REBOOT - Tucker Carlson’s Dad Lobbies for Orbán
And other ties to Russia
Author’s note: In light of today’s news breaker that Kremlin fanboy Tucker Carlson has been ousted from Fox, I am rebooting this Bette report from March 7, 2023.
I often try to figure out how people became who and what they are. I look at someone like John Lewis and think, his parents must have been such good people. Sure enough, he was raised by sharecroppers, who married a year after they met, had ten children, and inspired John to make good trouble.
So when examining the Republican Party’s Enforcer and Chief, Tucker Carlson, I decided it was time to take a look at his father - to see what kind of man could raise such a monster.
Well, once I got over the shock that I used to share a cubicle with one of Dick Carlson’s former reporting partners - yeah, that happened - I noticed that Tucker Carlson’s dad lobbies for Viktor Orbán.
I could just end this report here…
But I felt important to keep going.
Tucker Carlson’s dad, 82-year-old Richard Carlson, is the director of a Washington-based firm that lobbied for Orbán in the United States, according to the firm’s website.
Orbán, you might recall, is Hungary’s authoritarian leader, whose anti-human rights actions are being modeled by the Republican party.
You might also recall, Tucker Carlson broadcast his show from Hungary in 2021, in advance of attending an extremist conference in Budapest.
The bottom line - Tucker met with Orbán after a firm where his father is a director received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Hungarian Government to help reputation wash the Orbán regime.
As my investigative writing colleague Sian Norris reported for Byline Times:
Carlson met Prime Minister Viktor Orbán during his trip, two years after the Hungarian Government paid $265,000 to Policy Impact Strategic Communications Inc (sometimes known as Policy Impact Communications or Policy Impact) to “provide outreach to the U.S. Government and media on behalf of the Embassy of Hungary in support of its ongoing objectives to improve US-Hungarian relations, by coordinating, facilitating, and managing Government affairs, activities and media management.”
The deal included co-ordinating an interview with Peter Szijjártó, Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, on the Tucker Carlson show.
Carlson’s father, former US Ambassador to the Seychelles Richard Carlson, is a Director of the Washington D.C-based lobbying firm. Senior advisor William Cowen also has links to Fox News.
Tucker Carlson, who is currently creating unreality around January 6 to cover for knowingly promoting 2020 election lies, according to Dominion Voting System’s court filings, went to Hungary to promote fascist propaganda and his father, Dick, is a director of a lobbying group that promotes Orbán.
Okay, got it.
Sian also wrote:
This is not the first time Carlson has shown his support to Orbán and his Fidesz Party.
In 2019 – the same year the deal was struck between his father’s business and the Hungarian Embassy – Carlson delivered a monologue on his Fox News show praising Orban’s family protection programme.
Norris explained that the programme seeks to incentivise women to have more “ethnic Hungarian children”, awarding women a loan on marriage that is written off should she have three children or more with her husband.
In his monologue, Carlson explained that Hungary had lost “half a million of its population” due to low birth rates and that the “neoliberals” who “run the European Union” believed the country could fix that problem by importing a “replacement population from the third world”.
In essence, he was doing extremist racist propaganda, Great Replacement, on primetime.
Please read Sian’s full report here.
And for a refresher on why Tucker Carlson is lying through his teeth to get viewers to believe unreality about the Insurrection, please refer to my latest report in Byline Supplement, which offers a comprehensive view of the damage Fox does.
In addition, my series on the scandals unfolding at Fox can be read here.
Lastly, I always found it curious that Carlson’s partner in the extremist rag, the Daily Caller, which he co-founded, was a former Dick Cheney aide named Neil Patel. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported in 2017 that the Daily Caller has “a white nationalist problem” - and received funding from the Koch cadre.
It seemed worth noting that Patel has a disgraced hedge fund partner Paul Konigsberg - who pleaded guilty to falsifying books and records for Bernie Madoff - but was spared prison time. What a relief, because he could then visit his family in Russia.
A CBS report from 2015 noted:
The leniency shown Paul Konigsberg, 79, means he can visit two of his grandchildren in Moscow as soon as he gets a new passport.
Because of course.
****
Bette Dangerous is a reader-funded magazine. Thank you to all monthly, annual, and founding members. Thank you as well to all those who support my work with your generous coffee tips and who buy my ebooks.
More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
Save the date! The next Bette Dangerous ‘Speakeasy’ Zoom for paid members is Sunday, May 7, 4 pm PT. We invite special guests in the fight for truth and democracy, and it’s an amazing hour. If you are not yet a paid subscriber, please consider joining. You’ll receive invites, access to all archives, and comments.