Tucker Carlson fought the groypers, and the groypers won
Tucker Carlson is losing his handle on a key audience for Republican pundits: the angry, racist young men who call themselves “groypers” in honor of an obese version of the Pepe the Frog meme.
Carlson’s trouble started last week, when popular podcaster Candace Owens went on his show. In addition to discussing Brigitte Macron’s lawsuit against Owens, the two bonded over shit-talking a mutual foe: white nationalist podcaster and groyper chieftain Nick Fuentes.
Owens has her own beef with Fuentes. A July chat between the two went off the rails after she urged him to get married and have kids. Fuentes responded, essentially, by saying that as a woman, Owens had no place to tell him what to do.
Carlson used Owens’s clash with Fuentes to jump to his own theory: that Fuentes is an agent for some sort of sinister—presumably federal—psychological operation or “psyop” to discredit real right-wing, anti-war voices like him and Owens.
“I have noticed that his targets are all people that are sincere, non-crazy, not hateful opponents of neocon politics,” Carlson added. “So you have to kind of wonder about that.”
Carlson went on to raise questions about who is funding Fuentes and the groypers. And, for good measure, he called Fuentes a “weird little gay kid in his basement.”
That gay kid remark in particular set off a furor on the right that hasn’t gone well for Carlson, who came in for an online beating.