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Carlson, a reformed alcoholic, switched his nicotine gum regularly as he spoke off the cuff and powerfully to an audience that had a distinctly suburban feel.
Those in suits mostly wore untailored jackets, which contrasted with the more expensive cuts a few hundred metres away in Parliament House. Quite a few of the suits were stretched to their limits by the bulging muscles of the gym junkies inhabiting them.
This was a crowd of suburban, mostly battler Australians, along with a few Liberal figures such as Teena McQueen. These are the type of voters – fed up with an economy and culture they feel work against them – courted by the MPs who attended the event: the Coalition’s Joyce, Matt Canavan and Alex Antic, One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts, and Palmer’s man in Canberra, the real estate agent-turned-senator Ralph Babet, who hosted the event.
Carlson, as he finished his chicken lunch, couldn’t conceal a few giggles as he listened to Babet’s introduction.
“Tucker, he’s sitting right here, he’s not just a journalist, not at all – he’s the most famous journalist in the world,” Babet said.
Carlson, Babet said, “asked the hard questions [of] parliaments and institutions that have been seduced by Marxist ideology and the cowards of the woke mob”.
In an illustration of the unusual, horseshoe-like alliance of right- and left-wing figures who support Julian Assange, Carlson said he had spoken to the WikiLeaks founder’s wife earlier on Tuesday. He said Stella Assange had indicated Assange wanted to live in Australia long-term.
Carlson’s most venomous lines were reserved for the journalist class to which he belonged before Rupert Murdoch’s US network sacked him last year.
“I despise them more than anybody, really, in the world,” he said.
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The few reporters in the audience served as the event’s pantomime villains – an easy punching bag for Carlson and a crowd sceptical of the mainstream media.
This masthead’s question about whether he felt embarrassed conducting an interview with Putin – which was described by the Russian dictator as softball – was drowned out by barbs from the crowd. They were hyped up by Carlson who himself spoke over the question being asked.
“Did he [Putin] make you take the COVID shot?” he interrupted. “It’s like you’re the last Japanese soldier at Okinawa.”
A planned meet and greet in parliament after the lunch was cancelled after TV camera crews arrived, spooking organisers. Staffers and a group of Coalition MPs were milling about the event space before it was called off.