And the Anti-Israel Gold Rush

I have never been a Tucker Carlson fan. But for years he was one of Donald Trump’s biggest cheerleaders in American media. Then came October 7th, then the Iran war, and everything changed. These days most of his energy goes into arguing that American foreign policy serves Israel instead of the United States, that Trump sucks, and that America sucks. And even allowing for everything Trump did, you still have to wonder about a turn that sharp. That’s the part I find interesting. And the more I looked at it, the more I realized it’s not just about him.

Carlson is now one of the biggest independent political broadcasters on earth. His show sits near the top of the American podcast charts, but here’s the part you need to pay attention to. It has also been ranking number one in Apple’s News Commentary category in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia. All Muslim countries.

And Carlson doesn’t only sell opinions. He co-owns ALP, the nicotine pouch company attached to his name, and ALP is going global. Reuters reported it launched in eleven European markets this summer, aiming to be the second-biggest pouch brand in the EU by 2030. And there are 40 to 50 million Muslims in Europe alone.

So sure, let’s speculate. There are about two billion Muslims in the world. Carlson’s podcast is charting at the top in Muslim-majority countries while his commentary gets harder on Israel every day. And the harder he goes, the more of those two billion people he reaches. Could that audience eventually be a market for pouches, subscriptions, books and whatever else the man decides to sell? Of course it could.

And before anybody decides this is a right-wing problem, it isn’t. The same thing is happening on the left. The Young Turks with Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, Mehdi Hasan over at Zeteo and plenty of others are pounding Israel every single day, over and over, mercilessly, like it’s the only thing in the world, and you can bet they’re watching the same numbers climb. Carlson isn’t alone on his own side either. Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly are doing the same thing, day after day. As recently as January, Kelly was strongly supportive of Israel and sharply critical of Islam in the West. Now she’s running the same relentless anti-Israel line as everybody else. She even went on the air and asked out loud whether she’d been manipulated all along. The simplest explanation is that they’ve stopped worrying about ratings in America and started going after market share among two billion Muslims.

Now, I can’t see inside anybody’s head, and I can’t prove that’s what’s driving it. But the incentive is sitting right there, and people respond to incentives. They always have. So here’s what I think is actually going on. Maybe the story isn’t Tucker Carlson at all. Maybe it’s just greed.

For most of American media history, an American political commentator needed Americans. Walter Cronkite needed American viewers, Rush Limbaugh needed American listeners, Fox and CNN and MSNBC needed American cable subscribers and American advertisers. Their money and their country were tied together, and nobody ever had to think about it, because there was no other option.

That’s over!!!!!

Today a guy in a studio can press a button and reach Jakarta, Cairo, Riyadh, London and Lagos instantly. Those listeners watch the ads, drive the numbers, share the clips and buy the products, exactly like Americans do. And capitalism does what capitalism always does. It follows the customer. The difference is that the customer no longer has to be American.

Picture it. You spend an hour on some dull American policy issue and get 50,000 views. The next day you spend an hour pounding on Israel and American foreign policy and get five million, because it lands here and then explodes everywhere else. And some of those new people subscribe, and start buying whatever you’re selling. Capitalism doesn’t require a conspiracy. It only requires a customer.

And listen, I don’t think this is treason. Let’s be clear about that. In this country we have an enormously broad right to criticize our own government, and that right has to cover arguments other Americans find offensive, or even anti-American. Even saying inflammatory things on purpose because foreigners will pay attention isn’t a crime. It’s the First Amendment doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. I don’t like it, and I don’t think it’s going to fare well for us down the road, but it isn’t a legal problem. At least not yet. It’s an economic problem and a cultural one, and I’d argue that’s a bigger deal than we can even imagine.

Here’s the part that worries me.

How will Americans respond to this? Will it create a division so deep that we can’t come back from it? It might. Will our government step in and make it illegal before we get to that point? They don’t have a great history of getting things done. So are we doomed? Or is there an optimistic view somewhere in here, and if there is, what could it possibly be? What happens to American political thought when the free market figures out that influencing Americans can be paid for by entertaining the rest of the world?

Well, is it possible outrage isn’t the only thing that sells? Is there another market out there? Forty-five percent of Americans now call themselves independents, the highest number Gallup has ever recorded. A research outfit called More in Common did a big study and found that two-thirds of Americans belong to what they called the exhausted majority. People who are sick of the fighting, flexible in what they believe, and almost never heard from. That is the biggest unserved audience in American politics.

And here’s the part that got my attention. They ran the same kind of research in Britain, France and Germany and found the same thing. Quiet, worn-out majorities who don’t recognize themselves in any of the shouting. I have to imagine the same is true in most countries around the world. That is quite the untapped market. Imagine if somebody could find it. I just hope it doesn’t take a major catastrophe to make that happen. But understand, the middle isn’t just an American thing. Hopefully it’s everywhere. Most people in most countries want to pay their bills, raise their kids and not get screamed at, and all of them are stuck watching a handful of loud people pretend to speak for them.

Which means maybe it can work both ways. If a guy in a studio can reach two billion people by getting angrier every day, then maybe the exhausted two-thirds in twenty countries can be reached too. Nobody has really tried. That’s the whole opportunity.

Anybody got any ideas?