Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson (born May 16, 1969) is an American conservative political commentator, journalist, and host of The Tucker Carlson Show since 2023. He previously hosted the nightly political talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News from 2016 to 2023, the highest rated cable news show at the time of its termination, and is an influential voice in right-wing media.
Carlson began his media career in the 1990s, writing for The Weekly Standard and other publications. He was a CNN commentator from 2000 to 2005 and a co-host of Crossfire, the network's prime-time news debate program, from 2001 to 2005. From 2005 to 2008, he hosted the nightly program Tucker on MSNBC. In 2009, he became a political analyst for Fox News, appearing on various programs before launching his own show. In 2010, Carlson co-founded and served as the initial editor-in-chief of The Daily Caller, a right-wing news and opinion website, until selling his ownership stake and leaving in 2020. In the 2021 Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network defamation lawsuit, Carlson was among the hosts named for broadcasting false statements about the plaintiff company's voting machines. In April 2023, Fox News canceled Tucker Carlson Tonight, leading Carlson to launch his own program, The Tucker Carlson Show.
Originally a supporter of the Iraq War, he renounced his support in 2004 and has since been skeptical of U.S. foreign interventions. Formerly an economic libertarian, he now supports protectionism and restrictions on immigration. Carlson is known for introducing far-right ideas into mainstream politics and discourse. He has been noted for false and misleading statements on some topics and for promoting conspiracy theories on demographic replacement, COVID-19, the 2021 United States Capitol attack, and Ukrainian bioweapons. Some of Carlson's remarks on race, immigration, and women have been described as racist and sexist, and provoked advertiser boycotts of Tucker Carlson Tonight. A longtime supporter of U.S. president Donald Trump, he is said to have influenced Trump's decision-making, but has also been critical of Trump, most notably after the 2026 Iran war, causing him to leave the Republican Party. In February 2024 he became the first Western journalist to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. He has written three books: Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites (2003), Ship of Fools (2018), and The Long Slide (2021).
Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson was born at the Children's Hospital in San Francisco, California, on May 16, 1969. He is the elder son of Lisa McNear (née Lombardi; 1945–2011), an artist from San Francisco, and Dick Carlson (1941–2025), a former "gonzo reporter" who became the director of Voice of America, president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the U.S. ambassador to the Seychelles, and more recently a director at the lobbying firm Policy Impact Strategic Communications. Carlson's brother, Buckley Peck Carlson, later Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson, is nearly two years younger and has worked as a communications manager and a Republican Party political operative.
Carlson's paternal grandparents were Richard Boynton and Dorothy Anderson, who were teenagers when they placed his father at The Home for Little Wanderers orphanage in Boston, where he was fostered by Carl Moberger of Malden, near Boston, a tannery worker of Swedish descent, and his wife Florence Moberger. Carlson's father was adopted at the age of two by upper-middle-class New Englanders, the Carlsons, an executive at the Winslow Brothers & Smith Tannery of Norwood (the oldest tannery in America) and his wife.
Carlson's mother descends from Henry Miller, the "Cattle King", and from the Swiss-Italian Cesar Lombardi, who immigrated to New York from Switzerland in 1860. However, Carlson himself is only 1/32 Italian-Swiss.
Carlson is also a distant relative of Massachusetts politicians Ebenezer R. Hoar and George M. Brooks. Carlson himself was named after his great-great-great-grandfather J. C. Tucker and his great-great-grandfather George W. McNear.
In 1976, Carlson's parents divorced after the nine-year marriage reportedly "turned sour". Carlson's father was granted custody of Tucker and his brother. Carlson's mother left the family when he was six and moved to France. The boys never saw her again.
When Carlson was in first grade, his father moved Tucker and his brother to the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, and raised them there. Carlson attended La Jolla Country Day School and grew up in a home overlooking the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club. His father owned property in Nevada and Vermont, and islands in Maine and Nova Scotia. In 1984, his father unsuccessfully challenged the incumbent Republican Party mayor Roger Hedgecock in the San Diego mayoral race.
In 1979, Carlson's father married Patricia Caroline Swanson, an heiress to Swanson Enterprises (founded by Carl A. Swanson), daughter of Gilbert Carl Swanson and niece of Senator J. William Fulbright. Though Patricia remained a beneficiary of the family fortune, the Swansons had sold the brand to the Campbell Soup Company in 1955 and did not own it by the time of Carlson's father's marriage. This was the third marriage for Swanson, who legally adopted Tucker Carlson and his brother.
Carlson was briefly enrolled at Collège du Léman, a boarding school in the Canton of Geneva in French-speaking Switzerland, but said he was "kicked out". He attained his secondary education at St. George's School, a boarding school in Middletown, Rhode Island, where he started dating his future wife, Susan Andrews, the headmaster's daughter. He then attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. At the end of four years, he had achieved only a 1.9 Grade-Point Average (out of 4), and failed to graduate with his class. He graduated in absentia with the class of 1992. Carlson's Trinity yearbook describes him as a member of the "Dan White Society", an apparent reference to the American political assassin who murdered San Francisco mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk. After college, Carlson tried to join the Central Intelligence Agency, but his application was denied, after which he decided to pursue a career in journalism with the encouragement of his father, who advised him that "they'll take anybody".
Carlson began his career in journalism as a fact-checker for Policy Review, a conservative journal then published by the Heritage Foundation and later acquired by the Hoover Institution. He then worked as an opinion writer at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas, before joining The Weekly Standard news magazine in 1995. Carlson sought a role with the publication after hearing of its founding, fearing he would be "written off as a wing nut" if he instead joined The American Spectator.
In 1999, Carlson interviewed then-Governor George W. Bush for Talk magazine. He quoted Bush mocking Karla Faye Tucker, who was executed in Bush's state of Texas, and frequently using the word "fuck". The piece led to bad publicity for Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. Bush claimed that "Mr. Carlson misread, mischaracterized me. He's a good reporter, he just misunderstood about how serious that was. I take the death penalty very seriously." Among liberals, Carlson's piece received praise, with Democratic consultant Bob Shrum calling it "vivid". Carlson said of the interview, "I thought I'd be ragged for writing a puffy piece. My wife said people are going to think you're hunting for a job in the Bush campaign."
Further into his career in print, Carlson worked as a columnist for New York magazine and Reader's Digest; writing for Esquire, Slate, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Daily Beast, and The Wall Street Journal. John F. Harris of Politico would later remark on how Carlson was "viewed ... as an important voice of the intelligentsia" during this period. While working on a story for New York covering the Taliban, Carlson, alongside his father, was involved in a plane crash as it made its landing on a runway in Dubai on October 17, 2001. Carlson's 2003 Esquire profile on his journey to Liberia alongside Reverend Al Sharpton and other civil and political rights activists would garner a nomination at the National Magazine Awards.