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- Tucker Carlson was attacked by Trump supporters and allies last week after he put one of the president’s lawyers on blast for failing to provide evidence to back up her false voter fraud claims.
- That lawyer, Sidney Powell, has been pushing an outlandish conspiracy theory involving the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez launching a scheme to pay off election officials to use Dominion voting machines.
- Carlson invited Powell on his show to lay out her evidence, but she declined.
- Powell was cut loose from the Trump legal team on Sunday night.
- Emerging victorious from the spat, Carlson faces uncertainty over his conservative appeal ahead of a possible 2024 presidential run in addition to maintaining his show’s record ratings.
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Tucker Carlson’s consistent defense of President Donald Trump is part of what brought him to the pinnacle of cable news over the summer, when his program “Tucker Carlson Tonight” became the most viewed show in the industry’s history.
Yet when he called out a Trump lawyer last Thursday for failing to provide any evidence for her outlandish claims of voter fraud after she declined to come on his show, Carlson became the subject of a fierce backlash from the president’s loyalists.
How he found himself in this position demonstrates not only the loyalty of Trump supporters — whose siege mentality Carlson has perhaps done more to promote than anyone else — but also the unique position he finds himself in compared to other pro-Trump cable hosts and personalities.
The backlash from parts of Trumpworld was swift
Carlson hasn’t seen anywhere near this level of heat from Trump allies and supporters since he got his primetime show in 2016.
His biggest controversies prior to Thursday usually involved pushes from the left for advertisers to boycott his show.
That all changed once he singled out Sidney Powell, a Trump lawyer the campaign severed ties with on Sunday night, three days after Carlson's segment.
—Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) November 20, 2020
Powell promoted a far-fetched conspiracy involving Georgia's Republican governor and secretary of state getting payouts for using a voting system she claimed was designed by the late-Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez — who died in 2013 — in an effort to alter the results of elections so more communists could win.
The absurd plot Powell pushed also involved the CIA, the United Kingdom, and the Clinton Foundation. The GOP's official Twitter account later promoted Powell's false claims.
While Carlson started off Thursday's show with a largely sympathetic preamble supporting Trump's right to challenge the election results in court, his monologue on Powell is what went viral.
Twitter users saturated Carlson's mentions with words like "traitor" and "shame on you." More prominent figures in pro-Trump circles also took swipes at him, such as a producer for talk radio host Rush Limbaugh who subtweeted, "How quickly we turn on our own."
The next night, Carlson issued a sort of mea culpa, saying of Powell's promise of forthcoming evidence, "Well as far as we're concerned, that is great news."
He also acknowledged that he got pushback from White House officials.
—Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) November 21, 2020
But then Powell got fired, and Carlson faces a dilemma shared by both Fox News and the GOP
Carlson arguably emerged victorious from the whole spat, with Powell finding herself on the outside looking in after the Trump campaign cut ties with her Sunday.
Regardless of how temporary the backlash from Trumpworld may be for Carlson, it shows that even he is not immune to the wrath of the base if he contradicts the soon-to=be former president's message.
Early numbers are showing some diehard Trump supporters are protesting Fox News with their TV remotes and keyboards, migrating over to the even more pro-Trump networks of Newsmax and OAN for both cable and online coverage.
A recent Morning Consult poll also showed a sharp turn in Fox News' favorability ratings among Republicans following the election and Trump's criticism of the network for calling the race for President-elect Joe Biden.
—Morning Consult (@MorningConsult) November 20, 2020
Carlson regularly dedicates the opening segment of his show to issues well outside of the network's top stories of the day, focusing instead on more niche cultural issues and economic populism. His show has been accused of stoking racism, and in 2019 he falsely called white supremacy a "hoax." A writer for Carlson's show resigned in July after it was revealed he'd published a series of racist, sexist, and homophobic comments online.
Ahead of a rumored 2024 run — not to mention the more immediate task at hand of preserving his ratings under a new administration — Carlson is facing a dilemma.
Can he carve out a broad appeal to his base audience of aggrieved viewers without being tethered to Donald Trump?
It's too early to tell, but the fact that Carlson faced backlash at all over Powell shows the sway Trump will likely have on the GOP and Fox News viewers far after the end of his presidency.