Bill Kristol, who originally hired Tucker Carlson at the Weekly Standard told CNBC that he always had a "touch of Pat Buchananism" in him which has now turned into outward racism on his Fox News program.
CNBC's Speakeasy with John Hardwood interviewed Kristol about his time on Fox News, how they changed from a right leaning program into a birther-like network and the rise of the conspiracy theory on right wing media.
Kristol said," Now Fox is sort of — 75 percent of it seems to be birther-like coverage of different issues. That's been, I think, bad. And you put that together with the social media and the segmentation of everyone into bubbles, and I think there's some truth to that criticism."
He said the radical change was caused by the reelection of President Obama.
"The second term of Obama, I think, was a shock. I think one can't underestimate — that was a shock to the system. That was like, "We're losing our country" for a certain chunk of Fox viewers," he said.
However, he saved his sharpest criticisms for Tucker Carlson.
"Tucker Carlson began at The Weekly Standard. Tucker Carlson was a great young reporter. He was one of the most gifted 24-year-olds I've seen in the 20 years that I edited the magazine. His copy was sort of perfect at age 24."
Kristol continued, "He had always a little touch of Pat Buchananism, I would say, paleo-conservativism. But that's very different from what he's become now. I mean, it is close now to racism, white — I mean, I don't know if it's racism exactly — but ethno-nationalism of some kind, let's call it. A combination of dumbing down, as you said earlier, and stirring people's emotions in a very unhealthy way."
Tucker Carlson's program is a combination of a snide and nasty jerk promoting white nationalism and pure racism. You can see an example of this during his interview with George Cardenas, which was totally racist and mean.
Here's the full segment via CNBC:
