Tucker Carlson is usually the one putting guests on the hot seat — but this weekend, YouTube personalities said they turned the tables on the conservative news star.
A pair of pranksters claim they successfully tricked the conservative media star into covering their fabricated story on his network.
Josh Pieters and Archie Manners, British YouTube stars, told Deadline they managed to get Manners booked for an on-air interview with Carlson on the drama surrounding Princess Kate Middleton.
Posing as a fired Kensington Palace employee embroiled in the recent Middleton photo editing controversy, Manners says he tricked Carlson and his team into an interview.
According to Pieters and Manners, it started when they released a video going viral on social media that claimed Manners had been fired by the Palace for “not doing a good enough job” handling the controversial edited photograph fiasco.
After faking credentials, Carlson’s team reportedly took the bait and booked Manners for an interview.
“We stroked Carlson’s ego by offering our story as an exclusive because mainstream media in the UK wouldn’t touch it,” the pair claimed.
To get past Carlson’s fact checkers, they were forced to fabricate fake documentation like an employment contract complete with official royal seals.
Manners claims he managed to fully sell his cover story to Carlson during an extended on-camera interview at Carlson’s studio.
“That was great, and really interesting too. I didn’t expect to be as interested in it as I was because you told a really great story,” Carlson told Manners after the interview.
The pranksters opted to reveal the con publicly before The Tucker Carlson Network aired the bogus interview to its reported 12.5 million social media followers.
“We didn’t want to cause any more rumors, that are not true, to go out to lots and lots of people,” Manners told Deadline.
Take a look at their gleeful prank video below —
We Pranked Tucker Carlson… pic.twitter.com/pGceMRn26t
— Josh Pieters (@joshua_pieters) March 14, 2024
The Horn editorial team