Hated by All the Right People

A revelatory, jaw-dropping portrait of Tucker Carlson's career and his history of reinvention, and a story of how the right-wing media lost its mind.

New York Magazine writer Jason Zengerle's eye-opening narrative follows Tucker Carlson's infamous journey from gifted young intern at The New Republic to a noxious talking head on Fox News, and then to his dethroning and defenestration.

In the tradition of Our Man and The Loudest Voice in the Room, Zengerle examines how Tucker Carlson's Zelig-like career offers a unique lens into the confusing, myopic, and utterly shameless evolution of American conservatism, its media presence and punditry, from the 1990s to the present.

'Mordant, insightful, vigorously reported and, yes, deliciously entertaining ... Hated by All the Right People is as much a work of media criticism as it is a professional biography of Carlson, and Zengerle chronicles how first television, then the internet started to reward extremes, privileging provocation and punditry over sombre fact-finding.'
-Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

'If you're looking for an answer to the question "How did we get here?" - from 1990s multiculturalism and free market globalism to ICE raids and Venezuela - you could do worse than using the arc of Tucker Carlson's career as your lens. And if you're looking for insight into the right-wing pundit's transformations, you'll definitely want to read Jason Zengerle's breezy, entertaining and ultimately disquieting Hated by All the Right People, a biography of Carlson that tracks his turn from bow-tied beau ideal of the Washington establishment into the MAGA conspiracy theorist in chief.'
-The New York Times Book Review

'What emerges from Zengerle's portrait is a kind of morality tale about the decline of political journalism and the rise of for-profit agitprop ... A richly detailed portrait of Tucker Carlson and the media trends that have shaped political commentary.'
-Kirkus Reviews