Table of Biography
Tucker Carlson is an American conservative political commentator. Tucker Carlson is famously known for hosting the nightly political talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News since 2016. Most people also know him as a print journalist in the 1990s. He wrote for the magazine The Weekly Standard, among others.
Early Life and Childhood
Tucker Carlson, 53, was born on 16 May 1969. His birth name is Tucker Swanson, McNear Carlson. The political commentator’s birthplace is in San Francisco, California.
Consequently, as the director of the Voice of America, he is the eldest son of Richard Warner Carlson, a former “gonzo reporter“.
His father is the director of the Voice of America, and the president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Furthermore, he is also the U.S. Ambassador to Seychelles. The paternal grandparents of Carlson were Richard Boynton and Dorothy Anderson.
They placed his father in an orphanage where he was adopted at age two by the Carlsons. Richard Carlson’s adoptive father was a wool broker.
Carlson’s mother was artist Lisa McNear (née Lombardi). He also has a brother, Buckley Peck Carlson (later, Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson), who is nearly two years younger and was born two months premature.
Similarly, Carlson’s parents divorced after nine years of married life in 1976. Carlson’s father was granted custody of him and his brother.
More details
Carlson’s mother left the family when he was six, wanting to pursue a “bohemian” lifestyle. She eventually split her time between Beaufort County, South Carolina, and Cazac, France, where she had little contact with Carlson’s family. Latterly, his mother remarried artist, Michael Vaughn.
Richard Warner married fellow divorcee, Patricia Caroline Swanson in 1979. She was an heiress to Swanson Enterprises.
She is the daughter of Gilbert Carl Swanson and the niece of Senator J. William Fulbright. This was her third marriage, she legally adopted Carlson and his brother.
In addition, his father moved with him and his brother to La Jolla, California. They were raised there since his first grade.
Moreover, Carlson is of Swedish, English, German, Scottish, Irish, Swiss-Italian, Portuguese, and distant Dutch, descent. At one point in life, Carlson suffered appendicitis.
Caption: Tucker reporting about the defeat of Hillary Clinton, (Source: Fox News)
Education and College
In La Jolla, California, he attended La Jolla Country Day School. Tucker Carlson completed his secondary education at St. George’s School.
It is a boarding school in Middletown, Rhode Island. Particularly, he graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1991.
He finalized his college studies with a degree in history. After college, he tried to join the Central Intelligence Agency, but his application was denied. After this, he decided to pursue a career in journalism with the encouragement of his father.
Rumors and Controversy
In 2018, a group of about 20 activists from Smash Racism D.C. protested outside Carlson’s Washington, D.C., home. Carlson’s driveway was vandalized with a spray-painted anarchist symbol.
Police responded within minutes and they dispersed the protesters. Besides that, he has faced many rumors and controversies as a journalist.
There were many controversies regarding his career in replacing the job vacancies in various channels. Comparatively, one of those controversies was about Fox News. In August 2019, Fox News was not ready to replace Tucker Carlson with Donna Brazile.
In March 2019, Media Matters for America resurfaced audio clips of the Fox News host echoing white nationalist themes and insulting Muslims during appearances he made on Bubba the Love Sponge’s radio show during the aughts.
“Iraq is a crappy place filled with a bunch of, you know, semiliterate primitive monkeys,” Carlson said in one clip from October 7, 2008. Within a few days, there were two more scandalous videos and audio clips released on Carlson.
In one of them, he makes misogynistic and offensive comments including defending child sexual abuse, demeaning sex workers and women, and making suggestive comments about underage girls.
NowThis News published the third tranche, audio in which Carlson is alternately mocking and joking about having sex with underaged beauty pageant contestants. The video/audio published by Media Matters dates back to 2006 and he says to Iraqis:
“I just have zero sympathy for them or their culture. A culture where people just don’t use toilet paper or forks … they can just shut the fuck up and obey, is my view.”
However, Carlson never apologized for the wrong things he said regarding religion, country, ideologies, and much more.
Despite his scandalous speech during his program, Fox News still stands behind him instead of cutting ties with him.
Tucker Carlson – Net Worth 2023
Likewise, the net worth of the 50-year-old personality is estimated to be $20 million. Similarly, his annual salary is worth $6 million according to the latest research and information.
On top of that, Tucker also makes some profit through his writing career. He has also written for magazines and published his book.
Career and Professional Life
Initially, Carlson started his career in journalism as a fact-checker for Policy Review. Later on, he worked as a reporter at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He has also worked as a columnist for New York and Reader’s Digest.
Carlson has contributed his writings to Esquire, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, and The Daily Beast. Furthermore, he is popular as a writer and producer for Tucker Carlson Tonight (2016), Swing Vote (2008), and 30 Rock (2006).
Moreover, Carlson is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Caller. It is a 24-hour news site committed to providing its audience with original reporting, thought-provoking commentary, and breaking news.
CNN and MSNBC
Similarly, Carlson co-hosted the short-lived show The Spin Room in 2000. After one year, he was appointed as a co-host of Crossfire.
He also had an exchange with Jon Stewart. Jon Stewart is the host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central. Ultimately, Carlson left CNN in 2005, and Crossfire was canceled.
On MSNBC, Carlson had his evening show, Tucker. The journalist also hosted a weekday wrap-up during the 2006 Winter Olympics. He could last for less than three full seasons due to low ratings in 2008.
Fox News and The Daily Caller
In the bargain, Fox News hired him as its contributor. Since 2013, he has been a co-host, contributor, and frequent host on Fox & Friends.
The correspondent initiated hosting Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News in 2016. Until 2018, the show was the second-highest-rated cable news show in prime time. It had 3.2 million nightly viewers.
Furthermore, the newsman and former vice president Dick Cheney’s helper Neil Patel launched a political news website titled The Daily Caller. The well-known journalist was also a contestant on the third season of Dancing with the Stars in 2006.
Writing Career
To clarify, the reporter has scripted the memoir Politicians, Partisans and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News, about his television news experiences.
Warner Books was the publisher. Moreover, he was represented by the literary and creative agency Jvalin in 2017. Carlson has co-authored an “investigative series” of articles.
The Daily Caller published it in 2012. In addition, he had participated in political views as well. He is particularly described as a conservative.
Tucker Carlson Tonight (2016–present)
On November 14, 2016, he started hosting Tucker Tonight on Fox News. The premiere episode of the show, which followed On the Record, was the network’s most-watched telecast of the year in the time slot with 3.7 million viewers.
On April 19, 2017, Fox News stated that Tucker Carlson Tonight would air at 8 p.m. following the cancellation of The O’Reilly Factor. The show became the third-highest-rated cable news show as of March 2018.
By October 2020, The show averaged 5.3 million viewers, with the show’s monthly average becoming the highest of any cable news program in history at that point.
The show maintained an average viewership of just over 1 million, with 670,000 being between the ages of 18–49 in the 25–54 demographic.
Relationship Status
Other than that, Carlson is happily married to Susan Carlson. The couple met and tied the knot in the chapel of St. George School. They share three daughters and one son. Their children are Lillie (born 1995), Buckley (born 1997), Hope (born 1999), and Dorothy.
Caption: Tucker with his family. Source: Velvet Ropes
Tucker Carlson’s estranged mother, Lisa Vaughn, died in October 2011. She was thought to have died intestate, and in 2012, Carlson and his brother, Buckley, filed a lawsuit to determine the succession of her oil and gas royalties in several counties in California. They were initially valued at over $125,000 but later they found that they were over $2.5 million worth.
However, in 2013 a one-page handwritten will was discovered. In the will, Vaughn explicitly stated that she wished her estate to go solely to her husband and left one dollar each for Carlson and his brother. As of March 2019, the lawsuit is still under appeal.
Body Measurements
Identically, the reporter is 6 feet tall with an average build body. However, Tucker Carlson’s weight is not available. His eyes color is blue. And, he had light brown colored hair.
Source: Tucker Carlson speaks during Politicon 2018 at the Los Angeles Convention Center on October 21, 2018 (Source: Fortune)
Tucker Carlson – Social Media
The famous news reporter is active on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as well. He has more than 1.6 million followers on Facebook, 591k followers on Instagram, and 3 million followers on Twitter.