Chris Cuomo’s Controversial Tucker Carlson Interview is Actually a Blueprint For Political Media In Divided Times

Two titans of political media — and once bitter partisan rivals — laid down their arms recently for a nearly two-hour conversation marked by conviviality and shared vulnerability. The result was something far more interesting and revealing than anyone could have expected.

Chris Cuomo traveled to Tucker Carlson’s Florida residence for a conversation that aired both on NewsNation and the Tucker Carlson Network.

There were high stakes for the interview, thanks to a long history of animosity between the two broadcasters and their audiences. Cuomo has long faced attacks from the pro-Trump right, which he’s never shied away from. Carlson has a well-earned reputation as a pernicious force, even by the low standards of partisan media; it’s a reputation the former Fox News host relishes.

That Carlson, once a cable news mainstay, has developed such a toxic reputation, it ensured that the mere existence of the interview drew fire upon Cuomo.

But the NewsNation host is on a mission to bridge the harsh political differences that so bitterly divide the county and is going about it in a manner that flouts the conventional wisdom so eager to condemn irresponsible platforming: Instead of ignoring them, he’s engaging in thoughtful conversation.

The results, at least in his Tucker Carlson interview, were stunning. A convivial approach — as opposed to a confrontational one — led Carlson to concede and reveal far more than anything we’ve seen previously from him. More on that in a minute, but first, an important disclosure:

I am a paid contributor for NewsNation, and so I am more in league with Cuomo’s intellectual curiosity than Carlson’s divisive rhetoric and penchant for (his words) “pot shots.” I am also the founding editor of Mediaite, which recently published an Isaac Schorr column critical of Cuomo’s approach. And to his credit, Chris Cuomo has made abundantly clear how he feels about a lot of Mediaite’s coverage.

There are two abiding arguments about these sorts of interviews: one is the “discretion is the better part of valor” approach, which boils down to ignoring the people with whom you disagree in hopes they go away, regardless of their stature and influence. The other approach that Cuomo has opted for is the “fortune favors the bold” tactic.

Cuomo knew he’d catch hell for a Tucker interview from predictable precincts and even cited nattering nabobs in the first few minutes of the conversation.

“We are not supposed to be doing this,” Cuomo told Tucker. “I am doing something bad right now. Not just wrong — this is bad,” to which Carlson laughed “like morally.”

“I am giving a ‘platform’ — that’s the new word for censoring, right? I’m giving Tucker Carlson a platform.  I’m talking to him about who he is, what he’s about, why he does what he does, why he’s bad.  And that’s the end of the analysis.  But look where it’s gotten us,” Cuomo said.

“Nobody talks to each other anymore,” Carlson concurred.

And that’s precisely how this interview was portrayed. One media critic asked, “If Cuomo deems figures like Carlson and Owens worth hearing out, doesn’t that signal to his audience that they too should listen to what these dishonest figures have to say? That seems to be how the math works out. And it’s hard to see how encouraging people to follow these voices, who flood the discourse with dangerous lies, is the responsible thing to do.”

Had Cuomo opened confrontationally, with his back up, trying to prove the “speaking truth to power” ethos with Carlson, the interview would have elicited far fewer concessions and would have been far less enlightening.

Instead, the quasi-bromantic group therapy session of recently ousted cable news hosts relaxed Carlson to the degree that he admitted stuff he’d never really said before.

His self-effacing admission that he’s a “dick” got the headlines — and proved Jon Stewart prophetically accurate, but his admission that he throws out potshots devoid of actual evidence or proof was revealing. Carlson explained his hatred for CNN but couldn’t exactly explain why, and also claimed to be morally opposed to “lying” though he could not refrain from doing as much in this conversation.

Cuomo challenged Carlson on his strange obsession with Moscow and Putin, and challenged him on “cherry picking” security footage from January 6th, which Carlson insisted was “given” to his producers. That’s flatly false, as access to the footage was provided to Carlson’s producers, who made selects and then aired them misleadingly during the heat of an existentially threatening libel suit Fox News was fighting with Dominion Voting Systems.

But the most revealing takeaway from Carlson was his weird take on women. He used the term “unhappy unmarried women” multiple times as though not being married is some sort of pejorative. But then he went further to define women in terms that would fit right in with Truman-era Red Scare propaganda piece.

“If you ask women what they want, the overwhelming majority will say, I want to be married and have children,” Carlson asserted. When Cuomo pushed back, Carlson clarified:

 I’m talking specifically about women. They want to be married and have children. And that is the thing that the Democratic Party prevents them from having, through policy. And the reason they do that is because the single most important constituency, as you well know, is not Black voters. They always say those black voters know it’s unmarried women of all races. And so they do a lot of different things to discourage marriage and fertility. One of them is paying single moms not to be married. Another is constantly promoting anti-fertility measures like abortion and birth control. They actively work to prevent women from forming families. And I think that’s evil and I don’t think it serves women at all. That’s my view.

Carlson’s view is that Democrats are making policies — like abortion and birth control — to keep women from getting married and having children because it helps them win votes. It’s so absurd on its face that it is difficult to take seriously. Carlson arrived at that embarrassing revelation because Cuomo’s casual conversation got Carlson to lower his guard enough to reveal what seemed like honest thoughts, however conspiratorially misogynistic they might be.

Look, I’m being tough on Carlson here, too. There were plenty of moments when he came off as thoughtful, self-effacing, and contrite. For those who have long considered Carlson’s wildly successful rhetorical flourish, it was a shocking departure from his usual on-air persona.

It’s hard to know what his motivation was — was it a genuine moment from a changed person or a calculated pivot to a more likable figure following the raft of criticism he received for the Putin antics? That’s a question for future media critics to answer, but right now I think it’s safe to just call it great content.

I know Tucker to be a complicated figure: I’ve fought with him on his cable news show and had an off-the-record meal with him long ago. During the former, he was a total asshole. During the later? He was remarkably funny, charming, and not nearly as evil a figure as he seems to embrace with the establishment media set.

The point is that both Cuomo and Carlson did themselves a great service by not giving into predictable cable news warfare and instead honoring the fine tradition of civic discourse.

And the temperature of a fevered nation should be brought down if more of this sort of thing happened more regularly.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.