For a person who complains a lot about unnamed sources, Tucker Carlson seems to like being an unnamed source for a lot of stories about Donald Trump and internal Fox News politics, the New York Times reports, citing sixteen separate journalists.
“In Trump’s Washington, Tucker Carlson is a primary supersecret source,” the media writer and Trump chronicler Michael Wolff writes in his forthcoming collection of essays, “Too Famous.” “I know this because I know what he has told me, and I can track his exquisite, too-good-not-to-be-true gossip through unsourced reports and as it often emerges into accepted wisdom.”
Carlson isn’t just gossiping about his fellow Fox-ites; he’s leaking information to outside media to leverage the information internally at Fox. It’s an odd duality for a person who complains about journalists and hosts from other networks during his hour-long prime time show–an now innumerable hours for the Fox News streaming service, which prominently features Carlson.
Carlson frequently uses his Fox News airtime to launch attacks at those in the media to whom he’s actually providing information, perhaps as a way to keep viewers doubting he’s the source of the information or to ensure those journalists don’t turn on him.
But it’s Carlson’s use of his position to spread information about Trump that would most likely make his audience turn on him. Carlson, of course, denies this on the record.
“I don’t know any gossip. I live in a town of 100 people,” Carlson texted a Times reporter, noting that he lives and works mostly out of his home in Maine. Carlson’s small town living, however, belies his deep roots in Washington gossip.
“Too many times to count, after someone’s confidence, I’ve asked, ‘Did that come from Tucker?’” Michael Wolff writes. “And equally, after I’ve shared a juicy detail, I’ve been caught out myself: ‘So … you’ve been speaking to Tucker.’”