I Woke Up With Tucker Carlson …

And he ruined my day!

I’ve been on the road these past few days and I’m currently in Canada. Due to some relentless jet lag I was up ridiculously early this morning. I didn’t want to disturb my host so I lay in bed and made the regrettable mistake to open X (formerly Twitter). There I stumbled on Tucker Carlson’s content and inevitably opened a clicky-baity interview.

I found myself listening to a mixture of racist, xenophobic and conspiracy theory content, but not only. Surprising there was a good analysis as to why the US should not provoke a war with Iran, the reasoning being that countries like Russia and Turkey would step up to defend Iran and we’d soon find ourselves in the midst of a world war. The reasoning was sound and made a lot of sense, and that was when my anxiety started spiralling out of control.

I read a re-cap of an interview of US Senator Lindsey Graham in Politico, where he behaves like a blood thirsty warmonger, threatening Iran that if they continue to support Hamas and Hezbollah, he would “ introduce a resolution in the United States Senate to allow military action by the United States in conjunction with Israel to knock Iran out of the oil business. He said. “Iran, if you escalate this war, we’re coming for you.” I don’t know if he fully realizes what the devastating implications of that act would be.

And then there was another interview with President Joe Biden jumbling his words and proclaiming that the US can be victorious both in the Ukraine and in Gaza, that America is the greatest nation on earth. When I look at the state of the US military, I ask myself if Biden is becoming senile. Why is the US led by a bunch of old, conservative white men, who still believe they rule the world when in actual fact, they don’t.

This took me back to the mid-eighties when I was a student in high-school. In my last year, I took a course in World Affairs. It was a hard class to get into and my GPA wasn’t that good at the time. I dreamt of becoming a diplomat and begged the teacher to get into the class. She felt sorry for me and gave me a spot.

I worked so hard that year and even represented my school at the Model United Nations (MUN) in The Hague. It was considered an honour to do so. Our small team represented Egypt. I had to learn every inch of the foreign policy of the country to be able to respond credibly and accurately to all the statements made by other sovereign states including Israel. For me, MUN was so real, and as high-school students, we always managed to bring warring factor to the negotiating table, why are grown men and women incapable of doing that today?

One thing about Carlson is that he always ends up annoying me. I watched his interview with Viktor Orbàn, president of Hungary and actually learned a lot from it. I look forward to listening to his interview with Julian Assange, I think that’s going to tell us some truths that mainstream media will never divulge.

But this morning as I watched Carlson, I came across his conspiracy theory that George Floyd wasn’t murdered by Derek Chauvin. His thinks that Floyd overdosed due to fentanyl — the simply idea of this false narrative is preposterous. Carlson goes on to state that the government orchestrated a murder narrative around Floyd’s death to make way for a woke agenda and make white people feel guilty of being racist. As you can imagine, I’m not going to cover the full nonsensical rubbish of Carlson’s theory, but suffice to say that it was deeply triggering.

Since Carlson was fired from Fox he has done some good reporting, but he has also done a tonne of crap too. I sometimes wonder if he doesn’t see the difference between the Victor Orban interview and the sell-out Black man he had on his show who was pushing that theory about Floyd’s murder.

I come to the conclusion that as the arrogant, privileged, white male that he is, Carlson is just in it for the ratings. He wants to prove to Fox and to the world that people will still listen to him. The only thing that he has forgotten is that people — maybe for the exception of the MAGA crowd, won’t listen to crap.

Every single time his guest starts blabbering nonsense, an intelligent, rational brain cannot continue to listen. When narratives sound like lies, most people automatically switch off, and every time Carlson engages in rubbish like this, he misses an opportunity to be taken seriously.

Whether we like it or not though, some of the stuff he shares is insightful and helps me understand how mainstream media is into the business of deceiving us — if not all of the time, most of the time. I guess if I could put it simply, I would say that its important to have a diverse range of opinions, that is the only way that democracy works.

In conclusion I would add, we also need to listen to Carlson’s voice. I sometimes do it kicking and screaming because I despise most of his content. But, to be able to build ones opinion about what is going on in the world today, one needs to have access to several points of view including that of Tucker Carlson. Just don’t ask me how my day went though, he totally ruined it, and I’ll never wake up alongside him ever again.

Thank you for reading my perspective.