One day last year, on the truck ride home from a quail-hunting excursion, Tucker Carlson had a revelatory experience of radical empathy. “We were talking about someone I despise,” the former Fox News host recounted on Wednesday night to Megyn Kelly, a friend who had traveled a parallel career arc in leaving the network under acrimonious circumstances. Suddenly, Carlson said, “I could understand why this person was doing these horrible things.”
After he went to sleep that night, Carlson woke up startled at 2:30 a.m. “I go into the bathroom,” he said, “I flip on the light, and I have claw marks on both sides, on right and left side, on my ribs.” The marks didn’t match his own fingers. He began reading the Bible and, upon waking again, concluded after consultation with his wife and one of his podcast producers that he had been attacked by a demon.
Carlson and Kelly were sitting, him in his standard preppy fare and her in a red pantsuit, in front of a full house at the 5,000-capacity Westchester County Center in White Plains, New York, for the latest stop on Kelly’s live podcast tour. The story drew little reaction from a generally engaged crowd that was dotted with blowouts and leopard print—all told, a restrained vision of MAGA—and young men in blue blazers handing out discount codes for her merch.
Carlson had relayed the tale before on his own podcast, and as he and Kelly have struck out on their own in their post-cable careers, their audiences have become accustomed to a more untethered sensibility. In recent months, between his fishing and hunting trips, Carlson has used his Maine barn of a studio to discuss finding a wife in the age of OnlyFans with an early Love Island participant. During another recording, the suspicious tone he took in a conversation about the death of an OpenAI whistleblower prompted a visibly perplexed Sam Altman to wonder aloud whether he was being accused of wrongdoing. (“I think that it is worth looking into,” Carlson said while maintaining, “I’m not accusing you at all.”)
“He’s back and he is bigger than ever,” Kelly said as she introduced her guest for the evening.
Mindy and Jim Berard, a Pleasantville, New York, couple roaming the deco stylings of the arena, were less sure about Carlson’s new approach. “We love Megyn Kelly,” Mindy said. “We love the movement.” They thought the show might provide a balm in the aftermath of Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor the night before, which she described as “very disturbing.”
