Tucker Carlson's Stepmother Was An Heiress To The Swanson Frozen Foods Empire – But He Probably Inherited More From His Biological Mother (Who Tried To Disinherit Him)

Last night, Tucker Carlson took the stage at Indiana University as part of a Turning Point USA debate. During the event, he fielded questions from students on everything from abortion and immigration to Ukraine, Israel, and even aliens.

At one point, a student grabbed the mic and declared that Tucker's net worth was $50 million. We never found out where he was headed with that point because Tucker immediately cut him off:

"I'm not worth $50 million. Get off the fucking internet son..."

Within hours, clips of the exchange flooded Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram, collectively racking up millions of views. For example, this one:

Man: "You're worth $50 million …"

Tucker Carlson: "I'm not worth $50 million … get off the f*cking Internet son…"

Man: "You're got real defensive there… Jesus Christ, calm down."

Carlson: "Don't use that phrase! We're done!"pic.twitter.com/hGOHgMYUul

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) October 22, 2025

Ya! Get off the Internet, dork! Go outside, touch some grass, ask someone on a date. What kind of nerd reads articles about celebrity net worths? Don't you know there's porn on the Internet? And probably other cool stuff, too. The only thing worse would be a nerd who built a website dedicated to tracking the net worths of celebrities and then spent sixteen years updating pages that say things like "Tucker Carlson's net worth is $50 million." Just thinking about a person who would do that makes me sick. Anyhoo. Let's talk about Tucker Carlson…

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Fox News Salary, Book Deals & Real Estate

When Tucker Carlson was fired from Fox News in 2023, his salary was at least $10 million per year. Some reports peg the number at $20 million, but we believe the lower number is accurate. Before he took over Bill O'Reilly's timeslot in 2017, Tucker was making $2 million a year. After sliding into O'Reilly's slot and actually blowing his predecessor's ratings away, Fox bumped Tucker's salary to $6 million. In February 2021, he signed a three-year extension that boosted him to $10 million. At the time of his firing, he was reportedly working on another extension that would have kept him at the network through 2029. This contract MAY have bumped him into the $20 million annual range.

Tucker was fired in April 2023 in the wake of Fox's $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. Had Tucker chosen to stay under contract for the next 2.5 years, he likely could have made the $25 million he was still owed, but he would not have been able to work anywhere else during that period. Impressively, Tucker walked and, therefore, essentially left $25 million on the table to launch his own network, which mostly broadcasts on Twitter.

Outside of his Fox salary, Tucker supplemented his income with book advances and royalties. In 2017, right around when he took over from Bill O'Reilly, Tucker reportedly landed a $15 million book deal covering two books. He was also the co-founder of The Daily Caller website, but he sold his stake in 2020.

Tucker and his wife, Susan, own a bunch of real estate. They own property in rural Maine and an island compound in Florida. The Florida property is especially impressive. Tucker and Susan bought their first Gasparilla, Florida, property in 2020 for $2.9 million. In 2022, they bought the property next door for $5.5 million.

Swanson Frozen Foods Fortune

Outside of his impressive personal success, people are quick to point out that Tucker also comes from a wealthy family. And in reality, it's actually TWO wealthy families. Furthermore, according to one internet rumor, his mother was an heiress to a billion-dollar fortune connected to the Swanson frozen food empire!!! Is that true? Ehhhh. Here's the deal…

Tucker Carlson's adoptive stepmother was Patricia Caroline Swanson. Patricia married Tucker's father, Richard Carlson, in 1979 when Tucker was 10 years old. Patricia's father was Gilbert Carl Swanson. Gilbert was one of two children born to Swedish immigrant Carl A. Swanson.

Carl Swanson arrived in the United States in 1896 at the age of 17. He spoke no English. I mean literally no English. To the point where, when he stepped off the boat, an immigration officer found a tag around Carl's neck with this message:

"Carl Swanson, Swedish. Send me to Omaha. I speak no English."

Three years later, Carl and a partner started a business buying eggs, milk, and poultry from farmers and selling the goods to local hotels and grocery stores around Omaha.

By the late 1930s, Carl A. Swanson's small Omaha produce business had become C.A. Swanson & Sons, one of the Midwest's largest poultry suppliers. When Carl died in 1949, the company was grossing about $60 million a year, an extraordinary figure (roughly $815 million in today's dollars) for a family-run food processor. His sons, Gilbert C. Swanson and W. Clarke Swanson, took over and quickly expanded production, supplying chicken to U.S. military bases during World War II and later shifting to the booming post-war grocery trade.

In 1953, a Swanson executive had an idea that would revolutionize the world. The idea was to package a pre-cooked turkey dinner — complete with mashed potatoes, peas, and stuffing — in a divided aluminum tray that could be heated in the oven. AKA, the frozen dinner. The idea exploded. That first year, Swanson sold only 5,000 units. The next year? 10 million. By the mid-1950s, the company was selling tens of millions of frozen meals annually and generating close to $100 million in yearly revenue (roughly $1.2 billion today), making it one of the most profitable food businesses in the country.

That success drew the attention of Campbell Soup Company, which was seeking to move beyond canned goods. In 1955, Campbell acquired C.A. Swanson & Sons in a major all-stock deal—one of the largest food acquisitions of its time. The sale price was never publicly disclosed, but the Swanson family received a large block of Campbell stock, immediately placing them among the wealthiest families in the Midwest. By the time Gilbert C. Swanson died in 1968, the family's known holdings in Campbell Soup, Coca-Cola, and other companies were estimated to be worth more than $100 million. And yes, when adjusting for inflation, $100 million in 1968 is worth the same as around $1 billion today. More like $930 million. But you could see how someone might assume Patricia was an heiress to a "billion-dollar" fortune. However.

Before his death, Gilbert established a web of family trusts and charitable foundations to manage the fortune for his children—Gilbert Jr., Jay, Patricia, and Carla. Through those trusts, Patricia inherited a share of the Swanson wealth and lived comfortably for decades on investment income. When she married journalist and diplomat Richard "Dick" Carlson in 1979, she brought those resources into the marriage. Soon after, she legally adopted Tucker and Buckley Carlson, making the boys part of the Swanson family by law—if not by blood.

Patricia's exact inheritance has never been disclosed, and for years it wasn't clear whether any of that money reached Tucker or Buckley after her death in November 2023. But newly filed court documents in Nebraska's Douglas County District Court suggest that it did. In September 2024, Patricia's biological daughter, Roberta "Bo" Hunt—Tucker's adoptive stepsister—filed a lawsuit against Tucker, Buckley, Richard Carlson, and the First National Bank of Omaha, which serves as trustee of the Swanson family trusts.

According to the complaint, Tucker and Buckley have been receiving monthly payments of $2,414 each from the Gilbert C. Swanson Family Residuary Trust, while their father was receiving about $11,000 per month from a related "Sprinkle Trust." Hunt's lawsuit argued that the trusts were intended to benefit only "lineal descendants born in lawful wedlock" of Gilbert Swanson, meaning that Tucker and Buckley, as adopted non-blood descendants, may have been improperly included. She also asked the court to stop those payments and order repayment of roughly $21,700 each to Tucker and Buckley and $99,000 to their father.

Tucker's father, Dick Carlson, died in March 2025, at the age of 84. One can presume that his $11,000 monthly payment from the Swanson family "Sprinkle Trust" is now going to Tucker and Buckley. If true, that means Tucker receives around $8,000 per month as a dividend from various Swanson-family trusts.

The case remains pending, but it marks the first public confirmation that Tucker Carlson receives ongoing income from the Swanson family trusts, directly linking him to the frozen-food fortune that helped make his stepmother's family one of the Midwest's great industrial dynasties.

Tucker's Biological Mother

As it turns out, Tucker's biological mother was ALSO an heiress. Tucker's biological mother was Lisa McNear Lombardi, an artist and free spirit who came from serious old-money wealth on the West Coast. Her mother, Mary Nickel James, was a fourth-generation San Franciscan descended from two of California's great pioneer fortunes — the Miller and McNear families.

Lisa's maternal great-grandfather was Henry Miller, known in his era as "The Cattle King." At the time of his death in 1916, Miller owned roughly three million acres of rangeland stretching across California, Oregon, Washington, and Nevada, along with one million head of cattle — one of the largest private land empires in American history. He built his fortune through the 19th-century cattle boom, controlling territory that extended from Mexico to the Pacific Northwest.

Another of Lisa's great-grandfathers, George McNear, was dubbed "The Grain King" for his massive grain export operations at Port Costa, California. Between the Miller cattle holdings and McNear's grain fortune, the family's combined land and agricultural wealth made them one of California's most prominent pioneer dynasties.

Lisa's mother, Mary Nickel James, spent her childhood at the family's Los Banos ranch, which still encompassed about one million acres during her youth, before much of it was sold off. She attended UC Berkeley and came from a world of polo clubs, country estates, and San Francisco social registries. Here is her obituary from 1993:

After marrying journalist Richard Carlson in the 1960s, Lisa McNear Lombardi became Lisa Carlson, and the couple had two sons — Tucker and Buckley. The marriage, however, collapsed when Tucker was around six years old. According to court records and interviews Tucker has given, Lisa left the family in 1976 and moved abroad, effectively cutting off contact with her children. In 1979, Richard Carlson remarried Patricia Swanson.

Lisa went on to reinvent herself as Lisa Vaughn, an artist who spent decades living between California, the South of France, and South Carolina. She was part of the Los Angeles art scene in the 1970s, socializing with painters and musicians and, at one point, working with the artist David Hockney. Friends later described her as bohemian, eccentric, and politically liberal — very different from the conservative figure her son would become.

When Lisa Vaughn died in 2011, she left behind a small estate that became the center of an unexpected legal battle. Though she had grown up wealthy, most of her inheritance was tied up in oil and gas royalties on roughly 70,000 acres of family land in rural California, assets originally stemming from the Miller and McNear family holdings.

At first, it was believed that Lisa died without a will, so her estate was split into three parts: Her widow and her two estranged sons, Tucker and Buckley. A surprise came soon thereafter when a handwritten will surfaced in which Lisa intentionally left each of her sons $1. That's the cleanest way to leave someone out of your will. If you simply don't mention the person in your will, they can claim they were forgotten and reassert a claim on the estate.

Tucker and Buckley challenged the document in California probate court, alleging it was either fraudulent or invalid. After years of litigation, a 2019 appellate ruling sided with the Carlson brothers, allowing them to retain their share of the estate — and with it, the mineral rights that had quietly appreciated into seven figures.

The bioys initially believed those rights were worth only about $125,000. But they later discovered that the royalties were worth millions — at least $2.5 million, according to court filings.

So there you have it. Everything you could ever have wanted to know about Tucker Carlson's net worth, income, and family wealth. Now get off the internet!