Tucker Carlson Paints A Picture
I didn’t plan on writing about this today (I was originally going to do some more whining about baseball) but decided I didn’t want to wait until next week to do some more whining about Fox News. The back story on this cartoon is kinda convoluted and I’m not exactly sure where to start, so I’m just going to pick the first fact that comes to mind and here it is:
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave Fox News Host and GOP Human Hand Puppet Tucker Carlson surveillance video of the January 6th riot so Tucker could look at the video and put together a show explaining what actually happened that day.
Which off the top of my head, seems pretty much like giving documentary footage from the 1930s and 40s to Joseph Goebbels so he could put together a show explaining what happened during World War 2. Then Joe could tell the rest of us that Germany didn’t actually invade Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia and Greece, the Nazis were just sightseers and tourists engaged in “peaceful chaos.”
McCarthy defended giving Carlson access to the security footage and told the New York Times he did it because he “promised.” Now here’s another quote from McCarthy:
“I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment.”
If McCarthy is so keen on keeping his promises, apparently he’s never promised to not be full of shit.
McCarthy is claiming he thinks everybody should get to make their own judgment and the best way to make that possible is to give the Jan. 6 footage to a Republican propagandist and let him cherry-pick the scenes that make the case he wants to make and in Tucker Carlson’s case, he concluded:
“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress.”
If he really wanted everybody to “make their own judgment” McCarthy could have given the footage to every news organization and let them reach their own conclusions, but he didn’t do that, he gave it to Tucker Carlson.
Now here’s what a judge had to say when she dismissed a slander suit against Carlson and according to the September of 2020 NPR article that follows, she leaned heavily on the arguments made by Fox’s lawyers:
The “ ‘general tenor’ of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not ‘stating actual facts’ about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in ‘exaggeration’ and ‘non-literal commentary.’ ”
“Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statement he makes.”
So when backed into a corner, Fox lawyers defended Carlson by saying reasonable viewers do not believe this guy is “stating actual facts” and that’s the same guy McCarthy chose to sift through security footage and tell America what actually happened.
And now, what actually happened
If you’ve been paying any attention – and I’m guessing Tucker Carlson and Kevin McCarthy hope you haven’t – the cops and courts disagree with Tucker’s conclusion and here’s a story from USA Today which says 950 people have been charged for their roles in a violent riot.
At the time the USA Today story was written — which was January 6th of this year — about 350 individuals had been sentenced and 192 were incarcerated and I’m guessing all 192 wish they’d called Tucker Carlson as a character witness even though Tucker doesn’t seem to have any.
(And now we’ll pause momentarily while we wait for that “lack-of-character” joke to sink in.)
According to the USA Today article, more than 480 defendants pled guilty to government charges and at least 118 pled guilty to felonies, including 52 who pled guilty to assaulting law enforcement officers, so apparently, they thought they did something wrong even if Tucker Carlson doesn’t.
Here’s a link to the USA Today story:
Tucker’s You Really Didn’t See What You Just Saw Special was too much for some Republicans and here’s a story from NBC News in which Mitch McConnell says he agrees with the Capitol Police Chief, Thomas Manger, who denounced Carlson for spreading “offensive and misleading conclusions” about the January 6th insurrection.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis described Carlson’s version of events as “bullshit” and Republican Senator Mike Rounds said he was there that day and “There was violence on Jan. 6” and Republican Senator Mitt Romney said it’s “really sad to see Tucker Carlson go off the rails like that” (which makes me want to ask Mitt, “You just noticed?”) and called Carlson’s version of events “absurd” and “nonsense.”
Anytime you can disgust a bunch of Republican politicians by telling lies, you know you’re really full of shit and someone needs to inform Guinness because Tucker Carlson may have just set a new World’s Record.
OK, that was just Fact Number 1, now here’s Fact Number 2
Because Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for defamation, texts and emails from Fox News employees have now become public including a text from Tucker Carlson about Donald Trump saying: “I hate him passionately.”
Tucker also said: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.”
And: “That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”
Now here’s a picture that ran with an Associated Press article and the picture was taken on July 31, 2022, so after all that negative stuff he said about Trump, it appears Tucker was still willing to yuck it up with him in public:
I’m totally aware that pictures can be deceiving when taken out of context and you should be, too, but I’m also aware that there’s an extremely good chance Tucker Carlson is a Olympic-Gold-Medal-Level phony who will say one thing privately and a different publicly.
Rupert Murdoch has made it clear that Fox News is willing to misinform its viewers if it makes them money, so who knows what Tucker Carlson really believes because it seems pretty clear Tucker Carlson will say whatever he thinks will do him the most good and here’s hoping that this time he miscalculated.
And don’t worry, I’ll do more whining about baseball in the near future.
Lol now do MSNBC. If you can escape your bubble that is. Russel Brand was right, when he said what he did on Bill Mahers show, and you prove his point perfectly. Remember Debbie Wasserman doesn't think you should make money when you are a professional journalist. You got the mouthpiece for the state down pat though.