It’s well known that Donald Trump consumes television broadcasts and often makes policy based more on Fox News punditry than advice from political or government advisors. So it’s unsurprising that one of his most influential advisers, Tucker Carlson, has never held a political or government appointment.

Of course, Carlson, an early sceptic about the Iraq War, last week called the attack on Iran “absolutely disgusting and evil”. Trump responded by saying “Tucker has lost his way” and “he’s not MAGA”.

While this may signal the end of his hold over Trump, they’ve weathered disagreements before – as when Carlson attacked last year’s strikes on Iran, as well as consistently pressing Trump over the Epstein files.

Review: Hated By All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the unravelling of the conservative mind – Jason Zengerle (Scribe)

But if Carlson’s ruptures with Trump widen, some observers told the author of a new book, “he could then portray himself to a disillusioned MAGA base as the true leader of their movement – and run for president himself in 2028”.

The great mystery of Tucker Carlson is how a once-serious journalist, whose writing for the likes of New York magazine and Esquire was admired, wandered into the crazy world of the American far right and came to dominate it.

In his book, Hated By All the Right People, Jason Zengerle (a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine) traces Carlson’s evolution over past 30 years. It is, he writes, the story of what has happened to the United States in that period.

Carlson was born in 1969 to a prominent conservative father and a bohemian heiress mother: they divorced before his eighth birthday and Carlson’s father got sole custody. His mother lived mostly abroad. “I don’t know this person,” Carlson reported feeling as she was dying. She left him a dollar in her will.

He failed to graduate from college, where, Zengerle writes, he was an “abysmal student”, but charmed his way into a succession of small conservative media outlets, and a few national magazines. By the turn of the century, he discovered the lure of television and went through a series of attempts to break into mainstream broadcasting.

First CNN, where Jon Stewart essentially ended Carlson’s contract and his show by savaging it, at length, while appearing as a guest. Then PBS, and MSNBC – where Carlson picked liberal........

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