press.

What do you think people around the world read every morning?

Serious people who want an understanding of what actually happened in the world the day

before they read the New York Times?

Two decades later, Carlson's bow tie is gone, and so are his establishment Republican

politics.

Instead he has embraced a paranoid worldview fueled by racial resentment and status anxiety.

One he's brought directly into the living rooms of millions of Americans with his own show

...