The latest revelations from Tucker Carlson and Albo’s new bestie Piers Morgan

“Just finished an exclusive interview with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese who’s flown to London for the coronation,” promised Piers Morgan, a man whose unearned smugness sizzles at room temperature like liquid nitrogen. Even his tweets appear to smirk. “We discussed everything from the Monarchy/Royals to China, Biden, Trump, cancel culture, gender, Ashes & Dame Edna.”

Earlier this week we said Albanese had spent the whole of the previous weekend putting every single step wrong. Turns out we’d spoken too soon by limiting it to a weekend.

“I like fighting Tories. That’s what I do,” Albanese famously said over a decade ago. And how better to demonstrate that than to return to the United Kingdom as a representative of the most enthusiastic and servile remnant of its empire, to swear an oath of allegiance to our new king? What more brutal shellacking could the forces of reaction endure than an exclusive interview with the sneering emblem of right-wing tabloid journalism (Morgan once was publicly rebuked by Rupert Murdoch for being beneath the ethical standards of the News of the World)?

Speaking of Morgan (and of people who find a way to offend the decency of Murdoch), the same day he was interviewing our PM about “cancel culture” and (Christ almighty) “the definition of a woman”, footage emerged of his off-camera back-and-forth with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, talking — and there’s no other way to put this — about Carlson’s newly swarthy balls.

“If we’re going to talk about sex, I’d love to hit some of the fine points of technique but, you know, but it’s your show. It’s totally up to you,” Carlson tells Morgan before their interview, which appears to be from April 2022.

Morgan replies, “We can certainly talk about your sexual technique, especially after your tanning testicles last week,” a reference to Carlson’s recent endorsement of that practice in his “End of Men” Fox Nation special as a way to reduce the purported decline in testosterone levels. 

These are the men that our leaders seek out to discuss policy. 

The conversation with Morgan is one of a series of leaks to concern Carlson since his exit from the network. Yesterday The New York Times reported on texts — sent to a producer after the Capitol riots on January 6 2021, in the same conversation during which Carlson called Donald Trump “a demonic force” — where the Fox host criticises a group of “Trump supporters” beating up someone he called an “antifa kid” on a video he’d seen weeks earlier.

He says this was “dishonourable” and not “how white men fight”, and goes on to confess:

I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me.

But that’s not what brought about his exit, most likely, argues former Fox host and slowly leaking water balloon Glenn Beck — but a recent speech in which Carlson expressed his religious faith: “When I was at Fox News, I was told not to use the word ‘God’ on the air. They COUNTED how many times I disobeyed,” Beck tweeted. “I don’t know if Tucker Carlson’s speech about God and prayer was the final straw, but I have a feeling it DEEPLY bothered Rupert Murdoch.”

Indeed, it was recently reported that Murdoch broke up with his fiancée Ann Lesley Smith on account of her “outspoken evangelical views”: “She said Tucker Carlson is a messenger from God, and he said nope,” a source told Vanity Fair.

Could Murdoch’s lack of faith be the reason Beck had to leave Fox too? Or was that more to do with the time he told Fox & Friends that then-president Barack Obama was a racist with a “deep-seated hatred for white people” and then his advertisers and nearly half his audience bailed? God only knows.

Do you have a problem with Anthony Albanese talking to Piers Morgan? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.