It’s been almost a year since Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox News, and he’s clearly been living his best life. Or maybe not. Since taking his toys over to Twitter/X, the far right rabble rouser has hit some sad lows, including interviewing such shady figures as a guy who claimed to have sex with Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin. Now he’s been utterly duped by a couple of well-known pranksters who claimed to have dirt on the Kate Middleton mishegoss.
We Pranked Tucker Carlson… pic.twitter.com/pGceMRn26t
— Josh Pieters (@joshua_pieters) March 14, 2024
Per Deadline, Josh Pieters — cofounder of Goon Squad Productions — recently dropped a video in which he and his partner Archie Manners laid out how the two of them fooled Carlson’s team. Fooled them into thinking what? That Manners was a former Kensington Palace staffer who claimed to be responsible for the infamous/mysterious doctored photo of the Princess of Wales.
How easy was it to dupe Tucker and gang? Pretty darn easy! It mostly involved faking some Royal-looking documents, featuring a definitely legit-sounding clause that should Manners fail his probationary period he would have to amputate one of his limbs. But it worked and suddenly Manners was sitting in a London studio chatting with Carlson virtually.
“We’ve done our best to verify that your identity is what you say it is,” Carlson assured Manners in his introduction. “You’re not a fake [Alexei] Navalny or doing a prank.”
Manners then went on to boast that he’d been “fired for negligence” for the botched fake photo. He said the photo was actually snapped over the holidays and that he had to edit out a Christmas tree in the background. By way of defense, Manners claimed it wasn’t really his fault, that the job of making a fake family photo involving Middleton was ”almost too big to do.”
Carlson bought it hook, line, and sinker, calling Manners’ made-up tale an “amazing story.” Afterwards Tucker told him that their chat was “great.”
The episode, Carlson said, would air sometime next week, but in an interview with Deadline, Manners said he and Pieters decided to drop theirs first because they didn’t want Carlson to spew nonsense to his 12.6 million Twitter/X followers. Manners also opened up about how he was able to school Carlson, saying he stoked his ego with the “bullsh*t” claim that they were giving him an exclusive.
The Middleton fake photo business has been one of last week’s more enigmatic news stories. The princess has been largely AWOL since a “planned abdominal surgery” in mid-January, which has driven Royal obsessees who track their every movement crazy. After the Family, hoping to allay fears that something bad had befallen Middleton, released what looked like a family photo featuring her and her kids, that backfired after it was quickly found to be doctored. This has led much of social media turned into Oliver Stone, and it’s caused John Oliver to fume that he’s been sucked back into British nonsense all over again.
(Via Deadline)