Fox News star Tucker Carlson was rushed to the hospital and underwent surgery on his back, a Fox News spokesman announced.
But he didn’t miss a single show, despite going under the knife Wednesday.
“Tucker Carlson had emergency back surgery yesterday and did the show anyway,” a Fox News spokesman told Mediaite on Thursday. “He thanks all those who tuned in and watched closely.”
According to Vice, something happened to Carlson on Monday that hurt his back. Carlson said he doesn’t drink alcohol and has never consumed drugs, but reportedly emerged from the surgery with a deeper understanding of the opioid crisis impacting America.
Carlson described it as “one of the most traumatic things that’s ever happened to me in my whole life, ever.”
The hospital gave Carlson opiates, including fentanyl, to help him cope with his overwhelming pain.
“They hit me up, they told me this morning, with such a huge dose of dilaudid, which is more powerful than morphine, when I got there, that I had trouble breathing,” Carlson said on a recording, talking to his coworkers. “Scared the s*** out of me. Didn’t have any effect at all. And then all night, I lay there, the nurse finally upped my dosage of dilaudid to the point where every eight minutes I hit it and it was like getting shot. Just like bam, feel it hit me, and it didn’t touch the pain.”
“I didn’t sleep literally one-second last night, and I was on so many f***ing drugs,” he said. “It was just like, more drugs, more drugs. I didn’t know that there was untreatable pain.”
“They gave me fentanyl this morning, that did not cure it — they gave me intravenous fentanyl,” he said. “And they gave me all kinds of other s***. I was like, ‘Fine, go for it.’ And then it only ended when they gave me propofol, and I went out. Then I woke up and I was like, I felt totally fine. I haven’t taken a single Advil.”
Carlson said he will never take opioids again if they can be avoided, but said the dose gave him a better understanding of the deadly opioid crisis in the United States.
“I had this spirit of fear within me, which I don’t have,” he said. “I’m not bragging, I don’t have it. And I think you can feel it. I don’t have it, I think that’s why I’m successful, cause I’m just not afraid. I felt afraid just of like life or something. It’s interesting.”
“It was super deep. And I just haven’t had those feelings since I was in a plane crash 20 years ago this month. I’ve never had those feelings. I’m always like ‘Yeah I’m gonna die, I don’t care.’ And I mean it. But last night I was like, ‘Oh s***.’ Fear, just like anxiety. People who have anxiety, that’s what I felt. And it was from those drugs.”
“They extinguish the spirit within you, and they make you feel like you’re running away. You’re hiding. It’s so f***ing deep. I’m lying in bed filthy with dog toys on my pillow, and it doesn’t bother me. And I’m not that way. Like I am … in real life, I wash the sheets every day. I’m that guy. I shower every day.”
“I said this to [a friend] and he had such a deep response. He goes, ‘That’s why all the houses in Maine are unclean and have toys on the front lawn. Because the people are on fentanyl, they’re on opioids, and they’ve lost their dignity, their self-respect.’ That thing that makes you super uptight when you look at your house and you’re like, ‘Ah the shutters need painting.’”
“Maybe you paint them or maybe you don’t, but it bothers you, because you have dignity. That’s gone,” Carlson said. “So you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s a half-chewed rawhide toy on my pillow? Okay! Lie there with it.’ I don’t live like that. Have you ever been to my house? We’re not crazy but we’re orderly people, cause we have self-respect.”
“I just thought that was the most interesting f***ing thing that had ever happened to me. It wasn’t even that I survived it, it wasn’t even about me, it was about what it does to people.”
“It was just like so f***ing interesting. And … it explains so much of what we see around us. Just the lack of dignity. And that weird drive you have to be like, ‘That’s not in the right order, it should be this way. You know?’ It inculcates this not caring.”
The Horn editorial team