In light of the increasing political polarization diving the country, the idea of liberals and conservatives regularly crossing the streams to sit down with one another has become laughably unthinkable.
But not that long ago, liberals and conservatives could have civil political conversations without it devolving into insults and hysterics.
Nowadays it would seem absurd for personalities from these two camps to have friendly disagreements and exchange good-natured jabs on the air, but in 2006, it could happen.
And, indeed, it did.
Two political commentators who couldn’t be further from each other on the political spectrum were apparently great friends, and could amicably poke fun at each other over their political differences, as seen in an old MSNBC segment shared to the social media platform X.
Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.
Feels like an alternative reality… pic.twitter.com/GM6Gt8DEe0
— Wojciech Pawelczyk (@WojPawelczyk) May 6, 2024
Those commentators were conservative Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow.
Some may have forgotten this, but Carlson spent over five years at CNN and three years at MSNBC before landing at Fox News in 2009, where he stayed until he was abruptly fired in 2023, prompting him to launch his own show on social media platform Twitter, which later changed its name to X.
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Maddow started out in radio and was with the now-defunct left-wing talk radio network Air America from 2004 to 2008 before going to work at MSNBC. She was a liberal from the start and has only become more radically leftist in the years since.
In the 2006 segment with Carlson, Maddow was invited on the show to discuss the impending Democratic takeover of Congress.
After exchanging some pleasantries showing how much they clearly enjoyed talking with each other, Carlson began asked Maddow, “What’s the first thing — apart from nationalizing the railroads and passing the transgender amendment — Democrats are going to do when they take power?”
Maddow, after laughing at what at the time was a hyperbolic joke from Carlson, responded in kind: “Well, I mean, there’s a lot to get to right away. We have to make everybody get gay married, and we have to ban the Bible, and we have to send you to Guantanamo.”
Their conversation continued along the same tenor, talking seriously about potential issues that might arise from a Democratic Congress while poking fun at each other’s political views in a good-natured fashion.
Even when they disagreed, the conversation was civil overall, as when Carlson referred to the 1994 Republican “Contract for America,” asking Maddow if she believed the Democrats had a similar plan for that November.
Maddow began, “The awkward thing about the legacy and the analogy of the ‘Contract for America’ history, is that the Republicans didn’t actually do any of those things they said they were going to do, they didn’t keep any of those promises.”
Carlson interjected, “No, actually, they did. I mean, some of them, maybe you could say that some of them weren’t worth doing, I mean, there were a lot of procedural changes … but they actually did do them.”
As Business Insider explained when revisiting Maddow and Carlson’s friendship, there were times when the disagreements got much more heated, as when Carlson and Maddow discussed a speech from Osama Bin Laden in January 2006.
Carlson contended that, “I’m saying he’s criticizing Bush in exactly the same ways, with exactly the same terminology — it’s literally like he got the blast facts from [Democratic] HQ.” Maddow responded, “I’m actively angry that this is being turned into a political attack on Democrats.”
But, even then, the two remained friendly, Maddow frequently appearing on Carlson’s show as a panelist, and the two of them happily joking with each other over their political differences and opposing viewpoints.
To Maddow’s credit, though Carlson and Maddow find each other’s views abhorrent now, she expressed in a Vanity Fair interview that she would always owe Carlson a debt of gratitude for giving her that first big break on MSNBC, even though they probably would never again have an exchange like the one seen in this clip.
Could you imagine this same exchange shown in the clip happening today, on a network as virulently left-wing as MSNBC?
Carlson and Maddow have progressed from friendly disagreements to becoming mortal ideological enemies, with Maddow consistently spreading fear-mongering, anti-Trump and anti-conservative smears on her show.
Carlson has become a more vocal proponent of his conservatism in the last few years, using his X show to pursue stories no major news network wants to touch, such as by interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Nowadays, Maddow and MSNBC have grown more ideologically extreme than ever before.
Indeed, Maddow and Carlson’s simple disagreements on Carlson’s show in 2006 would probably now be considered akin to enabling the rise of fascism, disassembling democracy, supporting genocide, or whatever other hyperbolic buzzwords are getting thrown around these days.
In many ways, leftist America has truly gone off the deep end.
And Maddow and Carlson’s friendship was just one of the many casualties.
