Hated by All the Right People

“[M]ordant, 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 somber fact-finding.” —Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

“The only time I met Tucker Carlson, in 2010, he told me: ‘You need to promote yourself more.’ Carlson’s lust for fame, money, and power led him into a cesspool of bigotry and lies. Because this story is also the tale of how a new elite is destroying all that’s valuable about America, Jason Zengerle’s gripping account is both a journalistic triumph and a public service.” —George Packer, National Book Award–winning author of The Unwinding and The Emergency

“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

“Jason Zengerle deftly chronicles Tucker Carlson’s ideological evolution from bow-tied libertarian into the MAGA media’s most influential voice. This nuanced biography tells the urgent story of the Republican Party’s capitulation to Donald Trump.” —Gabriel Sherman, New York Times bestselling author of The Loudest Voice in the Room

“When future historians seek to understand American politics and journalism in this period, they will turn to Hated by All the Right People. Jason Zengerle has brought us a vivid account of the Age of Trump—and the forces that brought about, and sustained, this era.” —Jonathan Martin, Politico columnist and coauthor of New York Times bestseller This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future

“Jason Zengerle’s superpower is figuring out who wields power and why—and then telling those stories with unforgettable prose that you can’t put down. Hated by All the Right People is arguably his best yet: a riveting, wry, disturbing portrait of the man who made the Trump Age possible.” —Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, & Tommy Vietor, Crooked Media Reads

“Jason Zengerle’s Hated by All the Right People is an incisive, deeply reported account of how, and why, Tucker Carlson transformed himself from establishment Washington’s bow-tied enfant terrible into Donald Trump’s far-right Rasputin—with profound effects on the nation’s politics and culture that we’re only beginning to grasp. Anyone hoping to understand America’s radical transformation in the age of Trump needs to read this valuable book.” —Joshua Green, author of Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising

“The Tucker Carlson who emerges from this narrative is by turns charming, funny, repulsive, and base. The fascinating and subtle character study of this twisted soul alone is enough to make Hated by All the Right People a rewarding read. But Jason Zengerle goes beyond that. He takes us into the worlds of elite magazine journalism and lowbrow television to tell the story of the conservative movement’s intellectual debasement, turning these institutions into a vehicle to show how the Republican Party became an instrument of populist authoritarianism in the Trump era. The result is a story that’s both highly enjoyable and deeply insightful.” —Jonathan Chait, staff writer, The Atlantic

“…[W]hat 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

“[S]mart, well-written, and well-reported . . . . the first [book] to reckon critically with probably the most interesting, important, compelling and arguably dangerous media personality of the Trump age. . . . Zengerle dissects Carlson’s media career with a shrewd scalpel.” —The Guardian

“The aptly named Hated by All the Right People is neither a hit piece nor a hagiography; it is a chronology of Carlson’s ascent and descent, drawing on interviews with those who knew or worked with him. It charts the transformation of a talented young writer into what Zengerle describes as a ‘noxious talking head’.” —UnHerd

“In many respects, the strength of Zengerle’s effort . . . is its restraint. In chronicling the rise of Carlson as a radical but influential voice, whose persuasive power comes in part from his mastery of demagogic oversimplification, Zengerle lets his reporting speak for itself, resisting the temptation to offer his readers easy answers where reality is complicated.” —The Dispatch