Madeline Peltz works the night shift at the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters for America. Given the timing of that particular shift, one of her main responsibilities is watching Tucker Carlson’s 8 p.m. show on Fox News.
And she’s watched a lot of Tucker Carlson.
Carlson has been in the public eye for some 20 years — first as a print journalist, then a television commentator, founder of the conservative site the Daily Caller, and now, Fox News host, with a prime-time slot and a salary in the millions. But people have been confused by Carlson’s tone on Fox since he took over for Bill O’Reilly in 2018, noting concern about diversity and demographics in his show.
After many Carlson-watching hours, the 24-year-old researcher developed a working theory, which she outlined on the nonprofit’s website: that Carlson is using his platform on Fox News to introduce white-nationalist ideas to the mainstream, making him a uniquely prominent “mouthpiece for white supremacy.”
Peltz dug into his recent past and discovered a trove of appearances he made on shock jock Bubba the Love Sponge’s radio show between 2006 and 2011. She found a series of misogynistic, racist and homophobic remarks Carlson made, the audio of which Media Matters published this week.
In response, Carlson was defiant, casting himself as the victim of “the great American outrage machine,” a mob of power-seeking organizations and people he says are waging a political war to censor him.
In reality, credit for the tapes’ publication is due to Peltz: a 20-something in her first adult job who lives in the basement of a D.C. house she rents with five other people, a few cats and a dog named Noodles.
“I’m not like some high-power-wielding globalist,” Peltz said, adopting the conspiracy-inflected jargon of the far right. “I’m this kid who’s been on the Internet my whole life and knows how to get around it.”
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