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Political Junkie PodcastNews you can use about politics, culture, and media Author: Claire Potter and Neil J. Young
Where contemporary history and politics meet the challenge of today. clairepotter.substack.com Language: en Genres: News, Politics, Society & Culture Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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The Education of Tucker Carlson
Episode 10
Sunday, 1 March, 2026
Thank you Theresa Smalec, John Stoehr, and many others for tuning into my live video with Ryan James Girdusky! At the end of last week, I had a chance to do a Substack live with Ryan Girdusky, a conservative political junkie who has many balls in the air at any given time. Ryan’s book with Harlan Hill, They’re Not Listening: How the Elites Created the National Populist Revolution (Bombardier Books, 2020) was one of the first to explain to a mass audience how and why national populist movements, from MAGA to Orbán, swept North America and Europe. His Substack, the National Populist Newsletter, tracks this phenomenon from a conservative perspective, including important data and sources, whether you are a reader on the left or the right. If you are a podcast fan, try It’s A Numbers Game, where Ryan breaks down politics according to how he understands the data.From left to right: Representative Marjorie Taylor Green (R, GA-14), Tucker Carlson, President Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Eric Trump on July 31, 2022, at the LIV golf Tournament, Trump National Golf Club, Bedminster,NJ. Photo credit: L.E.MORMILE/ShutterstockTogether, we talked about Jason Zengerle’s new book, Hated By All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind (Crooked Media Reads,2026). A biographical study of Carlson, who rose to national fame as a Fox News pundit in parallel to Donald Trump’s emergence as a presidential candidate, it’s an excellent survey of the interconnections between radio, television, internet publishing as cable TV pushed Americans to extremes—and conservative journalism profited from their relationships to Donald Trump.Short takes:* You know by now that Ayatollah Khamenei was killed by an Israeli missile on the first day of Donald Trump’s attack on Iran. He was a pivotal figure in the calcification of Iran’s brutal totalitarianism, policy analyst Karim Sadjadpour writes at the New York Times. For almost 40 years, “this seemingly unqualified cleric who rose to the top almost by chance would become one of the world’s longest-serving autocrats, confounding every American president since George H.W. Bush,” Sadjadpour writes. “He would at one point become the most powerful man in the Middle East, dominating five failing lands — Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Gaza. This ambition and hubris also eventually led to his downfall. He came to govern with the hypervigilance and brutality of a man driven by the idea that much of his own society and the world’s greatest superpower sought to unseat him — which, in the end, it did.” (February 28, 2026)* Did Representative Jasmine Crockett (TX-30), on track to win the Democratic Senate primary in the Lone Star State, have Atlantic reporter Elaine Godfrey removed from her Lubbock rally last week? Crockett says no, Godfrey says yes. “After Crockett finished speaking, I attempted to join a closed-door press scrum with the congresswoman that was open to the other reporters at the rally,” Godfrey writes. “But I was turned away, so I walked over to interview people in the crowd. That’s when I heard my name from the same woman with the badge at the entrance—and hit ‘Record’ on my iPhone. She asked me to leave, and armed security guards escorted me from the property.” You can listen to the audio if you click the link: the Crockett campaign has yet to issue a full statement on what happened. (February 27, 2026)* Mary Walsh, a producer and 46-year veteran at CBS News, has left the building. Saying that the newsroom has been “told to aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum,” she explained; “I don’t know how to do that.” Jeremy Barr at The Guardian broke the story, reporting that “On a staff-wide editorial call on Friday morning, Walsh received a glowing tribute from the CBS News president, Tom Cibrowski, as did another departing veteran producer, Kate Rydell, according to a staffer who participated. The two producers also received an emotional sendoff at the network’s Washington bureau on Thursday.” The CBS News division is now helmed by conservative Bari Weiss, and numerous unnamed sources claim to fear for their jobs if they do not bend the news to her viewpoint. (February 27, 2026) Get full access to Political Junkie at clairepotter.substack.com/subscribe
