Tucker Carlson was my favorite anchor. What happened to him?

I watched Tucker Carlson, a man whose show I once never missed, sit in Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg’s home and insist that Russia’s economy is bigger than Britain’s. When the former British Cabinet minister told him Russia’s GDP is smaller, Carlson replied that GDP is not the only measure of an economy, as one analysis of the exchange recounted. It was a small moment, but it told me how far the anchor I admired has traveled.When I arrived from India in 1982, I trusted American broadcast news far more than the partisan press I had left behind. Peter Jennings reported without preaching, and Larry King let his guests talk. Decades later, most of cable news had become opinion programming, yet Carlson still earned my full hour each night. He booked guests who disagreed with him and let them finish, and the Fox format, with its producers, standards department, and lawyers, kept that method within limits.That method has not survived his independence. Fox parted ways with Carlson in April 2023, about a week after its $787.5 million Dominion settlement. He built his own network and, by 2025, bought out his investors. Freedom from a network is also freedom from editors and standards desks, and it shows. In 2024, he interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin, then held up a cheap Moscow grocery bill as something that would radicalize Americans against their own leaders, ignoring that Russian wages are a fraction of ours. He introduced the podcaster Darryl Cooper as perhaps America’s “best and most honest popular historian” and let him call Winston Churchill the chief villain of World War II and treat the Holocaust as a kind of accident, with little pushback. In late 2025, a friendly interview with the white nationalist Nick Fuentes roiled the Heritage Foundation, whose president defended it and then apologized.Carlson can still cross-examine. In 2025, he stumped Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) by asking for the population of Iran, a country Cruz wanted to confront. That was fair game. But the rigor now runs one way: Opponents get the quiz, sympathizers get the microphone.Which brings me back to Rees-Mogg. Carlson had half a point: At purchasing-power parity, Russia’s total output, about $7.1 trillion, does exceed Britain’s $4.5 trillion, by IMF estimates. But at market exchange rates Britain’s economy is far larger, roughly $4 trillion to $2.5 trillion, and per person a Briton produces more than three times what a Russian does. The man who quizzed Cruz could not draw that distinction. He added that he is not sure any other country’s territorial integrity is worth risking his life for, and he met Rees-Mogg’s charge that he was verging on defending Hitler with sarcasm instead of an answer.The rest of the picture fits. His ALP nicotine pouch, marketed against “soulless, pronoun-loving, politicized conglomerates,” is expanding into Europe. After the United States joined Israel in striking Iran in February 2026, he broke with President Donald Trump, apologized for “misleading people,” and began talking of a third party with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), sketching a ten-point plan on air.THE PRESIDENT STILL THINKS HE’S ON REALITY TVHis defenders note, fairly, that his anti-war views are consistent and that breaking with a president cost him dearly; Trump has dismissed him as a “Low-IQ person.” This is not simply a man chasing clicks. But a movement leader, a brand, and a merchant are all rewarded for provocation and loyalty, not for checking the numbers before the cameras roll.What I miss is not his opinions. It is the method: invite people who know more than you, do your homework, and let your strongest opponent finish. Carlson has more freedom than ever. He is using it to be louder, not better. I would gladly tune in again on the day he decides to use it to be careful.Meda Parameswara Reddy, Ph.D., is the Director of the Reddy Center for Critical and Integrated Thinking. A former R&D executive holding 30 U.S. patents, he has published 87 articles, appearing in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (PNAS), RealClear Markets, Science and Defense platforms; Washington Examiner, SpaceNews, The Fulcrum, The Humanist, American Thinker, and South Asia Monitor (on the editorial board, and also hosts the show “SAM Dialogues with Dr. M. P. Reddy.”)