It was a gloomy evening Tuesday night at Fox News as word of the sweeping Democratic victories in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere began trickling in.
While the primetime fire-breathers did their best to ignore the results, they couldn’t dance around it completely. When Fox News host Tucker Carlson received news that Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie had lost to Democrat Ralph Northam, his delivery became uncharictaristically slow and dejected.
Talking Points Memo publisher Josh Marshall said the normally fulminating Carlson had been reduced to a “sad trombone” over the news.
Harrowing, bracing moment when Tucker Carlson shapeshifted into an actual sad trombone and was forced to declare Northam the winner. pic.twitter.com/LmzsBB7RYT
– Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 8, 2017
“Numerically fairly close but “[Ralph] Northam in the lead at this hour,” said a muted Carlson before pivoting in funereal fashion to the breaking news.
“We’ve got breaking news here. We are are now reporting that Ralph Northam has won the Virginia’s governor’s race. Ralph Northam the Democrat beating Ed Gillespie with 58 percent in we are projecting that he is the winner tonight. We will bring you more detail on that.”
The host — fumbling at moments — mostly spoke over a static graphic showing Northam beating Gillespie.
Carlson then moved to Kristin Fisher who was live at Northam headquarters.
“Kirstin you there?” asked Tucker.
She wasn’t there.
“We’re going to get to Kirstin Fisher in just a second,” Carlson promised.
Sean Hannity picked up the baton from Carlson at 9 p.m. and spent all of a few seconds on the news before moving on to other stories.