A day after trying to rally House Republicans to support Ukraine, Boris Johnson confessed that he met stiff resistance because the lawmakers feared one man who opposed the war.
“I’ve been amazed and horrified by how many people are frightened of a guy called Tucker Carlson,” the former British prime minister said, drawing laughter from the Atlantic Council audience on Feb. 1. “Has anybody heard of somebody called — has anybody heard of Tucker Carlson?”
Yes, most definitely, House Republicans have heard Carlson, loud and clear.
The now ousted Fox News personality drew more than 3 million viewers a night, the most in prime time for cable news. But the most loyal — or cowed — patrons were the more than 200 members of the House Republican Conference for the past few years.
Carlson’s sway over those lawmakers ranged from influential to outright bizarre. Sometimes he tackled major policy issues, like his opposition to supporting Ukraine, and other times he ridiculed them over niche issues, like his defense of TikTok.
Many House Republicans pined to appear on his show, while others gave him preferential treatment. In mid-February Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) gave Carlson’s team exclusive access to tens of thousands of hours of security footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Not since the late radio host Rush Limbaugh and his “dittoheads” soared to the top of conservative talk radio in the 1990s has one news personality held such sway on a congressional caucus. Back then, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) would invite Limbaugh to address GOP meetings, and members of the majority-making 1994 class even granted him “honorary member” status.
And, just as Limbaugh was considered an oddity to Senate Republicans back then, Carlson drew mostly ire from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his GOP colleagues on that side of the Capitol.
“There have been some that have argued that he was setting foreign policy for the Republican Party. Which I find bizarre, certainly not for me,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said Tuesday, the day after Carlson’s dismissal from Fox.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a staunch supporter of defending Ukraine, wondered aloud whether Carlson’s departure might smooth the path toward continued funding of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s defense against Russia.
“I disagreed with his position on Ukraine, and I think continuing to support Ukraine is in our national interest,” Cornyn said Tuesday, “and if this makes that easier, then that’s a good thing.”
House conservatives couldn’t disagree more, predicting that Carlson would find a new platform and retain influence.
“He’s absolutely an important voice, and he still will be, in some capacity,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said Wednesday.
“I think you look at his viewership, it speaks for itself,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the No. 4 in House GOP leadership.
That’s only partly true. Over the last 12 months, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” finished behind “The Five,” a more amiable Fox News chat show at 5 p.m., for 11 of them. The conservative station’s 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. offerings, led by anchors Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity, drew more than 2.5 million viewers, just a few hundred thousand behind Carlson.
And his total viewers last month, a little more than 3.2 million nightly, is still slightly behind what his predecessor in the 8 p.m. slot, Bill O’Reilly, drew in 2016 before he was ousted in disgrace.
Ratings were just one factor in the power Carlson held inside HC5, the basement meeting room where House Republicans gather once or twice a week to plot their agenda. Carlson translated his personal outrage of the evening into constituents flooding House GOP phone lines and email inboxes the next day, in a way that left so many lawmakers living in fear of landing in Carlson’s crosshairs.
“I think he’s had huge sway, period,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a Freedom Caucus founder, said.
Carlson’s show-opening speeches, which varied between ideological arguments on policy to full-fury rants against Republican traitors to his cause, often delivered a different sort of response from viewers than other conservative news personalities.
“I know all kinds of people who are like, I gotta listen to Tucker’s monologue,” Jordan said. “That’s one of the things they wanted to do. So I think he’s had huge impact across the board.”
In May 2021, Punchbowl News conducted an extensive survey of congressional staff, asking the most senior GOP aides who the most important Republican voices were among those who weren’t seeking political office.
Carlson was No. 1 and Hannity finished a distant, distant second.
“They realize their chances of winning a primary are better if they’re going along with Tucker than not,” Romney said of House Republicans.
He used his show to meddle in House GOP politics in all sorts of ways. Two years ago he devoted more than 5 minutes to excoriating McCarthy, then the minority leader, for renting a room in famed GOP pollster Frank Luntz’s 7,000-square-foot penthouse apartment about a mile from the Capitol.
McCarthy sheepishly admitted that he had spent a few months in the palatial home, paying “fair market value,” but then vowed to move out and return to living in his congressional office.
In late 2022, Carlson waded into the GOP leadership election for House majority whip, angrily calling Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) to accuse his staff of leaking disparaging information about his son Buckley Carlson, according to Axios.
Buckley Carlson has worked for four years for Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), and the elder Carlson’s allies, including Donald Trump Jr., responded with social media support for Banks over Emmer.
In a secret-ballot race, Emmer narrowly defeated Banks for the No. 3 position in leadership.
In early January, as McCarthy kept falling short in his bid to win the votes to become speaker, Carlson used a show segment to suggest that he would more forcefully support his bid for the gavel if he agreed to release the insurrection tapes.
“Release the January 6 files. Not some of the January 6 files and video, all of it,” Carlson said.
Two months later, Carlson aired a two-part series that defended those Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol and created a false narrative that they were peaceful protesters. McCarthy promised to let other media see the footage, but two and a half months later, only Carlson has had that access.
Senate Republicans erupted at the Fox News episodes, with McConnell blaming senior executives for allowing Carlson to air the falsehoods.
But Carlson’s views on Ukraine might be the most broadly influential, with potential global impact. When Russia invaded last year, just a handful of House Republicans would vote against legislation meant to provide funds to shore up Ukraine’s defense.
By last summer the anti-Ukraine crowd grew to more than 50. And this year, with Republicans now in the majority, some traditional GOP security hawks are dreading the expected request later this year from Biden to provide billions more to Zelensky’s forces.
Trump has been a big voice against Ukraine, and now Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) has followed Trump into that lane as they get ready to square off for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
But on Capitol Hill, every senior Republican gives a one-word answer to the biggest obstacle for supporting Zelensky: Tucker.
And Johnson learned that firsthand two months ago after visiting the House GOP to try to twist arms.
“What is it with this guy? All these wonderful Republicans seem somehow intimidated by his — by his perspective,” Johnson said. “I haven’t watched anything that he’s said. But I’m struck by how often this comes up.”