During Tucker Carlson’s Monday show, his first appearance since taking a “long-planned” vacation days after his show’s top writer was forced to resign over secret racist posts under an online alias, the Fox News host—without evidence—claimed the New York Times is planning to publish his home address. “Last week, the New York Times began working on a story about where my family and I live,” Carlson said, a charge that the Times forcefully denies. He then accused the paper of hatching a plot to terrorize him: “So why is the New York Times doing a story on the location of my family’s house? Well, you know why: to hurt us. To injure my wife and kids so that I will shut up and stop disagreeing with them.”
Shortly after Carlson aired his claim, the Times countered that it had no idea what he was talking about: “While we do not confirm what may or may not publish in future editions, the Times has not and does not plan to expose any residence of Tucker Carlson’s, which Carlson was aware of before tonight’s broadcast.” Carlson implied to the Lewiston Sun Journal that the Times story is about his decision to sell his Washington, D.C., home to spend more time at his property in Woodstock, Maine. (Carlson also has a home in Florida.) “Editors there know exactly what will happen to my family when it does run. I called them today and I told them,” Carlson said of the Times piece later in the segment. “But they didn’t care. They hate my politics. They want this show off the air. If one of my children gets hurt because of a story they wrote, they won’t consider it collateral damage. They know it’s the whole point of the exercise. To inflict pain on our family, to terrorize us, to control what we say.”
Carlson went on to call out the name of the freelance journalist working on the piece and the photographer assigned to it. “How would Murray Carpenter and his photographer Tristan Spinski feel if we told you where they live, if we put pictures of their homes on the air?” he said. “What if we publicized the home address of every one of the soulless, robot editors at the New York Times, who assigned and managed this incitement of violence against my family?” Hours after the segment aired, the Washington Post reported that Carpenter’s home address was released online by right-wing Twitter users.
Carlson also recalled the time in 2018 when leftist protesters staged a demonstration outside of his D.C. mansion. “They vandalized our home. They threatened my wife. She called 911 while hiding in the closet,” he said, noting that the incident inspired him to abandon D.C. Similar to the murky claims Carlson is lobbing at the Times now, his description of that 2018 protest has been previously called into question. Carlson has claimed that a protester attempted to breach his home by “throwing himself against the front door” and cracking it, but the Metropolitan Police Department’s report on the incident does not support this claim. Instead, a report notes that protesters graffitied his driveway with an anarchist symbol. Journalist Alan Pyke, then writing for liberal outlet ThinkProgress, witnessed the protest and accused Carlson of piling “significant embellishments” onto his description. “One of the protesters knocked firmly on Carlson’s front door three times then trotted back down the steps to join the rest of the group in the street,” Pyke reported, noting the incident lasted roughly 10 minutes and that about a dozen protesters participated. The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple attempted to corroborate Carlson’s comments, but found that his front door appeared to be fully intact.