Tucker Carlson's Interview With Conor McGregor

Pugilist Pummels Reality

There’s nothing quite like watching a man who made his fortune getting punched in the head try his hand at political commentary on Good Friday, Conor McGregor—the UFC’s most famous export since cauliflower ear—sat down with Tucker Carlson, a man whose relationship with facts is more suspect than McGregor’s pre-fight training regimen.

What followed was an hour of rambling political grievances, conspiracy-laden doom-mongering, xenophobic dog whistles and the kind of nationalist fervour usually reserved for drunk uncles singing IRA songs at a West Cork wedding. McGregor, dressed like a cross between a character from The Quiet Man and a Dublin hipster who shops exclusively at vintage tweed warehouses. McGregor presented himself as the saviour of Ireland. His enemy? A shadowy cabal of globalists, traitorous politicians, a complicit media and—presumably—anyone who doesn’t own at least three flat caps and dresses like someone from Peaky Blinders.

McGregor’s flawed rhetoric was a greatest-hits compilation of far-right talking points. Ireland is being erased. By whom? Well, it’s never quite clear. The government? Definitely. The media? Obviously. Migrants? Absolutely.

“Legacy media will not push facts, they push agendas,” McGregor declared, a line Carlson eagerly nodded along to. Carlson, a man who once got fired from Fox News for being too unhinged even for Fox News. When McGregor lamented that running for president in Ireland requires actual political support, such as nominations from elected officials, Carlson gasped as if he’d just discovered that water is wet. “So how is it a democratic country?” he asked, apparently forgetting that the U.S.A requires candidates to raise a billion dollars and sell their soul to special interests to even get on the ballot paper.

Tucker likes to give a megaphone to the politically mad, bad and misguided. His role in this farce was that of a wide-eyed American tourist, marvelling at McGregors’ lamentations about the exotic backwardness of Ireland’s democratic system while ignoring the fact that his own country’s so-called democratic system is held together by duct tape and corporate donations. The hypocrisy is staggering. The U.S. presidential system is effectively a duopoly where any third-party candidate faces near-impossible ballot hurdles—yet Carlson pretended Ireland’s democracy was uniquely broken. Carlson also thinks Russia is a democracy, which is probably a good indicator of his level of intelligence and of anyone else he interviews about global geopolitics. Or Russia is paying him to say so.

The Ireland McGregor described bears little resemblance to reality. Ireland is not a perfect country, but it is a resilient, democratic nation. Its problems won’t be solved by conspiracy theories or celebrity demagogues. Yes, the country faces challenges—housing shortages, healthcare strains, political frustrations—and politicians who like to talk more than they act. Like every other liberal democracy.

McGregor is all about far-right talking points rather than policy papers. The problem with those kinds of people is that they can become President of the USA, luckily for us, not Presidents of whoever Tucker Carlson endorses in Europe.

McGregor’s performance wasn’t about solutions. It was about spectacle, that’s all he’s good for.