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MSNBC's Chris Hayes unearthed vintage footage of disgraced far-right political Fox commentator Tucker Carlson in what he believed to be was the conspiracy theorist's "villain origin story."
Hayes cited the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference as the pivotal moment when Carlson's previously noble political commentary did a complete 180.
The host of the weekday news show All In with Chris Hayes said court documents from Dominion's $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News highlighted an example of the "foundational asymmetry" between traditional media outlets, which reports with integrity, and the kind disseminated by Fox News that caters to what their audience wants to hear.
The lawsuit alleged Fox amplified its accusation that Dominion's voting machines rigged the 2020 Presidential election against former Republican President Donald Trump.
Hayes explained Carlson's former proposal to solve the issue of this news reporting disparity by creating a right-wing alternative to the New York Times.
"In about 15 years ago there was someone who very astutely identified this asymmetry, someone who knew that the hard-core political right didn't have its own rigorous journalistic institutions that could just produce reliable, trustworthy information."
"It was someone who wanted to solve that problem."
The segment cut to the vintage clip of Carlson trying to convince the CPAC attendees of his solution, which was to report–gasp–accurate news information like the New York Times.
You can watch the MSNBC segment here.
Carlson told the crowd the consequences of what has now become a common practice associated with Fox News–which is spreading damaging misinformation on a variety of important topics.
"If you create a news organization whose primary objective is not to deliver accurate news, you will fail."
"The New York Times is a liberal paper but it's also a paper that cares about whether they spell people's names right."
"It's a paper that cares about accuracy," he continued, as the crowd started becoming audibly restless after letting his disagreeable thoughts sink in.
He continued:
“Conservatives need to build institutions that mirror those institutions."
His statement elicited boos from the crowd.
Carlson desperately tried to persuade the audience he was correct.
"That’s the truth. You don’t believe me?”
When the clip finished, Hayes shared with viewers his final thoughts, first by acknowledging, "The boos. The boos."
Hayes said:
"Now I disagree vehemently with Tucker Carlson's assessment of bias at 'The New York Times' it's not a liberal paper."
"His point though that the political right lacks journalism is well taken."
Hayes said the jeering and ridicule leveled against Carlson at that moment "for telling the obvious truth, might as well be his villain origin story."
MSNBC viewers were impressed by the segment.
He continued talking about Carlson's bungled attempts to start his own news programs.
"You see, he had come off a series of professional humiliations. His second cable news show, at as many networks, has recently been been canceled."
"So Tucker Carlson was pursuing a new venture. His big project at the moment that he was launching was a website called the Daily Caller."
"It was going to be his conservative answer to 'The New York Times.' "
"The kind of project here tried to soft launch at CPAC a year prior lure."
"Spoiler alert," warned Hayes, "it didn't work."
In retrospect, Hayes added that Carlson's CPAC speech was "a harbinger of things to come."
Hayes suggested Carlson "learned where the money was" in regard to "how little appetite there was" for fact-based news reporting and acted accordingly to adapt to audience demand.
Hayes added that Carlson and his Fox cohorts knew more than anything the fact that the audience was "where the bread is buttered."
"You can't run a profitable business selling accurate reporting to the right-wing base."
Which brings us to Tucker Carlson 2.0–a misogynistic conspiracy theorist who presented manipulated footage discrediting the Capitol riot ever happened, and a vocal MAGA cheerleader who in secret talked smack behind Trump's back according to private text messages that were revealed in documents as part of Dominion's defamation case.