Ever since he took the coveted primetime hosting slot at Fox News, Tucker Carlson has enjoyed a common wisdom belief that his grotesque bigotry is, on some level, just an act. Pundits who remembered Carlson from before, in his bow tie-wearing smartass phase, would often remark on how he remolded himself into a more white nationalist form to meet the Donald Trump era. While some allowed this version of Tucker might be the "real" one, mostly he was afforded the assumption that his bigotry was a costume worn for profit and political gain.
Carlson even leveraged this notion that his demagoguery was an act to wiggle out of a slander lawsuit in 2020. Former Playboy model Karen McDougal sued Carlson after he accused her of "extortion" when she revealed she received hush money payments from Donald Trump. But Carlson's lawyers argued that his on-air comments are "non-literal commentary" that reasonable people do not take seriously. Trump-appointed Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil agreed, writing, "any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statements he makes."
