The caller ID said Tucker Carlson, and my stomach dropped a little.
Not that I have anything against talking to the guy; I’ve just long had a general rule about phone calls from on-air talent and try to avoid them. They almost never go well because I’ve found most television people carry a strange combination of enormous egos and very thin skin. When one of them dials directly, it’s rarely to check in on my well-being or give me an attaboy.
This was late October 2017. A day or two earlier I had published a nice little scoop about Pete Hegseth, then a Fox News contributor and regular guest host of Fox & Friends, and the Fox News producer who had given birth to his child that August while he was still married to someone else. I picked up the phone anyway because fortune favors the bold and Carlson was genuinely funny and charming to talk to. I’d no reason to think he wanted to discuss whether my testicles were getting enough UV light (that came later, on his own air, though it wasn’t just about my balls, I don’t think).
To be candid, the first thing Tucker asked was whether this was off the record. I said yes. I’m breaking that now.
I knew Tucker reasonably well by then. Three weeks earlier I’d been a guest on his show, where we fought about guns after the Las Vegas massacre. I had written that pundits who insisted nothing could be done were being cowardly. He told me he wanted to take me seriously, as hard as my piece made that for him, and called me totally ignorant on the subject. I told him I was sorry he was mad. The battle came out a draw, which on his home turf felt like a win. It was good television, and we were perfectly cordial before and after, as these things usually are.
He’d been hosting the 8 p.m. hour for about six months, since Bill O’Reilly’s ouster, and the ratings surge (along with the Infowars-grade conspiracy theories that fueled it) was still ahead of him. Even then, Fox News seemed to have mixed feelings about a guy who’d done time at CNN and MSNBC. But his audience skewed younger than anything else on the network, and that bought him patience as he built his viewership.
Privately, Tucker is quite charming. On air he seemed not to give a damn, and I think he saw himself as the right’s answer to Jon Stewart. He had a point. If the left could deify a man whose hottest takes were always half joking, why couldn’t Tucker do the same from the other side, with arch, over-the-top bits that weren’t serious (except when they were… and except when they weren’t.) Ironic detachment is a broadcast choice, and it can still be irresponsible. He understood that as well as anyone and took advantage of it, building a bifurcated audience of those in on the bit and those who weren't.
He had fun with it, and not only on camera. In Mediaite’s early days, we received an email from keith@keitholbermann.com that looked like a real scoop. We chased it down. Turns out it was from Tucker, who, while launching the Daily Caller, amused himself by registering the domain at the expense of an MSNBC blowhard few of us could stand. It was a great bit, but we didn’t take the bait (some site called Phawker did?), and I appreciated the quality effort. I was raised to enjoy a good prank, and my sons will confirm I still reach for a deadpan delivery when I can get away with it.
Tucker was also an eager media gossip. I mostly avoided him as a source. My instinct was that he was at least as interested in feeding me something bogus (see previous keitholbermann.com story) just to see if I’d run it.
But the Hegseth story was a genuine scoop that started with an inquiry about the future Secretary of War's sudden ubiquity on Fox News and the recently elected president's clear favor.
The piece was pegged to an Instagram photo of a White House dinner. Seated with President Donald Trump were Hegseth and Rob O’Neill, the former Navy SEAL who says he fired the shots that killed Osama bin Laden. Also at the table was Jennifer Rauchet, executive producer of Watters’ World and formerly of Fox & Friends, and the mother of Hegseth’s newborn. Hegseth was married with three children. We understood that his divorce was nearly final, that Rauchet had filed to divorce her own husband, and that the two were living together.
I wrote it straight and didn’t condemn him. The real news was that Trump had taken an early shine to Hegseth, who was landing the same presidential interviews that Bret Baier only gets. He was telegenic, reliably pro-Trump, and clearly had a big future in the Trump - Fox News orbit. The family situation was part of that story because it was sitting in a photo from the most powerful dinner table in the country, and because Hegseth sold himself to the Fox & Friends audience on homespun, God-fearing values. I saw Hegseth with a big future with Trump, and I may have never been more right.
But apparently Tucker did not want to learn about any of those salient and wise observational takes. And more importantly, he was quite angry with my reporting.
After I said hello, he immediately lit into me for writing about Hegseth’s personal life and made it clear he thought I was an asshole for airing a colleague’s dirty laundry. I tried to explain. The photo was public. The reporting was accurate and fair.
None of my explanation landed with a guy who was clearly more interested in telling me his piece than hearing mine. Carlson never claimed I’d gotten anything wrong with the report, but kept yelling, which surprised me. The Tucker I knew was cool, amused, and very much above it all in a nihilist, nothing-matters sort of way. This was someone else.
Eventually I’d had enough. “Oh, save me your sophistry,” I said, vaguely self-impressed with my grown-up word choice.
“Oh Fuck you! You’re a piece of shit!”
“Wow,” I said, and then said nothing.
He wasn’t finished. I was a motherfucker, he informed me. I would regret this, and I should stay out of his life.
Then he hung up.
I agreed to keep that call off the record, and for nine years I kept it out of print. But the man Tucker called to protect went on to run the Pentagon, after a confirmation fight over a Monterey police report and a nondisclosure settlement. One of the most influential figures in conservative media leaning on a reporter over accurate reporting stopped being a private squabble between two guys in the media (with very different platforms, to be fair).
Plenty of journalists will say I should have kept my word anyway. They might be right, but I’ve weighed the promise against what that call turned into, and the promise loses. Anyone who wants to argue the point is welcome to call me. Off the record, if they’d like.
I don’t hold his emotional blow-up against him. The media world is small, and I’ve also lost my temper on the phone with people I respect more than once. A few publicists can attest to that. I’ve long believed you get further in this business with a little grace and a short memory for a colleague’s worst five minutes. Pobody’s nerfect!
Tucker and I have traded a handful of messages since, mostly him confirming something mundane about an RNC appearance or the like. I was never as close to him as some media reporters were, and that suits me fine.
None of it was like the friendly, gossipy Tucker I knew, a guy who’d been a good Washington reporter long before he became a cable news provocateur.
So I’ve long wondered what it was about that piece that set him off. It had nothing to do with him, or Trump, or the network that employed him. It was about a colleague leaving his second wife after yet another affair. And for some reason that bothered Tucker enough to call me out of the blue, call me a piece of shit, and order me to stay out of his life.
What exactly was he afraid of in that kind of reporting? I still don’t know. I’m just asking questions. I learned it by watching him.
Tucker is a propaganda peddler on a mission. He yelled at you because he was doing his best to intimidate you for your factual reporting in order to steer the narrative.