According to a report from The New York Times’ Ben Smith, beloved Fox News host Tucker Carlson may not be as much of a conservative as he leads viewers to believe. Smith claims that Carlson, who is known for his quick-witted bashing of far-left media figures and politicians has actually helped feed them gossip for years.

According to Mediaite:

New York Times media columnist Ben Smith posted an article about “one of Washington’s open secrets,” that Fox News’ top-rated host, Tucker Carlson, frequently gossips with the same liberal media outlets he denounces nightly on his show, on topics ranging from former President Donald Trump to Fox News’ “tumultuous internal politics.”

“Tucker Carlson Calls Journalists ‘Animals.’ He’s Also Their Best Source,” was Smith’s headline, detailing how multiple journalists described the juicy info Carlson fed them over the years:

He’s the go-to guy for sometimes-unflattering stories about Donald J. Trump and for coverage of the internal politics of Fox News (not to mention stories about Mr. Carlson himself). I won’t talk here about any off-the-record conversations I may have had with him. But 16 other journalists (none from The Times; it would put my colleagues in a weird position if I asked them) told me on background that he has been, as three of them put it, “a great source.”

Among the anecdotes Smith shared was one about an excerpt from a new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender, in which he describes Carlson sending Trump’s calls to voice mail after his first debate with Biden — the one where Trump frequently interrupted his opponent — and then finally picked up. Bender’s book retells the conversation with direct quotes, but, as Smith noted, the author “declined to comment on the sourcing that allowed him to so precisely reconstruct a conversation only two people were privy to.”

Recently, Carlson has caught flack from journalists across the aisle for claiming the Jan. 6th Capitol riot was actually instigated by covert FBI agents.