Blake Neff credits Tucker Carlson with helping launch his career.
Today, however, Neff says he is struggling to understand the person his former boss appears to have become.
“What I think has driven a lot of what Tucker has done in the last year or so is he’s indulged negative traits within him more and more,” Neff, now a co-host of The Charlie Kirk Show and formerly Carlson’s lead writer, told Jeremy Boreing.
Excerpts from Boreing’s interview with Neff were provided exclusively to Our News Outlet. The full discussion is scheduled to air today at 3 p.m. Central/4 p.m. Eastern on The Jeremy Boreing Show.
Few people have followed Carlson’s rise as closely as Neff. At 26, Neff was working as a reporter for Carlson’s website, The Daily Caller, when Carlson debuted his primetime program, Tucker Carlson Tonight, on Fox News.
In 2016, Carlson moved Neff from the newsroom to help write his Fox News monologues—segments that helped define the show’s tone and influence the broader conservative movement. Neff resigned from Fox News in 2022 after old blog posts described by critics as racist resurfaced. Neff has maintained that the posts were jokes taken out of context.
Neff later joined The Charlie Kirk Show as a writer and producer. Several years afterward, he was standing about 20 feet from Kirk when the conservative activist was killed by an assassin on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
That history places Neff in a distinctive position as conservative media enters a deeply divided period, with former allies clashing over the Trump administration, the war in Iran and competing claims about the circumstances of Kirk’s death.
“What I think has driven a lot of what Tucker has done in the last year or so is he’s indulged negative traits within him more and more,” said Neff, a co-host of The Charlie Kirk Show.
A number of podcasters, including Candace Owens and Carlson’s younger brother, Buckley Carlson, have promoted conspiracy theories about Kirk’s killing.
In March, Buckley Carlson retweeted a post claiming that Kirk’s death was part of a “black magic ritual.”
Neff told Boreing that during his most recent contact with Carlson, he asked him to urge his brother to stop spreading conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death.
According to Neff, Carlson—who frequently discusses his close personal and professional relationship with Kirk—declined to get involved.
“The last communication I had with Tucker was: Tucker, just privately, can you ask your brother to just stop pushing this Candace stuff? And he wouldn’t… He refused to ask,” Neff said.
“I don’t think Tucker in 2018 would have had that response to someone he has a close relationship with spreading incredibly hateful lies about innocent people,” he added.
Our News Outlet contacted representatives for Carlson seeking comment.
Neff also alleged that Carlson now appears willing to accept almost any damaging claim aimed at people he views as opponents.
“He’ll believe anything negative,” Neff said. “Israel did this war that I powerfully hate, so why wouldn’t they have murdered Charlie? Why wouldn’t they have murdered President Kennedy, which he’s also suggested is something they did. And then that transitions into, let’s be frank, carrying water for people who are pushing the most hateful and deranged conspiracy theory. I would say it’s at least on par with people who say Sandy Hook was faked.”
“I don’t think Tucker in 2018 would have had that response to someone he has a close relationship with spreading incredibly hateful lies about innocent people,” Neff said.
Neff stood just 20 feet from his boss when the conservative activist was killed by an assassin on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah
Indeed, Neff seems to be pained to criticize a man for whom he once worked.
‘I owe my entire career to the fact that Tucker plucked me out [of the Daily Caller] and said, would you like to be the writer for my show at Fox? The bottom level of hell in Dante’s Inferno is for people who have betrayed masters. Tucker was a benefactor to me, but Charlie was a benefactor to me too.’
As to why Carlson has made this alarming transformation, Neff – who has not worked with Carlson for six years – has a theory:
‘He has some grievances that he has fixed upon. He has always been passionately against [America] going to war with Iran. He was paranoid that we would go to war with Iran way back when I was at the Daily Caller.
‘I think the fact that it finally happened was just profoundly upsetting to him. Also, I think he’s spoken about it himself, that he felt a little powerless to stop it. And this has made him so angry.
‘Tucker’s so fixated on his personal beef with Israel that he’s going to enable people who are going to lie about [Turning Point USA], lie about the good people at it and try to rip it to smithereens.
‘He’s let this real grievance of his take over everything. It’s consumed everything. He just refuses to see the huge damage that he’s doing to individual people as a result of this,’ Neff concluded.
