Strange Things About Fox News' Tucker Carlson We Just Can't Ignore

Controversial firebrand Tucker Carlson has always been outspoken about his strong political stances and hardliner right-wing values, to the degree that he even lost his job at Fox news, allegedly for being too conservative. He's picked fights and feuds with popular celebrities while at the same time welcomed authoritarian dictators from foreign countries to chat with him at his home — or traveled overseas to give them glowing press opportunities.

However, through it all, Carlson still has managed to cultivate an air of gravitas and professionalism. His dark blazers and cornflower blue button-down shirts with inoffensive striped ties have always given him the look of a consummate newsman. This has provided him a certain type of credibility and respect not afforded to some of the more unhinged conspiracy theorists spouting nonsense on the internet.

However, that doesn't mean Carlson is above passionately sharing some of his more outlandish ideas and beliefs. The same man who started his career as a fact-checker in the early 1990s — after graduating from Trinity College and getting rejected by the CIA — is the same man who claims to have been brutally mauled by a demon in his sleep and feels that Russia has secret files on supernatural Nazi officials. Try as he might to come across as a normal journalist, it's hard to ignore some of the stranger things about Carlson that he just keeps bringing up.

For all his mainstream fame, Tucker Carlson has some surprisingly fringe beliefs and not just when it comes to politics. As it turns out, Tucker is a firm believer in literal demons, and has had some close calls with demons in the past. In a preview clip of an interview for the documentary "Christianities?" that was released in November 2024, Tucker got candid about his encounter with a mysterious demonic entity "in my bed at night."

"I got attacked while I was asleep with my wife and four dogs and mauled, physically mauled," Carlson claimed in the interview. He claims he was attacked by something "unseen" that didn't even wake his wife or his dog, who were asleep in the same room with him. "I had these terrible pains on my rib cage and on my shoulder, and I was just in my boxer shorts and I went and flipped on the light in the bathroom, and I had four claw marks on either side underneath my arms and on my left shoulder. And they're bleeding."

His obsession with demons and demonic possession also came up during his controversial interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in February 2024. Carlson asked Putin about rumored secret soviet-era intel and files on the Nazi leader Rudolf Hess, who allegedly told his captors that he was possessed by demons. Putin did not seem interested in indulging Carlson with whatever secret information they may or may not have had on the matter.

It isn't just demons that Tucker Carlson thinks routinely interact with humans, but aliens as well. Carlson has come to believe strongly in UFO sightings and a deeply concealed government conspiracy about crashed extraterrestrial aircraft. On his post-Fox show, Carlson reported on a member of the Air Force who referred to himself as a whistleblower and claimed that he knew first-hand that the government had an alien UFO and its occupants stashed away in some secure facility.

"It was clear he was telling the truth," Carlson said (via the Washington Post). "In other words, UFOs are actually real and apparently so is extraterrestrial life. Now we know. In a normal country, this news would qualify as a bombshell, the story of the millennium. But in our country, it doesn't." Although not for lack of trying, as Carlson previously reported on potential extraterrestrial existence when he was still on Fox, with a multi-part special investigation on mysterious cattle mutilations.

Carlson also appeared on "The Joe Rogan Experience" in April 2024, where he shared even more thoughts on government cover ups of alien life, both celestial and aquatic. Carlson suggested that there has been "enough going on in the skies — but not just the skies, underwater — that the US military has been forced to respond to it" (via Newsweek). Additionally, Carlson said he believes "there is a real effort and has been underway for a long time to keep the public from knowing about it."

After Kevin Spacey's career came to a halt amid multiple allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct, the actor decided to work on a comeback by releasing cryptic videos every year around Christmas in which he reprised his "House of Cards" character, Frank Underwood. The videos were often somewhat unsettling and often showed Spacey as Underwood talking to fans from his home or outside in nature, often making vague allusions to being cancelled and getting revenge or returning to prominence.

In December 2023, Spacey got Tucker Carlson to join in on the madness now that both of them had lost their jobs despite prior popularity. In a video titled "Being Frank With Tucker," posted to YouTube just days before Christmas, Spacey as Underwood sits down for a chat with Carlson –- playing himself –- for what ostensibly seemed to be the kind of real interview Carlson would have with any embattled politician or celebrity. The blurring of the line between fiction and reality was unsettling and Carlson's awkward attempts at comedy didn't help.

Apart from believing he was attacked by a demon in his sleep, Tucker Carlson's outright belief in metaphysical evil also extends to influencing history and world events. According to Carlson, nuclear power –- both in terms of energy production and devastating weaponry –- is the work of supernatural forces hell bent on destroying the world. Carlson made his fascinating and unconventional claims during an appearance on right-wing extremist Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast in November 2024.

"Nuclear weapons are demonic, there's no upside to them at all, and anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant or doing the bidding of the forces that created nuclear technology in the first place, which were not human forces obviously," Carlson stated. Carlson also claimed, seemingly as proof of his belief, that he'd never met anyone who could "isolate the moment where nuclear technology became known to man. German scientists in the 1930s? Really? Name the date? It's very clear to me that these [nuclear weapons] are demonic."

Of course the actual history of nuclear fission and harnessing the power of atomic energy is well-documented, with exact dates and timelines firmly understood and established for decades, from the work of physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch in 1938 through the 1942 advancement of nuclear fission by Enrico Fermi in 1942 and the launch of the first nuclear power plants in 1951. 

When Tucker Carlson went to Moscow in February 2024 to interview Vladimir Putin, he also did some man-on-the-street segments to serve as Western propaganda tools (and/or legitimate journalism, depending on who you ask). Among the many stops on his trip was to a Russian grocery store that seemed to simply blow Carlson's mind with its low prices and wide range of options. In fact, he was so impressed with the random Russian grocery store, he couldn't help but fawn over it and insult American politicians at the same time.

"If you take people's standard of living and you tank it through filth and crime and inflation. And they literally can't buy the groceries they want. ... You're wrecking people's lives and their country, and that's what their leaders have done to us," Carlson said (via Newsweek), adding that going shopping at a Russian grocery store – which cost Carlson $103 for a weeks' worth of groceries –- would "radicalize you against our leaders. That's how I feel, anyway – radicalized."

As was pointed out by community notes on X (formerly Twitter), "Added context is needed to understand international price differences: The average wage in Russia is 73,383 RUB per month (which is $791 with today's exchange rate). Over 60% of Russians spend half of their salary on food." By comparison, the average food and grocery budget for those in the US is 11.2%.