• by Gord Hotchkiss , Featured Contributor, 6 hours ago

Tucker Carlson is the proverbial worm in the midst of a turn. He has now decided his approval of Donald Trump, whom he has been paying off-and-on support to for the past 10 years, is off again. A few weeks ago, he said this about his past lip service to Trump and the MAGA movement: “It’s a moment to wrestle with our own consciences. We’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”

But is he? Or is this just another pivot from a journalist that has more switchbacks in his past than an Olympic slalom skier?

Some applaud Carlson for what seems to be an ethical epiphany, reasoning that it’s never too late to see the light, and forgiving him his past sins.

I say, “Not so fast.”

Tucker Carlson is a transactional journalist. Whatever comes out of his mouth is what he feels will immediately do him the most good. It’s not that he didn’t fully recognize Trump for what he was. He has, multiple times in the past. And he has gone on record saying so. But then he willingly swallowed those reservations to be a MAGA team player, publicly supporting a figure about whom he said in a private text, “I hate him passionately.”

Carlson's most recent anti-Trump turn likely comes from being released from the far-right editorial restraints of Fox News and his need for an audience for his own podcast. This recent gnashing of teeth and clutching of pearls can simply be chalked up to just another pivot in search of an audience.

This may be one pivot too far. David A. Graham, a staff writer at The Atlantic, said this about Carlson and other prominent right-wing mouthpieces who have recently looked at Trump askance: “These pundits deserve no amnesty. Their second thoughts are wise, but to have erred so badly, when so many other commentators and journalists saw the truth, disqualifies them from being taken seriously on politics again.”

The casualty from all this transactionalism is trust. And it is just that quality -- trust -- that has been hardwired into us as the fundamental yardstick by which we judge all our own transactions. Yes, the real world is a place of pragmatic transactions, but when you strip trust and fairness away, you lose the very bearings you need to move from transaction to transaction with any sense of direction.

In game theory, there is a thought experiment called the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. This is transactionalism boiled down to its essence. Together with your partner, you can choose either to cooperate for mutual benefit, or betray them for individual gain. If you only play one round of the Prisoner’s Dilemma and you go first, the best option is to betray your partner. But if you play multiple rounds, the winning strategy is something called Tit for Tat.

Although the name doesn’t imply it, this is a strategy that embeds trust and cooperation. You start from that foundation and only move to retaliate if you’re betrayed by your partner. The Tit for Tat strategy self-corrects over time, consistently moving you back to your base of trust.

It’s this long-term ethical direction that is sacrificed by transactionalists like Tucker Carlson. It’s unfortunate that this ethical rot has crept into journalism, but a far more worrying concern is the fact that the U.S. -- and much of the rest of the world -- has now embraced transactionalism stripped of trust as their default position. This is true of the current administration, the billionaires who have eschewed their own personal ethics to support it, and every level of government, business and society propping up this transactional regime.

In today’s world, increasingly, there is no trust. There are only decisions made solely to secure immediate gains and exchanges built to amass profit and power. It is transactionalism run amok. And as any good game theorist will tell you, the only possible outcome from that strategy is mass betrayal.