RAGE DRIVEN PROFITS

DONALD TRUMP'S VICTORY ISN'T JUST ABOUT POLITICS. A SMALL WAVE OF ENTREPRENEURS HAS FIGURED OUT THAT PARTISANSHIP SELLS IN AREAS FAR BEYOND MEDIA. TUCKER CARLSON'S NEW NICOTINE VENTURE OFFERS THE PERFECT PRISM.

- WILL YAKOWICZ

Lucker Carlson ebulliently enters his barn in Bryant Pond, the small Maine village known for good trout fishing that's now the former Fox News star's headquarters. He glides past the pelt of a big game cat and bookshelves stuffed with a range of historical interests and titles that practically troll the browser, from Mark Tennien's No Secret Is Safe to Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to The Goebbels Diaries.

Fresh off bagging a few woodcocks, he removes a live 28-gauge shotgun round from his hunting jacket and begins hand-grinding coffee beans. It's election day eve, and in a few hours, Carlson, who already voted for Donald Trump via absentee ballot, will get a haircut and fly down to Florida so he can watch the results from Mar-a-Lago with MAGA luminaries such as Elon Musk, Majorie Taylor Greene and, of course, the once and future president.

"I hope we're successful and make a ton of money, but this isn't a business play," says Carlson, dipping his tongue into a small plastic container to retrieve two nicotine pouches.

"This is rage." This is a notable statement for two reasons. First, on a day everyone else in America is focused on politics, Carlson isn't discussing the election-he's talking about the nicotine pouches he tucked between his lips, a brand he has just launched: Alp, of which he owns half, along with his business partner. Second, Carlson uncharacteristically undersells the larger picture in a polarized country: how, increasingly, partisan rage is the business play.