This Week's Tucker Timeslot Substitute Teacher Sucks, Let's All Laugh And Throw Things

Lawrence Jones, whoever he is.

It's not going so well in the 8 p.m. hour at Fox News. Visit the Twitter replies of any Fox News host and you'll see hordes of scabrous paid blue checkmarks saying they miss watching, but they just can't watch the woke network anymore now that their beloved white superhero is fired.

Ratings during Tucker Carlson's old timeslot last week were garbage when "Fox & Friends" open-jawed windsock Brian Kilmeade was the substitute teacher. Some of Tucker's regular viewers watched Newsmax or OAN instead, but it seems like a significant number watched nothing, which is terrifying, as it means a significant number were entirely unsupervised during that hour last week.

This week, the substitute teacher is named Lawrence Jones, and he sucks.

Who is Lawrence Jones? It's OK not to know, because most people don't, but Kat Abughazaleh from Media Matters correctly predicted on TikTok that he'd be one of the rotating hosts Fox would stick in there:

 @katmabu*dial tone increases in volume* #fyp  #fypシ  #foryou  #foryoupage  #news  #usnews  #politics  #politicaltiktok  #foxnews  #tuckercarlson  #tucker  #briankilmeade  #tulsigabbard  #willcain  #petehegseth  #seanduffy  #tammybruce  #treygowdy  #lawrencejones  #adamcarolla  #dagenmcdowell   ♬ original sound - Kat Abu 

Abughazaleh says her favorite Lawrence Jones moment was when he "wore this tiny bulletproof vest and insisted Border Patrol made him wear it."

Cool vest, guy!

And now here he is on week two. It was pretty bad.

Jones interviewed Republican presidential candidate (LOL) and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, and for some reason he thought his job was just to be as mean as possible. There is no reason for a Fox News host to be mean to Hutchinson right now. He is a threat to no one's presidential prospects. Not Donald Trump's, not Ron DeSantis's. Hell, during Tucker's last week of employment, he was interviewing every certified bugfuck presidential candidate he could find, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Larry Elder. 

It's fine. Nobody cares.

But Jones decided to be real mean to Asa Hutchinson, HOW YOU LIKE THAT, ASA HUTCHINSON?

 It started with the hilarious combative chyron "Hutchinson wants to be pres. Is that a good idea?" and got stupider from there:

“Lawrence Jones, hosting Tucker's old hour on Fox News this week, is not great at this”

— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1682986412 

Jones just kept interrupting Hutchinson, for no reason in particular that we could see. He was strangely mean to Hutchinson about why he's running for president. He was mean to Hutchinson about Hutchinson's support for Ukraine. Maybe when you're subbing for Putin's mouthpiece, you figure you just gotta do that.

Hutchinson acknowledged there was a debate in the GOP over Ukraine, but said there are some like him who think "America needs to lead." To which Jones yelled in reply, "I DON'T THINK IT'S ABOUT THAT, THOUGH, SIR!"

Jones said voters want to know "Where do you stop it at? Do we go to Africa? Do we go to Latin America? What is the red line for you?"

And Asa Hutchinson was like fucking what? What is this guy talking about red lines? Is Vladimir Putin going to invade Africa and Latin America? Fucking what? 

  Jones asked "DOES TAIWAN COUNT AS WELL, SIR?" He seemed to be trying to set up that Republican talking point about how actually China is our greatest enemy. Hutchinson said Taiwan counts "in many different ways."

"SO WE GO TO WAR WITH CHINA THEN?" asked Jones, still combatively, as if he forgot which Republican talking point he was trying to set up three seconds prior.

It was so stupid and bad and it was all over Asa Hutchinson's face that he did not want to be there anymore.

 Here's another clip of Jones being very bad at his temp job, watch it if you want. At one point Hutchinson started actually saying hey dude, if you want to hear my answers, you have to let me say them.

“he tried to hard to do a gotcha interview here and it was just cringe and awkward”

— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1682986412 

At the end, Jones thanked Hutchinson for his time, and Hutchinson just didn't respond. He was over it. This was their faces:

 Next Jones interviewed the mayor of Portland, Oregon, which as all Fox News viewers know is currently a burning hellscape of antifa pronouns. The mayor said no, actually Portland isn't even near the top of the list of unsafe cities. Jones said ACTUALLY he's been in Portland for the last four years, and it is definitely unsafe. Instead of letting the mayor respond, he played a clip of interviews with Portland residents, which featured zero (0) people saying they weren't safe. Then he yelled at the mayor of Portland some more, and they edited it so the mayor of Portland couldn't do any more responding.

Good interview, man!

“lol in the next segment the Portland mayor owned Jones (note how Fox News weirdly and abruptly cut away from the interview without giving the mayor a chance to respond)”

— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1682986412 

Of course, to be extremely fair to Lawrence Jones, while he is grotesquely bad and unequipped for this week's assignment, Fox News viewers are grotesquely bad and unequipped for life, and that is who he has to appeal to.

A new CBS/YouGov poll of "likely GOP primary voters" — which is basically interchangeable with Fox viewers, let's be real — shows that Asa Hutchinson has less than one percent support, but look at this graphic of what those voters are looking for:

Eighty-five percent want a candidate who "challenges woke ideas." Sixty-six percent want someone who "opposes any gun restrictions." Sixty-one percent for "says Trump won in 2020."

And 57 percent of them just want somebody who "makes liberals angry."

These are the stupidest, most worthless, most deeply unserious people this country has ever produced.

That's who anybody sitting in Tucker's seat has to appease while Fox News tries to find some kind of MAGA garbage worthy of filling the seat permanently.

Good night and good luck, you idiots.

Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter right here. 

And once that doesn't exist, I'm also giving things a go at the Mastodon (@evanhurst@newsie.social) and at Post! 

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