⁍ The conservative television star Tucker Carlson attracts more than 4.3 million viewers a night.
⁍ His Fox News program last month became the highest-rated show in the history of cable television.
⁍ The new scenario has Carlson shifting, as Trump did, from the television studio to the halls of official power.
⁍ If Trump loses re-election in November, some Republicans now openly speculate, Carlson could swoop in to pick up the pieces by running in 2024.
⁍ The sudden enthusiasm about Carlson as a candidate may betray a certain awareness on the right of lean political days ahead.

– Tucker Carlson has been called everything from a “white supremacist sympathizer” to a “racist fool.” But the Fox News host, whose show last month became the highest-rated in cable TV history, may now be considering a run for the White House. With President Trump’s popularity at an all-time high, some Republicans are openly speculating that Carlson could step into the Oval Office if Trump loses re-election in November, the Guardian reports. “The reality is that the Republican nomination is Tucker Carlson’s oyster,” says a Republican political consultant who advised Trump. “While voters may push away from Trump if he loses, it’s not that they didn’t like his agenda. They won’t like that he failed in implementing it and failed at getting re-elected.” Carlson’s show mixes news with heavy doses of commentary, and the host often draws viewers into fantasies about confrontations with liberal offenders that end with Carlson and viewers “laughing in their faces.” Carlson’s show was thrown into sudden crisis Friday night with the departure of his “top writer,” Blake Neff, on the back of a CNN report that Neff was behind a string of racist and sexist comments posted anonymously online in 2018. Fox News executives condemned Neff’s “horrific racist,