Tucker Carlson, King of the Isolationists

"Israel is allowed to fight, but they are only allowed to fight to a tie."

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Eli Lake, The Remnant’s resident bloodthirsty war hawk, returns to the pod to break down the situation with Israel and Iran. The two get into why America has no strategic vision on Iran, the growing alliance of left- and right-wing isolationists, and how Tucker Carlson has become so unhinged.

Show Notes:
—Eli’s profile at The Free Press
—Eli’s piece on Tucker Carlson and Russia
—Eli’s piece on the FBI
—The Remnant with Nancy French

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Comments (71)
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  1. Dancrist13

    Lake says that Tucker has always had a libertarian streak, and cites support for Ron Paul in 2008. Tucker's entire schtick for about the last decade has been very anti-libertarian. You could cite his support for Ron Paul as part of a contrarian streak.

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    1. Stcyrn1

      So, Jonah and Eli are wrong?

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      1. Dancrist13

        Eli is wrong. As noted, he's the one who said it. Jonah often does not challenge his guests on such points, and a history of Jonah's writing would suggest that there were multiple points during the Tucker dialogue on which he would disagree but did not address them.

        On the Tucker/libertarian point, Jonah made fun of Tucker attacking libertarians in what I believe was his first Dispatch G-File. You could say that Tucker has a long anti-libertarian streak by now.
        https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/gfile/welcome-to-the-pirate-skiff-19-06-07/

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  2. Russell J

    I like Eli. The place where he claims Tucker went off the rails after getting fired is pretty wild. That wasn’t several years earlier? It’s like I could hear the grinding of reality against the pull of his tribe and still he’s searching for some reasonable explanation other than Tucker is a menace. No Tucker wasn’t asking good questions, he was taking half-truths or extreme examples in far-away cities to plant and water the seeds of fear and hate. He is much less harmful without his nightly megaphone.

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    Ben Connelly

    Man, that bit on Tucker and Pat Buchanan becoming caricatures of themselves was very illuminating! It gets at something I’ve been thinking about a lot, which is the performative nature of public life and the danger any public figure (or even anyone who is on social media) has of becoming a caricature of him or herself because attention is corrupting and it’s hard to resist that temptation.

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  4. IHFraser

    The narrative that Reagan's missile defence program is what "broke" the Soviet economy is a myth--one much beloved by neo-con taking heads, but a myth nonetheless. No serious scholar who has studied the Soviet Union in this period (Western or Russian) thinks the argument is tenable. Apart from anything else, the trajectory of Soviet defense spending was fairly constant throughout the Brezhnev & Reagan years. There never was a "Star Wars" bump. Alan P. Dobson's work is the best place to start on the Western literature debunking this much-loved fallacy.

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    1. R. James

      Leftist myth.

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      Ben Connelly

      Yes. Communism failed when it was initially implemented by Lenin in the 1910s/20s. Through stubbornness and a willingness to murder hundreds of millions of people, the Soviet Union managed to hang on and keep trying for several more decades. But it was doomed to fail anyway and the USSR would have collapsed even if Reagan hadn’t boosted US defense spending.

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    Pgrossjr47

    Love Eli Lake, listened to his Re-Education podcast faithfully. I note some have disagreements with him. The reason I subscribe to The Dispatch to hear people's honest opinion. If I find myself agreeing with everything that falls out of someone's mouth, I find someone else to listen to. To paraphrase something Karl Popper said, knowledge advances through disagreement, not consensus.
    The closing comments on Biden coming down like a ton of bricks on our allies instead of our enemies just shows that Biden is like the guy who gets pushed around at work, then comes home and kicks the dog.

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  6. Sdpurdy

    I’m sorry but, “Don Lemon pushed me into the arms of Tucker Carlson” is lame. I guess we’re just lucky he wasn’t watching Rachel Maddow or we’d have never seen him again.

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    1. Christopher Lake

      Why engage in a caricature of what Eli actually said in this podcast? Both Eli and Jonah were very critical (and very rightly so) of Tucker here. Eli never said that he was "pushed into the arms" of Tucker Carlson, or anything close to it, in this discussion, as evidenced by the fact that Eli is very critical (again, rightly) of Tucker here, *and* as evidenced by the fact that Eli is somewhat embarrassed, publicly, here, that he even had a period, a few years ago, of watching Tucker's show on Fox. Moreover, Eli never gave any indication, in this podcast, that he ever agreed with, or bought into, *everything*, or even most of, what Tucker said on his Fox show. Ultimately, it is your caricature of Eli that is lame here, not anything that he said in this podcast. He publicly spoke about his genuine regret and embarrassment at having been drawn into listening to Tucker's show, for a certain period of time in his life. He publicly admitted to this, with humility, when he did not *have* to say anything about ever listening to Tucker at all. For Eli's humble public admission, you took that opportunity to take a needless shot at him. That is not only lame, but genuinely sad. (To be clear, I am not related, in any way, to Eli Lake.)

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      1. Sdpurdy

        You've mischaracterized my comment. I never said he said those words or that he agreed with everything Tucker said. That's my paraphrase of what he said and I think it's fair. He said, pretty clearly, that the radical ideas of those on the left made him more receptive and sympathetic to the radical ideas on the populist right. And while I commend him for admitting that, I still think it's akin to "the Devil made me do it," which I find an insufficient justification.

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        1. Christopher Lake

          When you refer to Eli as having been made "more receptive and sympathetic to the radical ideas on the populist right," that kind of sweeping claim makes it sound as though he was buying into conspiracy theories and other radical nonsense which Tucker has spread. However, Eli specifically stated that he was drawn into watching Tucker's show on Fox, for a certain period of time, because on certain subjects, Tucker was accurately covering *things which were actually happening at the time* which mainstream news outlets were either not covering at all, or were covering in a notably biased and dismissive way. Eli never mentioned buying into the *more radical, populist* parts of Tucker's show when he was on Fox.

          For myself, I was not a Tucker fan, at all, during his Fox years, and I *really* can't stand him, now, in his post-Fox years, but even I have to admit that, at times, here and there, Tucker *did* cover certain things on his Fox show, things which were actually happening, more accurately than most mainstream news sources at the time. Again, I was not, and am not, a Tucker fan at all, but he hasn't *always* been wrong, for all of his career, on everything. Even a broken clock, etc. Eli gave no indication, in this discussion here, that he ever bought into any of Tucker's actual radical-right populism.

          Politically speaking, if you know anything about Eli and his career over many years, he has long been scorned by the radical populist right, where he is viewed as a "neo-con warmonger." So-called "neo-conservatism," such as Jonah's and Eli's, is strongly disliked, to say the least, on the radical populist right. The fact that Eli ever listened to *anything* that Tucker said, on any subject, on his Fox show, is striking, because in many ways, Tucker and other rightist-populists see thinkers such as Eli as being their *ideological enemies* on the right. Rightist populists (Trump, Tucker, and others) actually oppose The Dispatch's so-called "neo-conservatism" *almost* as much, and even more, at times, on certain subjects, than they oppose most radical leftism.

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          1. Russell J

            I like Eli in most cases with some small gripes about the weight he puts on certain things. The troubling part is that he seemed very blind to what Tucker was doing, slowly feeding lies that viewers wanted to hear so they could focus blame on individuals. A talented liar is going to mix truths or half truths to build credibility and trust so that the biggest lies won’t be questioned. It sounded like someone who is pretty smart was even susceptible which might explain some of the strange silence as folks watch their country and movement get torched by guys who were once their friends.

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  7. Dscott

    Generally enjoyed the podcast, with a few minor disagreements with Eli (and Jonah). But one thing stuck out to me: I don't consider the undeniable success of the missile defense systems in Israel a vindication of Reagan's SDI initiative from the early 80s. The US *still* doesn't have what Reagan promised -- to make ICBMs obsolete. And we're 40 years after his declaration. I'm certainly glad that we started and continued research, but Reagan's critics were right: the technology was decades away from reality.

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      Retired Prosecutor

      Were his critics correct? They said it was impossible to hit a bullet with a bullet. Yes, a space based system has not yet been developed, but research into it led to developing the missile based systems we now absolutely depend upon. Mondale, Kerry, and Biden all criticized any research into this technology and their judgment in history won't be kind.

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      1. Dscott

        The missile defense systems the US have now are very limited -- they probably (hopefully?) could knock out a few ICBMs lobbed from North Korea or Iran, but would be useless against a larger attack by Russia or China. I'm not sure what you mean when you say we "absolutely depend" on missile based systems. The Israeli systems depend on the Iron Dome, and we have Patriot batteries defending some of our troops, but they work because they have so little area to defend.

        We are still decades away from the kind of system that met Reagan's goal: to make strategic nukes obsolete. Reagan's defense build-up (and, to a small degree, SDI) bankrupted the Soviet Union and he deserves much credit. Many Dems back then opposed that level of defense spending on the basis that it would cause an arms race -- which it did, until we won the race. Those Dems were ultimately wrong. I will take your word that Mondale/Kerry/Biden et al were against all SDI research back then. At least Biden now supports defense funding for next-gen missile interceptors and overall missile defense research. But my original point still holds: 40 yrs after Reagan started SDI, we are at least another 40 yrs away from deploying anything resembling his vision, whether ground- or space-based. Sure, Reagan provided the initial funding. But if you are looking for someone to "credit" for the concept of SDI, that should go to George Lucas, because his movie was reportedly what inspired Reagan.

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        1. Russell J

          You are correct in that the discussion gets simplified, perhaps because it is a dense subject. Reagan’s idea was more focused on space based and energy weapons if I recall. The folks who are more deserving of scorn are the supposed “experts” who claim to prove Patriot and other systems are ineffective when the programs take great care to prevent such people from having any pertinent details. In my town groups occasionally stage missile defense protests outside the main gate to the local base. Personally, I think DoD released a couple of details to signal a new capability to the near peer forces if the intercepts actually happened outside the atmosphere.

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  8. Thartmann85

    Feeling very ambivalent--I want to join Jonah in giving kudos to Lake for owning up to listening to Tucker sympathetically until he left Fox--we all make mistakes and have blind spots, and I'm sure mine are more egregious than Lake's. On the other hand, though, oof, Eli! Tucker was transparently a shameless, cynical, populist white minstrel [thanks KDW] all throughout the MAGA era.

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  9. Steffent01850

    Mr Lake, I think the words you couldn't say are, "This is what happens, Larry, when you find a stranger in the Alps."

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  10. Jolcombs

    Great episode. Love Eli’s podcasts and articles. His Re-Education podcast is a great listen.

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