If you haven’t seen the video of Tucker Carlson questioning Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) about his knowledge — or lack thereof — on Iran, it’s riveting.
It’s an insanely compelling video. On one hand, you have a sitting Senator — one of the more influential senators at that — who has angled for American intervention to help its ally, Israel, attack Iran. On the other hand, you have Carlson, who has made no bones about his anti-war stance in recent years.
In his line of questioning to Cruz, Carlson asked the senator some questions about Iran that the politician didn’t have an answer for.
“How many people live in Iran, by the way?” Carlson asked.
“I don’t know the population,” Cruz admitted.
“At all?” Carlson replied.
“No, I don’t know the population,” said Cruz.
Tucker Carlson followed that up by asking what the demographic breakdown of the country was on an ethnic and religious basis, and, again, Ted Cruz admitted he did not know the extreme specifics asked.
The reactions on social media were mixed. Many observers argued that Carlson was guilty of “gotcha” journalism, while others said he had performed a great act of journalism.
Sitting her writing this story, I’m still not 100% sure where I land, outside of questioning Carlson’s tactics.
Because I remember a very specific set of comments made by the former Fox News host when he welcomed The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh to his program earlier this year.
In that episode of The Tucker Carlson Show, the duo discussed the theory behind debates, as Walsh is often confronted about his controversial stances and shared he approached being ambushed by someone unwilling to argue the central points of his beliefs.
“We don’t need to litigate what an expert is or who an expert is,” said Walsh.
“Yeah. Why not begin with the merits of the debate?” Carlson agreed.
“Right. Just get into it,” Walsh continued. “It doesn’t matter, this guy that you’re sitting next to, whether he’s an expert or not. It makes no difference. I don’t care if he’s a scholar. I don’t care if he’s a homeless guy just pulled off the street. His arguments are valid, or they aren’t.”
“Exactly,” replied Carlson.
Well, which one is it? Do the merits of arguments matter or is accepting and embracing logical fallacies to prove your point the most important aspect of the marketplace of ideas?
I was so struck by the comments from both Walsh and Carlson because it’s something that I think we see all too frequently in today’s political and news media landscape. Many don’t argue or lobby from a stance of principle or for/against ideas. There’s a large swath of players involved in these conversations who argue for/against people, and I think that’s incorrect and backward.
There is too much content — whether it’s from news media pundits or legislators — that talks about political opponents instead of with political opponents. Many notice that and share that belief, while simultaneously lobbying that it needs to be changed. However, many do nothing about it. So to hear two conservative media titans noticing this issue and sharing their opinions on how to rectify it was a breath of fresh air.
But, like many of the aforementioned who point out this problem, it certainly doesn’t appear as if Carlson practiced what he preached.
In this instance with Ted Cruz, Tucker Carlson attempted to discredit the argument by pointing out that the senator isn’t knowledgeable enough about the topic to have the opinion that he does.
Which, on the surface, makes sense. “If you don’t know how many people live in the country or what the demographic makeup of the nation is, how can you have the stance that the United States should be involved in military intervention?,” is the argument, essentially.
But it’s a straw man argument. It’s a fallacy. Because neither of those things have anything to do with the topic at hand. It’s an attempt to discredit your debate opponent with items that aren’t germane to the conversation at hand. It’s literally and legitimately an attack to make someone look stupid because they don’t know everything about a topic, therefore, they obviously know nothing about the topic.
And I don’t think that’s the case. Furthermore, I don’t think it’s fair. And for someone like Tucker Carlson, who made a name for himself by arguing from a state of principles, those principles didn’t seem to be on display as he argued with Ted Cruz.
To be clear, I have no stance or opinion on Carlson’s anti-war-at-all-costs beliefs. Truly, I find them admirable if anything, because — in the past — he’s explained that his view has been shaped through the lens of fatherhood and his love for his children.
But the idea that because Ted Cruz doesn’t know specific, trivial facts about a country doesn’t make his stance invalid, either. It’s an appeal to emotion in a situation where you need to nearly remove emotion entirely.
I can understand and empathize with Tucker Carlson on why he’d appeal to emotion to attempt to take the moral high ground in the debate. But it feels like a dirty tactic, and one he’d call out if the roles were reversed.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
