The left needs a Joe Rogan – why not Tucker?

For months, the conversation on the American left has revolved around that thorny question: where can we find our own Joe Rogan? This week, there’s suddenly a compelling possibility to consider – that the answer was in front of them all along, giggling right in their faces: the answer for the left’s Joe Rogan could be none other than Tucker Carlson.

Why not? He’s got the popularity, the skill and the value of a traitor to his class. What podcaster has done more to elevate critics of President Trump’s second term foreign-policy agenda than Carlson, who has already become the place ex-admin officials run to for their post-firing spin? He’s featured one guest after another claiming that Trump’s foreign policy is too beholden to Israel, openly calling the president “complicit” in Israel’s strikes and claiming support for Israel against Iran could “end Trump’s presidency” and the “American empire.” 

What put Carlson over the top this week was his interview with Ted Cruz, which turned into an openly obnoxious feud as the two Gen Xers traded insults, Carlson lobbed gotcha questions, and (feigned?) ignorance of Iran’s interest in assassinating President Trump. The virality of the interview speaks to Carlson’s skill, considering that it generated no actual news, but was just a video of two men in repp ties who used to be friendly and now publicly clearly despise each other trading blows for two hours to the tune of nearly 8 million views. Who on the left could get that kind of attention for anything?

The plaudits came rolling in from the left. Jon Stewart, the man single-handedly credited with leading to the cancelation of Crossfire back in the long, long ago, emerged to sing Tucker’s praises to Christiane Amanpour and Ben Rhodes.

“We’re in such a bizarro world, you’ve got me nodding my head to Tucker Carlson videos,” Stewart said. “You got Tucker Carlson going, ‘Why are we going why are we going to war with Iran again?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, you tell him, brother!’ Like, that’s how fucking upside down we find ourselves in this moment.”

Along with Stewart, Richard Hall of the Independent welcomed Carlson to “the resistance” and described his interviewing capability as fueled by a particular brew of lifelong inside knowledge of the neocon pro-war right, noted the litany of leftists complimenting his performance:

Stewart wasn’t alone in backing Carlson, with support from Democrat Congressman Ro Khanna, former Obama staffer Tommy Vietor, liberal commentator Mehdi Hasan and even leftist streamer Hasan Piker, who tweeted: “why is tucker carlson capable of conducting an adversarial interview about the dangers of american intervention in iran with ted cruz better than everyone else in legacy media? Shame.”

Maybe the clue to all this was when Carlson identified William F. Buckley Jr. as one of the “great villains of the 20th century” during an interview with Dave Smith, a regular guest on Tucker’s podcast who has now called for Trump to be impeached and removed from office. As Chesterton reminded us, “Diogenes looked for his honest man inside every crypt and cavern; but he never thought of looking inside the thief.” Maybe the left’s Joe Rogan was just waiting there all along, shrouded in a Brooks Brothers disguise.