What happens to the ecosystem of right-wing grifters and gadflies who made their bones by appearing on Tucker Carlson Tonight, now that the top-rated Fox News host is out of a job?
That’s the burning question on this week’s Fever Dreams—and though it remains unclear what will become of Tuckerworld flunkies like Glenn Greenwald, Andy Ngo, Darren Beattie and others, hosts Will Sommer and Kelly Weill say they’ve certainly shown their hand by throwing public tantrums over Carlson’s Fox News ousting.
“A lot of these guys, they sort of just needed a placard to have on the chyron, you know? I mean it, these are not really going concerns other than as a thing you flog on Tucker every night,” Sommer said. “So there’s been a huge outcry from those guys who are seeing their path to the most popular show on cable news just absolutely vaporized.”
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And despite the “go woke, go broke” rhetoric floating around in right-wing circles, there isn’t much evidence to suggest that Fox News—or any of the other companies that take flack from these far-right internet personalities—are going to be worse off for their supposed leftist pandering.
Then, the podcast investigates what has to be the weirdest media blitz so far this year: a couple somehow garnering headlines for their “pronatalist” quest to have as many children as they possibly can.
“They’re doing it not necessarily because they love kids, but it’s more for, let's say demographic reasons,” Weill said. “This is really popular, obviously, with racists who say there are not enough white kids and you’ve gotta outbreed other populations.
“It’s also popular with like the intellectual dark web, Silicon Valley types who probably have similar fears to the racists, but couch them in a little bit more intellectual language about, ‘Oh, there’s going to be a population collapse and we need to have elites produce genetically superior offspring,” she added.
Plus! A dystopian GOP attack ad on President Joe Biden that was actually generated by artificial intelligence—which lends a patina of otherworldliness to an already incredibly alienating and unsettling series of images.
Listen, and subscribe, to Fever Dreams on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.
