It appears that for Tucker Carlson, host of Fox News' ratings-hogging Tucker Carlson Tonight, the penchant to exaggerate started early.
A formative anecdote Carlson shared in his 2018 book Ship of Fools was recently debunked by his first grade teacher as "the most embellished, crazy thing I ever heard," The Washington Post reports.
The Fox host had written that his distaste for liberals began at seven years old, with his teacher Marianna Raymond — a "parody of mother-earth liberalism" who "wore long Indian-print skirts." He claimed Raymond eschewed "conventional academic topics, like reading and penmanship," and would sob "theatrically" at her desk. "Mrs. Raymond never did teach us [to read]; my father had to hire a tutor to get me through phonics," Carlson wrote in Ship of Fools. His "sojourn as a conservative thinker" began shortly thereafter, adds the Post.
Raymond, however, has a completely different account of Carlson's time in her class at the affluent La Jolla Country Day School. She remembers Carlson as "very precious and very, very polite and sweet," and denies sobbing at her desk, wearing an Indian skirt, or venturing into political territory at all. What's more, not only did she teach Carlson reading in the classroom — she was later hired to tutor him at home, the Post reports.
She was completely unaware how Carlson had "ridiculed her as a key to understanding him." "Oh my God," Raymond told the Post. "That is the most embellished, crazy thing I ever heard." Read more at The Washington Post.