The exposure of text messages from Fox "News" host and pro-sedition hoax promoter Tucker Carlson revealing that, in private, he hates Donald Trump "passionately" has been met with glee not just among liberals who hate Tucker Carlson, but among conservatives who hate Tucker Carlson.
Oh, they've been enjoying this. They've been enjoying this a lot.
America, I understand how you feel. Tucker Carlson is quite literally one of the worst people in the nation, and is certainly one of the biggest liars, and he spends most of his available airtime making a face that is one part constipated and three parts confused dog, and has spent his entire professional life trying to be unpleasant in whatever specific way unpleasantness can best be monetized at each moment, and he inspired a generation of young white male conservative CPAC attendees to wear bowties and make smug faces at each other despite having no skills or values or anything at all to brag about, and he is just the worst. So stipulated.
But I almost have to defend him here, because the news that Tucker Carlson hates Donald Trump should not really be news. Everybody hates Donald Trump. Every last person on this planet hates Donald Trump, and they hate him in direct proportion to how much contact they've had with him. You will not find a single person around Donald Trump who does not hate him. You will, through Donald Trump’s entire adulthood, not find such a person.
Donald Trump may be the world's most prominent exception to the supposed rule that everyone, no matter how far they have fallen, has something good about them. Nobody has ever accused Donald Trump of having a good side; the best anyone has ever offered is examples of him momentarily being just a bit less awful than his usual norm, and even those are rare and cherished by his allie—like sips of fine, slightly less-poisoned whine. Nobody likes Donald Trump.
You have never seen Donald Trump playing with his grandchildren. Donald Trump has no endearing stories about what Ivanka or Tiffany or Donald Jr. or Whatshisface or Barron were like as young children, of hijinks being jinked, of nursing them when they were sick or laughing with them when they were well. During his time in the White House, Donald's adult daughter and son-in-law were not there to boost their father, but to help manage him. His wife, the current one, rises to his defense only through paid spokescreatures and is seen in his presence about as often as any one of Trump's usual ties. A significant percentage of his family members and business acquaintances have signed paperwork promising not to disparage him in exchange for money.
Donald Trump shares no stories about close friends. We hear vague hints that Trump may have friends, perhaps, and on inspection each of them is less a friend than a loose business partner or, more often, men who have paid eye-watering membership fees to be in Donald's occasional presence. During the 2016 Republican convention that nominated him, the people scraped together to lavish Trump with praise were his immediate family, people on his own payroll, and a business associate who told a heartwarming story of Donald Trump hearing that one of his employee's children was distraught over their hospitalized father and providing, to that child, Donald Trump's autograph and not a damn thing else.
Donald Trump's extended family hates Donald Trump. Donald Trump's sister expresses revulsion for him. Donald Trump famously retaliated against a brother who filed suit against him by revoking the health insurance of that brother's sick infant child.
Donald Trump does not like dogs, and seems to have affection for no other animals, either.
Donald Trump has no close friends, and no friends at any distance at all. Donald Trump does not play golf with friends. Donald Trump plays golf with supplicants. People like Sen. Lindsey Graham come to Donald Trump to play a round of golf because they need something from him, or want to be seen with him for the sake of inflating their own supposed importance.
And when those people come to him to play golf and chat, Donald Trump brazenly cheats and nobody dares call him on it because they're not his friends; they're only there for favors and appearances.
The people Donald Trump appointed to administration jobs? All of them hate him. Some of them hate him enough to have contemplated whether they needed to tell Congress he was unfit for office, some of them hate him enough to badmouth him in interviews after Trump inevitably yells at them and fires them, and some of them hate him but refuse to talk about hating him because they still want to have a Republican Party career left.
Mike Pence hates Donald Trump with a passion after Donald Trump tried to have him killed, but Mike Pence wants to be president more than Mike Pence wants to not die at the hands of an angry mob, so he's been filing court paperwork in an attempt to dodge being asked about Donald Trump under oath.
Even the people at Donald Trump's rallies hate Donald Trump. Have you seen a Donald Trump rally? Donald Trump's rally crowds begin wandering out of the venue after hearing Trump speak for just 15 minutes. The people who can stand listening to Tucker Carlson every night will wait in line to hear Donald Trump talk for 10 minutes or so, and after that they start glancing toward the exits because more than 10 minutes is just too damn much.
Everybody hates Donald Trump. Tucker Carlson may be a fascism-promoting booster of would-be European autocrats. He may lie through his teeth in ways that undermine democracy. He may gleefully look to provoke violence by hosting white nationalists who spout conspiracy theories that his most addled viewers may feel compelled to act out on—but he is still, at least according to his driver's license, a human being.
And every human being who's ever met Donald Trump hates him. That's just science. You can't ask someone to talk to Donald Trump and not hate his guts afterward.
Friends. Americans. Countrymen. You cannot possibly expect Tucker Carlson to have met Donald Trump, interviewed him on multiple occasions, and not hate him "passionately" in private conversations afterward. There is no way on this earth we can call fascist fish stick fanboy Tucker Carlson an honorable man—but not hating Donald Trump is not something we can ask of him.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
