She then rejected him and his brother after their TV journalist father filed for divorce and successfully sued for full custody, claiming she was an unfit mother. That’s because, Carlson said, his “nut case” mother initially raised him and his younger brother in a “bizarre,” early ‘70s counterculture milieu of drug use, partying and lax supervision. “I bitterly hated her,” Carlson said in a 2019 podcast interview with right-leaning comedian Adam Carolla. In interviews over the past few years, Carlson has suggested that he developed his extremely thick skin for cable news success because of his mother - or rather, because of the terrible thing his mother, former San Francisco socialite-turned-artist Lisa McNear Lombardi, did to him as a 6-year-old.

Capitol to keep Donald Trump in office.” The more Carlson doubled-down at Fox, the more his millions of nightly viewers embraced him as an “aggrieved” partner in their perceived “victimhood,” the Times said. Before Tucker Carlson’s shocking ouster from Fox News Monday, observers sometimes said he owed his massive success on the network and in America’s extreme right-wing circles to his unique ability to be shamelessly provocative.Ī 2022 New York Times profile of Carlson described his on-air technique as “gleefully courting blowback” for touting racist, white nationalist views or for being one of the “most visible and voluble defenders of those who violently stormed the U.S.

Peter swanson before she knew him