Thread by @TheRickWilson

1/ A few quick thoughts about Tucker.

First, and most deliciously, is the seething, furious meltdown on the right, alt-right, and loon-right. On the right, Tucker's wealth, origins, and prep-school presentation always helped launder the uglier stuff and dumb-down complex...

2/ ...issues for the demo. (Boomer, older GenX non-hs grads who comprise the core of the base). On the alt-right, Bannon's stompy-foot pissy-fit about Tucker and Fox tells you he lost the single best venue for laundering white nationalist...

3/ ...agitprop into the normies cable boxes. His "I'm just telling you why the Soros-funded brown people are trying to rape your women and take your job by cucking you" schtick was normative and essential for Bannon et al on the alt-reich.

4/ The white nats loved Tucker, whom they called "Our guy" and correctly saw him as a gateway drug for their more virulent and obvious messages. For normies, Tucker could wink and nod about it, but the white-robe crowd filled their hate spank banks with Tucker clips.

5/ For the loons, there was nothing he couldn't amp up. Election fraud, vaccine denial, Soros, and every other nutbird conspiracy was laundered into the "THEY are hiding the SECRET TRUTH from you"...and it validated the crazies in the same way as the white nats.

6/ The shock of this will ripple through the enormous right-wing media ecosystem for ages to come. He was the big goal for MAGA activists: the Tucker Hit.

Consider this: Ron DeSantis predicated his entire campaign on winning the "Tucker Primary."

7/ Many people on the right have adopted a position that may be wishcasting; "Tucker will be back on a new streaming channel tomorrow and you'll rue the day, libtards!"

Maybe not. Fox probably has a pretty stiff noncompete in his contract, so I wouldn't count...

8/ ...on the Tucker Carlson White Power Hour on the Blaze or Daily Wire any time soon. TBD, of course, but Fox will leak those details soon enough to chill the waters.

Which leads us to a fascinating prospect...

9/ What if he runs? He's rich enough. He'd instantly have an online fundraising juggernaut second only to Trump, and perhaps surpassing him. He's polarizing, terrible, and utterly amoral...in short, better than Ron DeSantis for the base.

I'd argue he's the only Republican...

10/ ...who presents a material danger to Donald Trump in a primary.

Celebrity, money, mental acuity, cynicism, pro-Putin isolationism, and an overt love of authoritarianism are a pretty strong secret sauce for the MAGA base.

Celebrity got Trump the WH.

11/ It could certainly do the same for Tucker. And spare me your "That could never happen. Even Trump's GOP would never vote for a former TV host pushing white replacement theory."

That's PRECISELY who they'd vote for.

12/ This iteration of "A Face In the Crowd" doesn't end with a revelation of the real character of the showman-as-politician. This one ends with Tucker running and possibly winning a herrenvolk campaign, where his flaws don't matter, only his capacity for hate.

End.