Carlson Lays Into Daniels' Lawyer After He Snubs Tucker's Show for Hannity Appearance
Hell hath no fury like a Fox News host scorned. That’s doubly true when the scorner is Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels’ lawyer and the most promiscuous man in the cable news guest firmament.
In a tongue-in-cheek rant Friday, Carlson said that while Avenatti will pretty much appear on any cable news show, probably up to and including public access, he won’t appear on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
“We invited the creepy porn lawyer onto this show,” Carlson said, using his pet nickname for Avenatti. “We called his office — or what he said was his office. It may have been a booth at a Wendy’s in Passaic, maybe a White Castle — you never know.
“In any case, he turned us down flat. Too bad.”
Carlson’s remarks were part of a longer critique of Avenatti in which he observed that Stormy Daniels’ lawyer and spokesman had appeared on CNN and MSNBC a whopping 108 times. Carlson said he was trying to “add a little diversity to his media diet” by inviting him on Fox News. Apparently, his media appetite is rather narrow.
Tucker has previously criticized Avenatti in unapologetic terms, going after the frequency of his appearances on simpatico networks and his appearance, even noting during a show earlier in the week that Avenatti’s “eyes are too close together.”
“Picture yourself standing in your kitchen at night, getting one last glass of water from the kitchen sink, and you look out into the backyard there’s creepy porn lawyer,” Carlson asked Democrat strategist Julian Epstein Friday, who joined the show in Avenatti’s stead. “How do you respond?”
Alas, Epstein noted he lived an apartment and was unlikely to see the lawyer peeking in from over the azalea shrubs.
For his part, Avenatti claimed that he turned down the appearance on Tucker because he wanted to appear on Sean Hannity’s show.
.@TuckerCarlson – Stop lying to your viewers. You did not invite me on your show Fri night. It never happened. You invited me on Wed and I responded within 3 minutes (see below). I then never heard back. Again – pls have Sean’s EP reach out to me. And try honesty next time. pic.twitter.com/hNVlQJFvuQ
— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) May 12, 2018
“Stop lying to your viewers,” Avenatti tweeted after Friday’s show.
“You did not invite me on your show Fri night. It never happened. You invited me on Wed and I responded within 3 minutes (see below). I then never heard back. Again – pls have Sean’s EP reach out to me. And try honesty next time.” That Avenatti, he’s sure a man with a plentiful reserve of class.
This still, mind you, represents a refusal to appear on Tucker’s show. I’m also guessing the fact that Hannity hasn’t contacted Avenatti yet is probably a function of the fact that they don’t actually want him on “Hannity.” It also probably doesn’t help that Avenatti had bizarrely challenged Hannity to a mano-a-mano conversation on air earlier in the week on social media.
“We don’t agree on everything but we are both street fighters (Sean Hannity), which means something. Let’s set a booking so I can come on the show to talk about the case and the issues in the case. No BS. Just a straight up discussion by two men. Thanks for considering it,” Avenatti tweeted on Monday.
Avenatti has previously complained about his lack of coverage on Fox News, telling CNN on Sunday that they don’t “seem to want me to be on their shows much.”
After this slight, Fox host Martha MacCullum called Avenatti out Monday, noting that he was scheduled to appear on “The Story” but had cancelled.
“Over the weekend Michael Avenatti, the attorney representing Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against President Trump, told CNN that Fox News doesn’t seem to want him on our shows. That is not actually the case,” MacCallum told viewers. “In fact, Mr. Avenatti was scheduled to appear on this show tomorrow night, but this morning, he abruptly canceled the interview despite his pledge to appear on Fox News this week. So there you go.”
Avenatti called MacCullum’s divulgence of that fact “classless,” noting that he told producers he had casework to do. This seems particularly odd, given that casework seems to always otherwise take a backseat to media appearances, but I digress.
I suppose it hurts being turned down by the most accessible man in the media today, but you should probably expect as much when you refer to an individual as a “creepy porn lawyer.” (Not that he doesn’t deserve it, mind you.)
In short, I think what we can tell from Friday’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” is that a) Tucker Carlson doesn’t have a whole lot of respect for the legal chops of of Michael Avenatti, b) we’re not going to see him on “Hannity” anytime soon either, and c) you can see him on pretty much every other show on cable TV in the foreseeable future.
However, if he does want to take a second look at Tucker, the Fox News host is still willing to consider it.
“Maybe when Jeff Zucker tires of him over at CNN, he will reconsider our offer,” Carlson told his audience. “That won’t be long. We’d enjoy it.”
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