YouSaid · the spoken record

Brian Stelter

lines on the record: 65
first: 2023-11-20
most recent: 2023-11-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Gets to the leadership story here. It's a giant leadership lesson or lack of leadership lesson. Roger Ailes, who was a genius television programmer, but also a sexual predator. Roger Ailes ran Fox from the top down. What he wanted is what happened. And many people were hurt as a result. But there was a clear, forceful, autocratic boss. Ever since he was forced out and then died, there hasn't been that kind of leader at Fox. It's really much more bottom up now. Every show for itself, every host for him or herself. And so I think in that environment, Tyra Carlson was, I don't want to say doing whatever he wanted, but coming pretty darn close to doing whatever he wanted. I noticed, I mentioned in the book that he was going to Hungary. He went off and did a week of shows in Hungary celebrating that autocrat of Viktor Orban. He didn't have approval to go, and he went anyway.”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's true, and I think we can look at unfortunately two massacres as two examples of this El Paso, the Walmart in El Paso, where Tucker Carlson is the one who's been on television talking about the great replacement theory that whites are being replaced. And then you have a gunman saying many of the same things. Now that manifesto did not mention Tucker, did not mention Fox, but it came from the same world. And then again in Buffalo a few years later. One of the differences with Buffalo at the top supermarket is that Democrats like Chuck Schumer speak out. There becomes a more forceful response to this right-wing rhetoric that's pushed not just by Tucker, but by an entire network of lies, but Tucker's the leading. He's the face of it. I think when we look at those episodes, those massacres, and we see that there are people who are consuming this content, maybe not directly Tucker's. Again, I want to be clear. It's not as if we know he's a Tucker junkie.”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know you're going to say that, but we shouldn't expect this. We shouldn't tolerate it. We should have a higher standard for these shows. And of course, CNN's Oliver Darcy, my former colleague, caught that, reported on it. The guy left. Tucker Carlson went on the air, and he sounded more upset about the guy getting fired than about the racist posts. I think him moving off to these compounds is a metaphor for him moving away from the reality and the diversity of the real world.”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm saying Washington. I'm saying D.C., I'm saying the protests. I'm saying, but I think it's actually more with his information diet. I think it's more about what he's reading and hearing the stuff that's being forwarded to him. Remember his head writer was caught posting homophobic, racist, sexist comments over a period of years.”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hot new thing, yes. And I back then still recognized him. I still recognized the guy that I had known for almost 20 years. I still recognized him on TV, but there were a couple of incidents that I think really reshaped him. One I write about in detail about the day there were protesters outside his home in Washington. Definitely scary. I don't want to minimize that. Scared his wife. The police got involved. But he also seems to have exaggerated what happened. And of course, when I wrote about that, he freaked out. When I wrote about that for CNN, he freaked out. After that protest, that was one of the reasons why he left D.C. And what's the impact of that? It means he's not at work with his staff. He's not with his producers in person. He's not on set with guests as often. He's doing his show from two compounds, one in Maine, one in Florida. And I think that sense of being on an island is a very real explanation of what happened.”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think Tucker was playing one on TV, but he talked himself into believing a lot of what he says. And I'm not a psychiatrist, not in his brain. I don't want to be in his brain. I don't know. But I think he has truly radicalized himself. He has become what the Republican base is. I think he isolated himself. I think he became unglued in the Trump era. He was living in Washington at the start of the Trump era, his brand new primetime star.”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The only months where he lost, he was losing to the five, which is that 5 p.m. talk show. And when that would happen, his staff would freak out. I say in the book there were periods where the order would come down, we need more animal segments. We need more funny segments at the end of the show. They were doing whatever they could do to beat the five. But otherwise, it was always Tucker, number one.”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This departure was much more of a shockwave. It was much more of an earthquake and had much more of a shockwave. I don't know if I'm mixing my metaphors. That's my pen. But I think that the impacts were so much larger. Bill O'Reilly, when he was ousted, the ratings decline was not nearly as dramatic. Megan Kelly, when she went to NBC, the Radings collapse was not nearly as dramatic. Tucker Carlson really did call this shockwave for Fox's ratings. Newsmax took full advantage, others took full advantage. But the untold story, the underappreciated story, is that the Fox audience mostly came back. So it was different because of the magnitude of the shock, but ultimately it once again proved that Fox is bigger than any of its stars.”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, one more time calling me a eunuch on live TV. I do think ultimately Lothla Murdoch, you know, again, I think there's a lot of criticism of how he's been running Fox Corporation, but he's looking around and saying, this is a moment in April of 2023 after having paid this historically large settlement amount to make real change. And I would argue Fox News has lowered the temperature a little bit. So, a lot hotter than it should be Without Tucker, it's lowered a little bit”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He definitely wasn't leaving because he wrote an email to his staff a few minutes after he was told the show was over. I print that email for the first time in the book. He's in shock. He says he doesn't know what's happening. He doesn't know what's going to happen to the staffers. And then a minute later his email is turned off. That moment, I think, for him was one of the worst moments of his life. He wasn't allowed to sign off on the air the way that I was allowed to sign off at CNN.”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can't really plausibly say that when Tucker Carlson's the face of the network. So I think Lachlan Murdoch decided enough was enough and he had more than enough reasons to do it.”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Totally, totally. And if you believe, as I do, that he's been a force, you know, he's been a dangerous force in the country, should have happened after Patriot Purge, his false flag lies about January 6th. But I think it happened right after the Dominion settlement because Lachlan Murdoch is looking around, sizing up what his company is going to be. And some people aren't going to buy this. I'm not sure if I buy it. But I think Laughlin Murdoch wanted to make his network a little bit less fringy, a little bit less radical, a little bit less far-right. I think he wanted to drag it a little bit more toward the center. I know there's nothing as a center, but Lachlan Murdoch calls Fox News center right.”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My theories of what happened is that everything happened. Is that this wasn't about one thing? It was everything. I've never had a breakup quite this bad, but it's like any really bad breakup. It's, you know, by the time the person's actually dumped, the other person has 20 reasons why they're doing it. I think with Tucker, it was his behavior, it was his repelling advertisers, it was his conspiracy theorizing on the air, his indulgence of lies. There were all of these reasons. I do think Dominion was important in one way, though. Dominion forced the Fox executives to look square in the face at who Tucker was. They were looking at his emails, looking at his texts that Dominion had dredged up, his text messages calling a female executive the C-word, his messages saying this is not how white men fight. And there's other messages that will remain redacted forever. I don't know what they say. But the Fox board knows. The Fox Board looked, and within a few days they decided, Lachlan Murray decided to cancel him. So to me, the story is so much more interesting.”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I do love that wolf exists. We need lots and kinds of media critics. We need wolf types as well. You know, the history between us is that very early in the Trump administration, three weeks in, he came on reliable sources and beat the, you know what out of me. You're the problem. The media's out to get Trump. You all are, you know, he did this whole shtick against me on live TV. And I know why he did it, because Donald Trump was watching. And the next day, Trump called him up for half an hour and said, come over to the White House. And that's how fire and fury happened. No joke. That's how Wolf gained that access to the White House. So I feel like he's always had a shtick in that way. But look, I think there was one important thing about his book that I have rebutted very clearly in this book, In Network of Lies. It is that Tucker Carlson was not fired because of Dominion. It wasn't a condition of the Dominion settlement. I feel like Wolf just took dictation from Tucker about that. And I think what I've done is done a much more thoroughly reported version.”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I think I am much more optimistic as a person. I think I am not nearly as ugly as a person as Wolf. Listen, Wolf and I have a history. He's definitely my nemesis, or is it Nemeson? I don't know what the word would be. He comes out with a book about Fox about six, seven weeks ago. And to me, the thesis was wrong. I think he was producing liberal wish fulfillment. He was saying, this is the end of Fox News. Fox News is dying. And I know maybe some readers want to believe that, but I just don't think it's true.”
2023-11-20 · On with Kara Swisher · The Fox News ‘Lying Tax,’ Tucker and More with Brian Stelter · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT