Nick Confessore

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

RT @YouGovAmerica: As research continues to highlight the harmful impact school closures have had on students' academic progress, our lates… — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

"Tucker Carlson, workplace menace." WaPo's indefatigable @ErikWemple picks up on a lesser-discussed thread of "American Nationalist": How Carlson tries to intimidate less-powerful Fox colleagues who criticize his show. https://t.co/yHb2Z4hLQj — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

The good people at @whyy's @RadioTimes were kind enough to have me on this week to discuss "American Nationalist," our three-part series on the Fox host Tucker Carlson. You can listen here. https://t.co/tyLLje9Psu — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

RT @JoeNBC: Fascinating timing of WSJ editorial laying out the ideological breakdown of the decision before it leaked. https://t.co/BTbNX8… — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

"Academic researchers have since been studying the subject, and they have come to a consistent conclusion: Remote learning was a failure." @DLeonhardt on Covid's other long tail. https://t.co/wVEwErOwLQ — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

Last seen declining to speak with The Times about what work he might have been doing with Rupert Murdoch circa 2018, when Brimelow popped up in an internal Fox org chart reporting directly to Murdoch. https://t.co/eYo7z5hqBT — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

RT @UrbanAchievr: "conservative media once operated along an understanding that white nationalism was a distinct and unacceptable faction f… — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

RT @Jan_Ransom: Who Gets Abortions in America? https://t.co/A3ol8cXfaY — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

RT @NewsHour: A new analysis from the New York Times explores how Tucker Carlson has grown his ratings by weaponizing “fears and grievances… — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

RT @DeadlineWH: "These [white nationalist] sites watch [Tucker Carlson's] show and praise it and say he is the best messenger they've ever… — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

RT @ryanjreilly: This extremely thorough reporting from @nickconfessore on Tucker notes how he accused the wife of a Jan. 6 defendant of be… — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

And if you're not a subscriber, you can read the story here. https://t.co/qOV4Rme1cM — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

Carlson was soon back on the air to accuse liberals and big tech of trying to silence everyone else. There’s more in Part 2. You can read it here. https://t.co/oprfQ2Jpvo — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

When a low-ranking Fox producer tweeted that “white supremacy is real, as evidenced by fact” — after Carlson called it a “hoax” — she got a call from an unlisted number. It was Carlson, who screamed at her to “shut your mouth.” He later denied it was him on the phone. https://t.co/5wHbqSh3K0 — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

When a Fox reporter complained to HR -- the new, post-Ailes HR -- that Carlson’s offensive rhetoric about Muslims and Iraqis had created a threatening work environment for colleagues, his complaint somehow leaked to Carlson, who confronted the reporter in Los Angeles. https://t.co/xVWBGRGDvo — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

When Carlson claimed South Africa’s white farmers were “being targeted in a wave of barbaric and horrifying murders," the head of Fox Business told executives that Carlson had ripped his story from sites like the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer. He was overruled. Carlson kept going. — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

Fact checkers in the Fox “Brain Room” would sometimes warn Carlson’s staff that stories they were being sent had originated on a racist site like Stormfront. Carlson’s staff soon stopped asking for their help. — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

As Carlson rose, Fox leadership was repeatedly made aware that Carlson was parroting ideas from noxious and racist sources. Not just by outside critics — by employees at Fox itself. They were ignored or shouted down, sometimes literally -- by Carlson himself, we report. — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

In Part 3, we show how Carlson’s nightly monologues have gotten longer, and dissenting guests more rare. That’s in part intentional. The monologues rate highly, and the audience doesn’t like seeing liberals. It's a glitch. https://t.co/A7X8KucT5j — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

Sharing an outrageous video clip from “Tucker Carlson Tonight” – even to dunk on him – advances what the show is trying to do. They cry “cancel,” parlaying the dunks into brand loyalty and new content. — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

Clips of his show travel especially well online, Fox learned. Courting backlash is part of Carlson’s programming strategy. Calls to cancel the show boost the audience’s loyalty to Fox, while giving Carlson potent content for the next night. Attack, then play victim. — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

And “Tucker Carlson Tonight” prints money: Despite boycotts and the loss of premium advertising, every year since 2018 Carlson has bought in more estimated annual ad revenue to Fox than any other show. — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

There is little chance of Carlson being “canceled.” The inflammatory content on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” is not an aberration. It’s the point. It’s what works. Fox is a high-tech ratings machine. “Every second that goes on that network now gets scrutinized,” one ex-Foxer told us. — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

On his show Thursday, Carlson claimed — as he often does when criticized — that our story is an effort to make him “shut up.” We wanted to hear more from Carlson, not shut him up. He declined to be interviewed for this story. — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

There’s more in Part 3, an interactive dive into more than 1,000 episodes of “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” We show exactly how he appropriated the rhetorical tropes & exotic fixations of white nationalists, weaving it all into something uniquely his own. https://t.co/A7X8KucT5j — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

There’s more in Part 3 of our story, an interactive analysis of more than 1,000 episodes of “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” We show exactly how Carlson has appropriated the rhetorical tropes & exotic fixations of white nationalists, weaving it all into something uniquely his own. — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

But it wasn’t the only time. Or the first! In more than 400 episodes, he has amplified the idea that D politicians and others want to force demographic & political change through immigration. “Replacement” content has steadily increased since Carlson got the 8 p.m. timeslot. — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

Remember the furor over his immigration “replacement” comments last April? When Mr. Carlson ran a clip of the comments on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” a few days later, the segment got 14 percent more viewers in the advertiser-sweet “demo” than Mr. Carlson’s average for the year. — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

As he honed his programming edge, the show drew more & more from the arcana of the far right, especially the conspiracy theory that an elite cabal bent on destroying Western civilization uses immigration and feminist ideas to disempower and replace the native-born. — PolitiTweet.org

Nick Confessore @nickconfessore

Carlson’s innovation was “Trumpism without Trump.” Stories that would grab the Trump audience while keeping a certain distance from the undisciplined president. They were sometimes weird — “Gypsies” pooping on the street? — but spoke to fears of a trampled-on American culture. — PolitiTweet.org