TUCKER2

12/18 see t carlson for older

2020?

SEE THREE

see CALLER

see new 520 whisperer trump

see bad trinity

hit man status on duckworth character assassination

320 bak ends icymi  FBI's...

1119 TAG tukr on impeach defense (plus hannity and ingraham core of fox that keeps base from collapse?)

// djt, too much to track?

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bad trinity: trump base held together by hannity, tucker and ingram?

every once in a while tucker seems to grow a spine/conscience, but never lasts

see bloviator?

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tucker attacks duckworth double amputee vet

https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlson-doubles-down-on-tammy-duckworth-attacks-calls-her-a-coward-and-fraud

no lnx pix

vid

DB

Tucker Carlson Doubles Down on Duckworth Attacks, Calls Her a ‘Coward’ and ‘Fraud’

CHICKENHAWK

“Keep in mind, she is also described as a hero,” Carlson scoffed, adding: “Yet Duckworth is too afraid to defend her own statements on a TV show, what a coward.”

Justin Baragona

Contributing Editor

Published Jul. 07, 2020

A night after saying Iraq War veteran Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) hates America, Fox News host Tucker Carlson doubled down on his attacks, describing the Purple Heart recipient who lost her legs in combat as a “coward” and “fraud.”

During his Monday night broadcast, the primetime conservative star played an abbreviated clip of Duckworth saying there should be a “national dialogue” over the possible removal of statues, touting it as proof that she supposedly wants to “get rid of George Washington” while questioning her patriotism.

“You’re not supposed to criticize Tammy Duckworth in any way because she once served in the military,” he added. “Most people just ignore her. But when Duckworth does speak in public, you’re reminded what a deeply silly and unimpressive person she is.”[// trump put downs]

Duckworth would quickly respond via Twitter, wondering if the longtime TV personality would “want to walk a mile” in her legs and then tell her whether or not she loves America.

On Tuesday night, with Duckworth’s fiery response still gathering tons of attention, Carlson fired back by once again calling her love of country into question.

“Senator Duckworth was asked if we should tear down statues of George Washington,” the Fox host said. “We played that for you last night and we noted how grotesque it was. Only someone who hates the country would suggest ripping down monuments to its founder.”

Claiming that the Democratic lawmaker was unable to disagree with his argument, Carlson then added: “Instead she questioned our right to criticize her at all since she wasonce injured while serving in the Illinois National Guard. That’s what passes for an argument in modern identity politics.”

Repeatedly asserting that Duckworth believes that Washington is a “dead traitor,” he went on to say that she has “contempt” for him despite the fact that he “paid his dues” in the military and was a “combat veteran.”

“George Washington was a genuinely great man,” he sneered. “But to morons like Tammy Duckworth, Washington was just some old white guy who needs to be erased.”

He would go on to note that he reached out to Duckworth’s team to see if she would come on his show for a “vigorous reasonable exchange” of ideas, but they declined unless Carlson was willing to issue a public apology.

“Keep in mind, she is also described as a hero,” Carlson scoffed, adding: “Yet Duckworth is too afraid to defend her own statements on a TV show, what a coward. Tammy Duckworth is also a fraud.”

Carlson wrapped up his segment by calling the Illinois senator a “callous hack,” accusing her of mistreating veterans, and then comparing her to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)—a favorite target of Carlson’s, who he regularly claims hates America.

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tucker attacks duckworth double amputee vet

https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlson-doubles-down-on-tammy-duckworth-attacks-calls-her-a-coward-and-fraud

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chickenhawk? TD defends army officer twin who obeyed subpoena in impeachment

Carlson used deceptive edits to accuse veteran Sen. Tammy Duckworth of hating America

07/07/20

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mma 720

• Carlson told his audience,“You will need a protector. That protector must be the Republican Party.” Carlson also called Black Lives Matter protests a disease: “Minneapolis was our Wuhan.”
• There are now 10 QAnon-supporting congressional candidates who have made it to the November elections -- and every indication is that more are on the way.
• Sarah Sanders said that Trump doesn't get credit for his COVID-19 response: “He got government out of the way."
• Ben Shapiro claimed that the hit movie Get Out is racist against white people. Shapiro also said that Trump tweeted a video with his supporter shouting "white power" because the sound was off on his computer.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/bye-bye-tucker-far-right-fox-news-host-loses-multiple-advertisers-following-unhinged-rants-against-black-lives-matter/

gaffs in BLM?

mma 6/20 big ad drops:

According to approximated advertising revenue obtained and analyzed by Media Matters, Carlson’s show generated about $100 million in advertising revenue for Fox News in 2017.Carlson’s revenue plummeted following the advertiser exodus in 2018. The effect was so significant that if you combined the total advertising revenue his show generated in 2018 and 2019, the combined amount is still less than what Carlson’s show earned in 2017. Theloss is anywhere between $70 million and $80 million.

Carlson’s show is not the only Fox News program that experienced big dips in the number of paid commercials and revenue either.

Bottom line: Fox News has lost a significant amount of advertising revenue.

Much more than advertising revenue is at stake for Fox News this year, though. Fox also has to worry about its contract negotiations with cable providers. This year, Fox News is renegotiating cable contracts that account for about 65% of its subscriber fee revenue.

Fox News actually gets the majority of its revenue from subscriber fees, not advertising revenue.

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tucker Carlson says there’s no ‘evidence’ coronavirus lockdowns work — but he’s totally wrong

Alex Henderson

Tucker Carlson is among the far-right opinion hosts at Fox News who has been critical of the stay-at-home orders issued by governors in the United States in response to the…

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https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/how-tucker-carlson-manipulates-president-trump

Trump apparently changed his mind about whether the United States should fund the World Health Organization in response to a monologue from Fox News host Tucker Carlson. It’s at least the third time this year that Carlson’s program has triggered major changes in U.S. policy, an indication of just how effective the Fox prime-time star is at manipulating the president.

Axios’ Jonathan Swan reported Sunday that Trump, who declared last month that he was freezing the United States’ $400 million annual payment to the WHO, had been “on the brink of announcing” he would restore roughly 10% of the funding up until “late last week.” But then someone leaked the draft of the announcement to Carlson, who broke the news on his Friday-night show, denounced the WHO’s handling of the novel coronavirus, and argued against the funding. Carlson’s appeal seems to have reached the president, as Swan wrote that in light of the segment, Trump was now “leaning toward preserving his total funding cut.” And indeed, on Monday, Trump sent a letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus threatening to permanently pull all U.S. funding if the organization did not “commit to major substantive improvements in the next 30 days."

Many Fox personalities have used the president’s obsession with their network to influence U.S. public affairs in recent years, dictating everything from border-wall construction contracts to federal pardons to government shutdowns. But Carlson is better at this game than any of his colleagues. Twice this year, he staked out a position drastically different from virtually everyone else at Fox -- on whether the U.S. should escalate with Iran and whether the administration should take the coronavirus more seriously. And each time, he reportedly succeeded in shifting Trump’s thinking -- and federal policy.

Carlson is particularly adept at winning over the president because of his unique grasp of Trump’s psychology. Trump is a paranoid xenophobe who is fixated on his grievances and cannot handle even the slightest criticism, and Carlson crafts his argument accordingly. He almost never knocks Trump directly for his decisions, instead railing against the purportedly nefarious advisers who must have led the president astray. And his framing of the issues constantly plays to Trump’s hatred of foreigners, Democrats, political correctness, and the media.

Friday’s WHO segment provides a good case study in how Carlson exploits Trump’s weaknesses to shift his opinions.

[vid]

carlson began his monologue by presenting the potential partial restoration of funding as a surprising decision -- “bet you didn’t see this coming” -- and setting it up as a dispute between “the Trump administration” and Trump himself. He did this by contrasting the pending move with the president’s own harsh criticism of the WHO.

“Last month, you'll remember, the administration cut off U.S. funding at the president's direction. That amounts to about $400 million a year,” he said. “They did this, as the president explained, because the World Health Organization badly mishandled and lied about the coronavirus pandemic and is of course nauseatingly subservient to the government of China.”

He then pinned the pending decision on Trump’s advisers, saying, “We're told the president supposedly has agreed to sign the letter, if he hasn't already. It would be interesting to know who convinced him to do that.”

Carlson read from the draft letter, which states that the U.S. agrees to pay as much as China does. He then blamed the State Department, saying this would happen “if the State Department gets its way,” before arguing that the U.S. still won’t have as much influence as China with the WHO.

Next, Carlson reminded his audience -- including the president himself -- why Trump opposed the WHO funding in the first place.“Now, there are certainly many reasons that the president was deeply skeptical of the World Health Organization in the first place and stopped funding it,” he said. “Director Tedros Adhanom has thoroughly disgraced himself and his organization for years, but particularly throughout this coronavirus epidemic.”

In particular, Carlson homed in on the WHO’s criticism of Trump’s travel restrictions. Trump has described his decision to restrict some travel from China as a crucial move which he baselessly claims saved “hundreds of thousands” of American lives, and his political career has been centered in part on castigating claims of racism as “political correctness.” Carlson knows this, and so he sneered that the WHO had “attacked” the restrictions as “unnecessary and needless to say, racist.”

Carlson went on to castigate the WHO for supporting “Chinese propaganda,” which “killed people,” particularly criticizing Tedros’ delay in “calling the virus a pandemic when it clearly was.” In blaming the WHO, Carlson carefully avoided holding Trump accountable for ignoring months of warnings about the virus from U.S. public health agencies, his advisers, and the intelligence community, and ignored Trump’s own praise of the Chinese government’s response in the early weeks of the virus’ spread. Again, when Carlson is trying to influence Trump, he does not criticize him.

Carlson then provided a scapegoat whom he suggested was responsible for the possible partial restoration of WHO funding. “And yet, there is one person who has long, always through thick and thin, been a fervent fan of Tedros, and that's Dr. Anthony Fauci,” he said, pointing a finger at the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a frequent target of the program. After airing a clip of Fauci praising Tedros, Carlson concluded, “Well, doubtless, Dr. Fauci will be thrilled with tonight's news that we're going to continue to fund the World Health Organization.”

After the monologue, Fox medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel joined Carlson to discuss the potential restoration of WHO funding. For the most part, both stuck to the same talking points from Carlson’s monologue, praising Trump, blaming the pending decision on advisers like Fauci, and highlighting the importance of travel restrictions. “There are people around him whose instincts are reliably bad as his are on target,” Carlson concluded of the president.

But notably, the interview featured a direct appeal from Siegel to Trump to reverse the pending decision. “I have a message for President Trump tonight, too. Please don't sign anything that restores funding to the World Health Organization before there's a huge overhaul of the World Health Organization,” Siegel said. “Yes,” Carlson replied. While engage in this sort of direct appeal to the president, Carlson largely avoids that strategy in favor of more subtle commentary, using the second-person to make every viewer a stand-in for Trump. But this time it appears to have succeeded, as Trump’s letter to Tedros demanded “major substantive improvements” before funding could be restored.

Carlson employed similar tactics in trying to convince the president not to further escalate with Iran following the U.S. killing of Quds Force commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. He argued on his January 2 broadcast that Trump himself is “wary” of war, but may have been “outmaneuvered” by advisers who are “reckless and incompetent,” like former national security adviser John Bolton. And he leaned on the president’s xenophobia, saying that those advisers “are the very same ones demanding that you ignore the invasion of America now in progress from the south.”Carlson’s commentary diverged dramatically from his colleagues, but reportedly shifted the president’s thinking in his direction.

Likewise, the March 9 Carlson monologue credited with helping convince Trump to briefly take the coronavirus more seriously includes no direct criticism of the president. Even as Carlson said that “people you trust, people you probably voted for, have spent weeks minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem,” he avoided calling Trump out, thus making it far more likely that the president would listen to him. And the monologue was filled with xenophobic references to the “Chinese coronavirus” and attacks on Trump’s frequent target, the “corrupt media establishment.”

Carlson appears to have figured out the secret formula to winning over the president through his television show: No criticism, attacks on his advisers, and a spoonful of racism to help the medicine go down.

https://www.mediamatters.org/trumprussia/richard-grenells-flynn-unmasking-noninformation-campaign

Right-wing media froth over “Obamagate” and bully press to play along

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 05/15/20 2:15 PM EDT

Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, a former Fox News contributor and Republican Party stalwart who was appointed to lead the U.S. intelligence community because of his loyalty to President Donald Trump, provided a document of his own devising to Congress on Wednesday. It promptly leaked to the press. Republicans, including Trump himself, immediately seized on the content in the document as evidence of vast Obama administration malfeasance. Fox hosts spent the next two days incessantly declaring that it vindicated their conspiracy theories, turning their attention away from the coronavirus pandemic. And more credible media outlets, buffeted by the partisan claims, responded with a flurry of stories, at times failing to properly contextualize the story.

Trumpists have declared Grenell’s document a smoking gun showing that disgraced former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty for lying to the FBI about his calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, was a victim of an Obama administration conspiracy, and Fox is hyping that narrative with wall-to-wall coverage. In reality, the document provides almost no information whatsoever. It is simply a list of senior Obama administration officials who received Flynn’s name after they followed the National Security Agency’s standard process and asked the agency to unmask the identity of an individual generically referenced in an NSA report they were authorized to read. It does nothing to establish that any of the individuals named acted improperly in any way -- or even how many unmaskings were related to the Kislyak calls.

We’ve seen misinformation campaigns, where false or deceptive information is distributed, and disinformation campaigns, when that distribution is done with the full knowledge of its inaccuracy. Grenell is engaged in a noninformation campaign. He deliberately crafted and propagated a data point so vague that it is virtually meaningless on its own. But pro-Trump partisans -- particularly at Fox -- have easily picked up, misread (deliberately or not), and promoted the point, aligining it with their wild assumptions. Those furious misinterpretations have in turn spurred attention from the mainstream press, driving the conspiratorial thinking into the broader public.

This is an intentional plan that corresponds with what the president wants from his director of national intelligence. “Trump hopes enough information will be released by his intelligence appointees to muddy the waters and lend a patina of confusion about what Mr. Obama may have done, according to people familiar with his thinking,” The New York Times reported Thursday. As the president struggles in reelection polling, Trump and his Fox propagandists are using the Flynn story to try to damage the credibility of former President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s 2020 opponent.

Grenell’s noninformation campaign is the latest salvo in a years-long campaign by Trump and his Fox propagandists to turn the Russia investigation inside out, presenting the Trump associates who pleaded or were found guilty under its auspices as victims and those involved in carrying out the probe as criminals.

With vast swathes of the federal bureaucracy in the hands of partisans selected for their loyalty to the president, including the DNI and Justice Department, we should expect more of these releases -- and perhaps more dangerous actions -- in the coming months, as Trump’s supporters try to push the political debate away from the ongoing pandemic that has killed more than 80,000 Americans so far in order to secure his reelection.

The Trumpist defense of Michael Flynn

Michael Flynn is a retired general who served as Trump’s national security adviser during the 2016 presidential campaign, the transition, and the early days of his White House tenure. At various points during that timeline, Flynn was also assigned by Trump to find the Hillary Clinton emails he had publicly asked Russia to procure; was under investigation by the FBI, which was concerned with whether he was serving as a witting or unwitting agent of the Russian government; was illegally acting as an unregistered agent of the Turkish government, for which he was reportedly involved in discussions of a kidnapping plot; and was seeking Trump’s approval for a plan to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia after working as a paid adviser for the group behind the proposal.

On December 29, 2016, the day the Obama administration placed sanctions on Russia in response to its interference in the presidential election, Flynn called Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and urged him that Russia not retaliate for those sanctions. Flynn was fired as Trump’s national security adviser after reports surfaced that he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about those conversations, which opened Flynn up to blackmail from the Russian government. He would later repeatedly plead guilty as part of Mueller’s probe to lying to the FBI about those calls before renouncing that plea last year.

The position on Flynn among Trumpists like Fox host Sean Hannity is that he is an American hero, that there was no good-faith reason to probe any of his actions during that period, and that anyone involved in such an effort was a participant in the broad-ranging Obama administration conspiracy to take down Trump, which the president terms “OBAMAGATE.”

Their argument features Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak in two ways: They argue that the FBI’s interview with Flynn was a nefarious “setup” and suggest that the leak about the conversation from a “senior government official” to The Washington Post’s David Ignatius for his 2017 column, which brought the call into public light, was an illegal attempt to take down Flynn and Trump by someone who had improperly “unmasked” his identity from intelligence intercepts.

William Barr’s Justice Department showed last week that the Trump administration is putting the force of the federal government behind Fox’s conspiracy theories when it filed a dubious and virtually unprecedented motion seeking to drop the government’s case against Flynn, citing the FBI’s interview tactics. And on Wednesday, Grenell tried to use his own power as the director of national intelligence to provide grist in support of the other fork of the Flynn defense.

“Unmasking” and what Grenell’s document shows

On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Grenell had declassified and provided to the Justice Department what the paper described as “an Obama-era document related to President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn” and “a list of Obama administration officials who sought to learn the identities of Trump associates swept up in surveillance of foreign officials.” Later that day, Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson sent a letter to Grenell and Barr asking for the document. Grenell provided it to the senators on Wednesday, and it was immediately leaked to CBS News’ Catherine Herridge, a former Fox reporter whose work often promotes Republican talking points. Herridge then published the letter on Twitter. (The document did not turn out to be precisely what the Times had reported. It had been generated on May 4, not during the “Obama era,” and dealt solely with cases involving Flynn, not “Trump associates” more generally.)

In NSA reports derived from the legal surveillance of foreign targets, analysts anonymize (“mask”) the names of U.S. persons to protect their privacy. It is routine for senior officials to ask the NSA to reveal (“unmask”) those identities in cases where they believe that information is necessary to understand the intelligence. The NSA has a standard procedure for doing this, including a review of the justification of the person seeking the unmasking. For context, Trump administration officials sought and received the unmasking of U.S. persons from the NSA more than 10,000 times in 2019 and nearly 17,000 times in 2018.

The document is a list created at Grenell’s request of several dozen “officials who submitted requests” to the NSA between Trump’s election and the end of January 2017 to unmask an identity which turned out to be Flynn, as detailed in an attached memorandum to Grenell from NSA Director Paul Nakasone. It provides the names of the officials, which include then-Vice President Biden, Cabinet secretaries, and intelligence agency leaders, and the date on which their requests were processed. It is the second version of the document -- as Nakasone detailed, the list was originally provided in alphabetical order but revised to be chronological.

That’s it.

Contrary to the insinuations from the right-wing figures, the document provides no evidence that any single unmasking was related to Flynn’s calls with Kislyak. In fact, the record suggests none of them were the original unmasking that first discovered Flynn had made the call, as that one was done by the FBI from its own intercept, not the NSA’s. Nor does it show that Flynn was in some way targeted -- by definition, unmasking occurs when senior administration officials don’t know the name of an American referenced in an intelligence report.

Indeed, there is no indication in the document that anyone listed behaved inappropriately -- in fact, it makes clear that the Obama-era unmaskings happened by the book. “Each individual was an authorized recipient of the original report and the unmasking was approved through NSA’s standard process, which includes a review of the justification for the request,” it states. It also points out that the NSA cannot confirm that any of the persons who requested the unmaskings eventually saw the information.

Grenell’s noninformation plot

Grenell is totally unqualified for his post. While previous occupants of his position ran intelligence agencies, he at most was a consumer of their products during a brief stint as U.S. ambassador to Germany. What he brings to the table instead, along with unswerving loyalty to the president, is broad experience in public relations and shaping news cycles, which he honed as a spokesperson for Republican politicians and for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, a strategic communications consultant for domestic and foreign clients, a Fox contributor, and a notably unhinged Twitter troll.

Grenell personally requested, sought revisions to, declassified, and provided the document to Congress in precisely this form, showing precisely what he wanted to become public.

If he wanted the document to include more information -- by for example, including the actual documents for which Flynn’s name was unmasked, or summaries thereof -- it would. Without that, despite the right-wing chorus linking Grenell’s document to Flynn’s Kislyak calls, it doesn’t provide evidence that any single unmasking had anything to do with them.In fact the majority of the unmaskings predate the calls and thus could not be related. Indeed, it doesn’t even indicate that Flynn was a participant in the intercepts used in the intelligence reports in which his name was unmasked, as the New York Times’ Charlie Savage points out:

If Grenell had wanted the document to include less information -- by, for example, limiting the date range to after Flynn’s December 29 calls with Kislyak, which would reduce the list from 39 names to only eight -- it would.

What he produced is a very long list of names that maximized its impact, with no information whatsoever that any of them were involved in something the least bit inappropriate. That is, presumably, exactly what he wanted to do.

Perhaps Grenell has no evidence of wrongdoing, and few or none of the unmaskings reference the Kislyak calls (which is not implausible, as the FBI derived and distributed its own intercepts of the call with no masking as part of their already in-progress counterintelligence probe of Flynn). In that case, he’s declassified and released this information for a political purpose.

Perhaps he does have that evidence, but isn’t releasing it for now so he can continue to dribble documents out and generate more news stories as the presidential election approaches. In that case, he’s withholding that information for a political purpose.

Fox’s propagandists understand that their role in this noninformation campaign is to fill in the gaps left by the document with feverish, often fact-free speculation. Fox’s Tucker Carlson described Flynn’s unmasking as a “domestic spying operation” that was “hidden under the pretext of national security,” and that the Obama administration officials involved are “amoral creeps” who committed “felonies” and should be “punished.” His prime-time colleague Hannity by asking, “What did Barack Hussein Obama know and when did he know it? Tonight, we will unravel the biggest abuse of power scandal in American history.” He also attacked Biden for “lying” about the story and claimed on Wednesday that if the officials involved in Flynn’s unmasking don’t face “justice,” “the great American republic will disintegrate before your eyes.” Despite how little information the Grenell document provides, they are convinced that it vindicates their conspiracy theories.

Meanwhile, Fox personalities are attacking the mainstream press for not obsessing over the story, with Hannity arguing that this proves they are “Democratic shills.” On Friday, Trump himself picked up that angle, praising the Fox morning show for “covering, supremely, the greatest political scandal in the history of the United States, OBAMAGATE,” while pillorying CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times as “Fake News” for failing to do so.

It’s no coincidence that Trump and Fox are trying to bully the mainstream press into giving the story more attention. They are counting on journalists to repeat the failures of the 2016 electionand flood the zone with context-free scandal coverage that dirties up the president’s opponent. That’s the play Trump is calling, and the leaders of the Justice Department and intelligence community are eagerly supporting the effort, and will likely continue dropping noninformation and disinformation until Election Day.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trumps-flunkies-are-trying-to-scapegoat-anthony-fauci-but-we-all-know-whos-really-to-blame/

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amanda

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Trump’s flunkies are trying to scapegoat Anthony Fauci — but we all know who’s really to blame

Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony S. Fauci addresses his remarks and urges citizens to continue to follow the President’s coronavirus guidelines during a coronavirus (COVID-19) briefing Wednesday, April 22, 2020, in the James S. Brady White House Press Briefing Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon May 13, 2020

Just a month ago, I predicted that Donald Trump and his lickspittles in Congress and right-wing media were setting up Dr. Anthony Fauci as their scapegoat for Trump’s massive failures. (That admittedly wasn’t difficult, since the far right has been attacking Fauci all along.) Now here we are, with the death toll from the novel coronavirus soaring past 83,000 and the unemployment rate at 15% (and likely closer to 20%) and, sure enough, some of the worst Trump flunkies are looking to blame the sober-minded infectious disease expert who’s been working tirelessly on the coronavirus problem, despite having the worst possible boss imaginable.

Some on the right, in their ludicrous efforts to depict Trump as blameless (and almost hapless), are painting Fauci as an all-powerful mastermind who is somehow controlling the government against the president’s will — and even suggesting he’s faking the scientific understanding of how contagious the coronavirus is.

On Tuesday, Fauci testified before a Republican-controlled Senate committee — after Trump blocked him from appearing before a committee in the Democratic-majority House — and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky did his best to paint the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as some kind of ur-authority who has trumped the will of elected officials.

“I think we ought to have a little bit of humility in our belief that we know what’s best for the economy, and as much as I respect you, Dr. Fauci, I don’t think you’re the end-all,” Paul told Dr. Fauci. “I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make the decision.”

The problem, of course, is that no one has actually said that Dr. Fauci is the person who makes the decisions. Except, that is, for right-wing conspiracy theorists who are trying to claim that the president of the United States isn’t responsible for any of this. Fauci himself pointed this out.

“I have never made myself out to be the ‘end-all,'” he calmly replied, noting that he’s “a scientist, a physician and a public health official” whose job is to give advice about those matters, but never to “give advice about economic things.”

This is the paradox of Trumpian authoritarianism. On one hand, Trump ran on the promise that “I alone can fix it“, but from the second he set foot in the Oval Office, he and his supporters have depicted him as a helpless child being controlled by a nefarious “deep state” that is working against him. Now the narrative forming against Fauci holds that he somehow manipulated Trump or controlled his decisions on handling the coronavirus.

None of that is true, of course. Fauci didn’t tell Trump to ignore months of warning that the coronavirus was coming. Fauci didn’t force Trump to blow off ramping up the U.S. capacity to deal with the virus, and he certainly didn’t force Trump to interfere with efforts to institute widespread testing. Fauci did indeed recommend the lockdowns, as did public health experts in nearly every country in the world — but only as a way to buy the U.S. time to institute better mitigation strategies. It wasn’t Fauci’s fault that Trump proceeded to waste the next six weeks tweeting and ranting at reporters during press conferences. Fauci certainly played no role in the Republican decision to reject and stonewall the kind of economic policies required to counteract the impact of the virus, further aggravating the already terrible economic impact of this pandemic.

All Fauci did was look at the evidence, and tell Trump how many people would get sick and die without implementing social distancing efforts. Trump and other political leaders always had it in their power to say, screw it, let them die. (Though there’s no reason to think that heartless strategy would have saved the economy.) Trump was too much of a coward to embrace some Malthusian “herd immunity” approach from the beginning, and too lazy and stupid to take the measures that were necessary to make the lockdowns work the way they were supposed to.

Trump’s cowardice is hardly unique, however. None of the right-wing advocates of the “do nothing” strategy are willing to confront how deadly it will be to ignore the science completely and “reopen” the country as if there was no deadly virus to contend with. (Which is already starting to spike upward in areas outside major cities.)

Instead, they’re using the same playbook they have used for decades against climate change science: Deny that the scientists know what they’re talking about and imply that ignoramus couch potatoes somehow know more than people who actually study things.

“Is Tony Fauci right about the science? Do we have any particular reason to think he is right?” Fox News Tucker Carlson said Tuesday night, in a segment in which he scoffed at the idea that reopening schools would spread the coronavirus.

It’s worth taking a step back and understanding what Carlson is doing here: He’s literally trying to argue that there’s meaningful controversy over how viruses spread. Whatever rhetorical tricks he employs to make this sound smarter than it is, in the end it’s germ-theory denialism, just as the “just asking questions” trick around climate science is climate-change denialism.

The reason we know schools spread disease is not because of untested, esoteric scientific spitballing. That airborne viruses spread from person to person through close contact is one of the most well-established scientific facts in all of human history. Even small children know that you get sick from things like the flu by coming in contact with other people who have it.

Nor do we lack data on such questions, as Carlson implies. Even a cursory glance at a map tracking the spread of the coronavirus makes it quite clear that it’s spreading through human contact. That’s why it exploded in dense urban areas at first, and why the decline in new daily cases only started to occur after rigorous social distancing and lockdown policies were implemented.

Carlson knows all this, of course. He’s not actually confused by the theory of airborne virus transmission. Nor is Rand Paul (who is an optometrist with a medical degree), even though he claimed during Tuesday’s hearing that “there are people on the other side saying there’s not going to be a surge” after reopening. We know Paul understands how viruses spread, because he himself was infected with the coronavirus after being exposed through airborne transmission.

As with a lot of science denialism that comes from the right, this needs to be understood more as a troll, a posture that conservatives strike to draw liberals into “debating” whether or how viruses spread. Their real goal is to distract our attention from the real question, which is how government should respond to these scientific facts.

Because on that front, the answer is clear: The government needs to stop wasting time and start pumping more cash into the economy (ideally by raising taxes on the rich), while instituting the kind of testing regime we need to even start to consider reopening the economy. Republicans don’t like that answer, so they want to talk about anything else, including starting a debate over how we can “really” know anything about how viruses spread.

The depressing truth, however, is that the government isn’t going to do nearly enough to fix this problem. Some Democratic-run state governments, including California and Washington, have done about as well as they could with little help from the federal government, but governors can’t do much to save the economy without federal help. Trump and the Republicans, of course, are determined not to do what is needed to repair this economic situation. Instead, we will apparently have to spend months listening to right-wingers undermine the nation’s leading expert in infectious diseases and claim they’re not sure how viruses spread, while the death toll mounts and the economy continues to melt down. And we still can’t be sure whether American voters have wised up enough to elect Democrats in November.

==

might re related to black guy shot in back and no arrrests till TRMS?

https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-launches-unhinged-attack-rep-ilhan-omar-calling-her-repulsive

CARLSON (HOST): This isn't about Michael Flynn, it's about you. It's scary to think about that. Most people in Washington seemed determined not to think about it, they are intent on excusing all of this.Ilhan Omar was among the first to chime in on the news today, "white privilege at work," she tweeted.

Omar didn't explain what in the world make Flynn's case might have to do with his skin color, which he cannot control, but she denounced the decision as racist anyway. Surprised? You shouldn't be surprised.

Ilhan Omar is a person who clearly married her own brother in an immigration scam, who passionately hates the country that saved her, who reduces every conceivable issue to the most vicious kind of race-baiting. Can a single human being actually be as loathsome as Ilhan Omar is? It's hard to believe, she's like a parody of her repulsiveness. Sometimes you doubt she really exists, the RNC must have created her -- we can't confirm that, of course.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/msnbcs-chris-hayes-rages-at-tucker-carlsons-faux-populist-ire-and-bogus-claims-about-covid-19/

MSNBC host Chris Hayes lashed out Tuesday night at Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, slamming the right-wing pundit’s recent efforts to downplay the impact of the coronavirus.

Carlson argued that, despite a still-rising death rate approaching 60,000 in the United States, COVID-19 just isn’t really as deadly we were told. To buttress these dubious claims, Carlson cited the work of doctors whose views have been widely rejected by the medical and public health establishment.

In a clever rant in his Tuesday night show, Hayes flipped the script of Carlson’s usual populist shtick. Since the rise of Trump, Carlson has tried to present himself as a voice of the working class standing up to elitist liberals. But Hayes made the case that it’s Carlson’s current stance about the coronavirus that is appallingly elitist.

“Tucker Carlson, who has been broadcasting in safe isolation, is telling you it’s safe to go out,” Hayes said. “That’s his message to you, bus drivers. And you, people who work in meat-processing facilities. And you, who are providing elder care in a senior home or assisted living facility — or a cashier at a grocery store, or working in an Amazon warehouse. The cable news pundit wants you to get back out there because ‘it’s just not that deadly.'”

AD REMOVED FOR SUBSCRIBED USER

He continued: “But for all the faux-populist ire being mounted by the conservative politics legacy case from La Jolla, polling shows that most Americans continue to believe that shelter-in-place is the right policy. In fact, more than three in four Americans who have lost work, lost work or lost pay from the virus, still support stay-at-home measures.”

Watch the clip below:...

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/how-tucker-carlson-is-crafting-a-dangerous-and-preposterous-conspiracy-theory-to-prop-up-trump/

no lnx

How Tucker Carlson is crafting a dangerous and preposterous conspiracy theory to prop up Trump

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon April 23, 2020

During the months when Donald Trump thought he could somehow defeat the novel coronavirus by lying, minimizing it and calling concerns about the coming pandemic a “hoax,” most Fox News hosts were right there with him.  The one major exception, however, was popular prime time host Tucker Carlson. While Sean Hannity kept calling the coronavirus crisis a “hoax” and Laura Ingraham described people concerned about it as “panic pushers,” Carlson actually criticized Trump and his Fox colleagues for “minimizing what is clearly a very serious problem,” arguing that the virus was “a major event” that “will affect your life.” The fact Trump made a reluctant pivot and began to admit that the coronavirus was a real threat — even though he’s still trying to cover up the spread of the disease — is likely due to Carlson’s pressure.

In fact, the difference between Carlson’s approach and that of his fellow Fox News hosts, especially Hannity, was so pronounced that it likely altered the course of the disease. A new study shows that communities that favored Hannity’s show over Carlson’s show had more cases of COVID-19 and more deaths. The reason is simple: Because Hannity downplayed the seriousness of the coronavirus, his viewers were less likely to follow stay-at-home recommendations and therefore more likely spread the disease.

Don’t get too soft on Tucker, however. He wasn’t motivated by a real concern about the safety of his audience, much less about Americans at large. He simply took a more opportunistic attitude, viewing the inevitable panic and instability that would result from thepandemic as a chance to push his white nationalist views by blaming immigrants. He encouraged people to embrace racist frames that implied people of color were dirtier than white people, and encouraged Trump to use the pandemic as an excuse to shut down immigration. Trump has taken that advice, although his ban — which only affects people seeking green cards, not those seeking temporary work visas — has already been criticized by Carlson, who thinks it doesn’t go far enough.

But now even Carlson’s racism-inflected willingness to take the coronavirus seriously has abruptly ended. Starting at the beginning of April, even after his Fox News colleagues had begun to take the virus more seriously,Carlson switched gears and moved toward a denialist viewpoint. He started attacking public health officials for the stay-at-home orders and saying the economic results of the lockdown were worse than the disease.

(This argument, it should be noted, is entirely false. The notion that the economy would be doing fine with a highly contagious and often deadly disease ripping through the population is asinine. Evidence shows that the economy will not rebound, even if politicians remove the lockdown orders. And, as I’ve repeatedly argued, workers who stay home because they’re sick aren’t any more productive than workers who stay home because they’re under lockdown.)

As happened with his emerging white nationalism, Carlson’s denialist stance towards the coronavirus has only grown more extreme in the past few weeks. Last week, he praised the astroturfed protesters who swarmed state capitals, armed with rifles and Confederate flags, to portray the lockdowns as an elite conspiracy to destroy Trump.

On Wednesday night, Carlson stopped playing footsie with the conspiracy theorists and went full science denial.

“Mass quarantines, they tell us again and again, are the only way to save lives, but that’s a lie,” he said, bizarrely suggesting that quarantines have “never been done” and saying that we “have spent trillions of dollars and crushed millions of people, purely on the guess that a nationwide lockdown would save us from the coronavirus.”

Carlson is lying, which should be obvious without even doing a moment’s worth of historical research. If quarantines are a brand new thing that no one has ever considered before, why do we have a word for the practice? How is it that the word for this novel, unheard-of practice is so common that everyone knows what it means? How many other words does the English language have for things that don’t exist and no one has ever heard of?

Humans figured out quarantines worked before they even knew why they worked. The CDC website I found after a Google search for “history of quarantine” explains that the “practice of quarantine, as we know it, began during the 14th century in an effort to protect coastal cities from plague epidemics,” by holding ships at anchor for 40 days before docking. The website for PBS’ “Nova” dates the practice back to 549 A.D. Boston first instituted maritime quarantines in 1647. Federal management of quarantine orders dates back to the 19th century.

Famous works of literature — including the Bible, with its references to leper colonies — have references to the practice. “The Decameron” by Giovanni Boccaccio, one of the most famous literary works of the Renaissance, is about people telling stories to pass the time as they shelter in place to avoid the bubonic plague. “The Plague” by Albert Camus tells the story of a plague and quarantine measures in a 1940s setting. Why do Romeo and Juliet die in the famous Shakespearean play? Because a messenger with a letter outlining the plan for their survival is waylaid by a quarantine. (Those of us still awaiting Amazon packages can relate.)

Tucker claims he’s the protector of the great traditions of “Western civilization,” mind you, but when it comes to actual history, he’s decided to play ignoramus.

Of course, it’s hardly news that Carlson thinks his audience consists of illiterate morons who don’t know any history prior to 1982, but even for him this is a stretch. People know how disease spreads and why reducing exposure works. Polling shows that not only are Americans broadly supportive of the shelter-in-place orders, but that even a majority of Republicans aren’t keen on ignoring well-established germ theory just because Fox News tells them to.

Still, Carlson is doing this for a reason: He needs to give his audience some excuse to claim that none of this is Trump’s fault. (Narrator: It is Trump’s fault.) He’s offering them a conspiracy theory that these lockdowns aren’t an authentic attempt to slow the spread of a deadly disease, but an invented crisis aimed at bringing down Trump. It’s true that Carlson hasn’t come out and said that, but it’s the only real conclusion one can draw from his accusation that thousands of public health experts, bureaucrats and elected officials are working together (and none are blowing the whistle!) to crash the economy in order to grab “godlike power” for themselves.

There is no small amount of projection in his rant, in which he complains that “mediocre people” are trying to control “when people can get married, which medical procedures you are allowed to have.” The people who are actually interested in doing that are, of course, Republicans who would like to ban same-sex marriage and abortion. But of course, accusing your opponents of doing what you are actually doing is exactly what right-wing conspiracy theorists do.

Carlson’s full-blown Alex Jones-style conspiracy theories aren’t just a threat to our democracy. They’re a threat to the health of his viewers. As the study mentioned earlier in this piece has shown, many Fox News viewers are willing to break the stay-at-home orders to demonstrate their loyalty to Trump and faith in Fox News. Some have already died because of this. Tucker Carlson clearly doesn’t care how many of his own viewers get sick and die. He has a larger agenda: Create some explanation, no matter how preposterous, that deflects the blame for this national catastrophe away from Donald Trump.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/study-finds-people-who-watched-sean-hannity-were-more-likely-to-die-from-covid-19/

no lnx many

Study finds people who watched Sean Hannity were more likely to die from COVID-19

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon April 22, 2020

A new study from the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics found that “greater viewership of ‘Hannity’ relative to ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ was strongly associated with a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the early stages of the pandemic.”

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Fox News host Sean Hannity has been heavily criticized for echoing President Donald Trump’s initial attempts to downplay the threat posed by the new coronavirus. Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson, his colleague at the right-leaning network who has framed the issue in more nationalistic terms, has been credited with convincing the president to take the pandemic seriously.

“Carlson warned viewers about the threat posed by the coronavirus from early February, while Hannity originally dismissed the risks associated with the virus before gradually adjusting his position starting late February,” the researchers wrote in the working paper.

The two hosts diverged greatly on the issue in February. While Hannity expressed optimism that “zero people in the United States have died from the coronavirus,” Carlson warned viewers that the virus could kill 1 million people across the country.

The researchers commissioned a poll of more than 1,000 Fox News viewers, which found that Carlson’s viewers were more likely to change their behavior earlier than Hannity’s viewers.

“We find that Hannity’s viewers on average changed their behavior in response to the coronavirus five days later than other Fox News viewers, while Carlson’s viewers changed behavior three days earlier than other Fox News viewers,” the paper said.

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The researchers then compared the death rate in counties that favored either host, finding “approximately 30% more COVID-19 cases” in areas that preferred Hannity than those that watched Carlson.

“Already by mid-March, we see a statistically significant difference — that there are greater case loads in places that favor Hannity over Tucker,” researcher David Yanagizawa-Drott told The Chicago Tribune. “Then weeks later, we see a similar trajectory increase for deaths.”

After Hannity’s “shift in tone,” however, “the diverging trajectories . . . began to revert,” the study said.

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The researchers argued that their findings were consistent with “misinformation being an important mechanism driving the effects in the data.”

Polls have similarly found that Fox News viewers as a whole are far more likely to believe the threat of the virus is exaggerated. Another poll showed that Republicans, in general, were less likely to change their behavior in response to the threat than Democrats.

The attempts by certain Fox News opinion hosts to downplay the virus early in the outbreak came in stark contrast to steps the network’s executives and owners took to protect themselves against the virus.

“The selective cherry-picked clips of Sean Hannity’s coverage used in this study are not only reckless and irresponsible, but down right factually wrong,” a spokesperson for Fox News said in a statement. “As this timeline proves, Hannity has covered Covid-19 since the early days of the story. The ‘study’ almost completely ignores his coverage and repeated, specific warnings and concerns from January 27-February 26 including an early interview with Dr. Fauci in January. This is a reckless disregard for the truth.”

Hannity likewise defended his coverage of the virus in an interview with Newsweek earlier this month, arguing that his January interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the country, showed that his viewers were getting accurate information.

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“Go to my web site, and you’ll see irrefutable evidence that I have taken this seriously way before most in the media did. I warned in January that it was dangerous because it was highly contagious, but some people were asymptomatic, so it would spread quickly,” he said, though he also argued months later that the flu was “much more dangerous” than the new coronavirus and compared the associated death rate to the murder rate in Chicago.

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Hannity’s comments came in response to a letter from 74 journalism professors to Fox owner Rupert Murdoch and CEO Lachlan Murdoch calling on the network to stop spreading “misinformation” about the virus.

“The misinformation that reaches the Fox News audience is a danger to public health. Indeed, it is not an overstatement to say that your misreporting endangers your own viewers — and not only them, for in a pandemic, individual behavior affects significant numbers of other people as well,” the letter said. “. . . Inexcusably, Fox News has violated elementary canons of journalism. In so doing, it has contributed to the spread of a grave pandemic. Urgently, therefore, in the name of both good journalism and public health, we call upon you to help protect the lives of all Americans — including your elderly viewers — by ensuring that the information you deliver is based on scientific facts.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/tucker-carlson-attacks-michelle-obama-for-trying-to-make-it-easier-to-vote

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/are-trump-and-his-allies-setting-up-dr-fauci-as-their-elite-scapegoat/

no lnx

Are Trump and his allies setting up Dr. Fauci as their ‘elite’ scapegoat?

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon April 6, 2020

This has gotten buried under the pile of horrific news about both the coronavirus pandemic and Donald Trump’s multiple failures to handle the crisis, but there was a moment during Trump’s daily propaganda dump on Sunday that was even more disturbing than usual. It came while Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was speaking, which usually means a respite from Trump’s firehose of misinformation and self-aggrandizement and an opportunity to get real information from an actual expert who is not a sociopath.

A reporter started to ask Fauci about the use of hydroxychloroquine, the now-legendary anti-malarial drug, to treat COVID-19. Fauci was almost certainly about to say, as he does every time he’s out of reach of Trump, that there’s no real evidence that the drug works, much less that it’s the “game-changer” that Trump desperately wants it to be.

But Fauci wasn’t able to answer the question, becauseTrump stopped him. “You don’t have to ask the question,” the president said, stepping in front of the podium, waving his hand in the air and using his girth as a physical barricade between Fauci and the reporter.

Earlier in the press conference, Trump had offered yet another glowing recommendation of hydroxychloroquine, which has no substantive evidence to recommend it. He literally cited “rumor” as a reason to give it a spin and said, “What do you have to lose?”

People actually have a lot to lose, as the drug has been known to damage the nervous system, cause psychological trauma and lead to heart attacks.

During this exchange, there was a hint of one reason Trump is championing this drug as a of miracle cure, despite the lack of evidence: He’s starting to workshop the excuses he will use and the scapegoats he will sacrifice in order to escape the blame — which he richly deserves — for how badly this crisis spun out of control. And the person most in danger of becoming the primary scapegoat for Trump and his minions is Fauci himself.

“If it does work, it would be a shame we did not do it early,” Trump said about hydroxychloroquine during the press conference Sunday.

At that point, it became clear to me what Trump hopes to get out of this endless hype about an unproven and dangerous drug: A QAnon-style conspiracy theory he can roll out, after the worst of the crisis has passed, about his heroic efforts to save everyone with a miracle drug, which were thwarted by shady “deep state” forces who denied the public this lifesaving drug as part of a plot to make him look bad.

Unfortunately for Fauci, he’s the most obvious candidate to become the villain in this conspiracy theory, in much the same way former FBI director James Comey and special counsel Robert Mueller were framed as part of a sinister anti-Trump conspiracy during the investigation of Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election.

Tucker Carlsonof Fox News has been leading the pack in the effort to cast Fauci as the villain in the right-wing conspiracy theories that will pour from the spigots as soon as the spread of the coronavirus and the associated death rate start to ebb.

Dr. Fauci is prescribing “national suicide,” Carlson claimedon his show last week, declaring that the economic collapse caused by social distancing protocols is “a far bigger disaster than the virus itself, by any measure” and declaring that our “response to coronavirus could turn this into a far poorer nation.”

There are plenty of people who must share the blame for this national disaster. Trump, for one, is to blame because he twiddled his thumbs and denied the virus was serious until it had exploded across the country. If he’d actually taken this seriously and contained the disease, it’s likely none of this would be necessary. Carlson, of course, isn’t blaming Republicans, who seem determined to stop the kind of New Deal-level federal investment in our workers that is needed not just to keep people from falling into dire poverty, but to get the economy back on the road to recovery.

But instead Carlson is blaming Fauci, saying that the doctor “has bulletproof job security,” with the clear implication that he doesn’t care about people who are losing their jobs.

To make matters worse, there are reports that Fauci is conflicting with White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, a major booster of hydroxychloroquine. This isn’t surprising, since Trump’s right-wing economics advisers are eager to grasp at any thin straw to suggest that the economy can be “reopened” without causing mass loss of life from COVID-19. It just happens that this fantasy is not scientifically feasible.

It’s easy to see where all this is going. If the social distancing works to contain the virus, conservative pundits will point to the lower-than-feared death toll as evidence that the virus was never that serious — but not, of course, that the severe restrictions on daily life actually worked. They’ll claim that quarantine measures were never necessary, and suggest that hydroxychloroquine was a real solution that was available the whole time but got left on the table thanks of the “deep state” conspiracyagainst Trump. (Rather than because there’s no evidence this often-dangerous drug is actually a cure for COVID-19.) And Fauci will be held up as the straw-man villain in this conspiracy because he supported social distancing and was skeptical of Dr. Trump’s miracle drug.

Will this conspiracy theory work? In the sense of shoring up Trump’s support with his loyal base, there’s no doubt about it. There’s been a run on hydroxychloroquine from Trump supporters, who trust their president’s ill-founded rumor-mongering over any and all medical evidence. These are folks who feel justified in voting for a racist reality TV star and will cling to whatever nonsense Trump and Fox News dish up as a rationalization.

It’s unclear, however, how much traction this nonsense will have outside of that Trumpian bubble. There is definitely room for concern, since conspiracy theories about “secret” cures that regular doctors are holding back for mysterious reasons never seem to go out of style. But as Rutgers professor David Greenberg argued in Politico this weekend, “Politicians may be able in the short term to cover up their failed programs or weak leadership with clever messaging and images,” but in the end, with the economy down the toilet, the public is more likely to blame Trump than whatever scapegoat he and his propaganda team at Fox News serve up.

Still, this “deep state” theory seems close to inevitable, and the attacks on Fauci have already started. Trump’s opponents need to anticipate the twists and turns ahead and have a strategy to counter them. In an election that’s already being compromised by the pandemic itself, the prospect of widespread voter suppression and Trump’s apparently immovable popularity with his base, every weird Trumpian dirty trick could turn the tide.

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mma 320

tucker

:{ Carlson attacks universities for admitting “foreign students, many of them from China”:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

03/26/20 9:28 PM EDT

https://www.mediamatters.org/daily-caller/despite-health-care-shortages-and-pleas-daily-caller-sold-n95-masks-pricey-survival

3/26/20 2:12 PM EDT

Until just recently, an “outbreak” store operated by the Daily Caller was selling N95 respirator masks as part of a “survival kit” that retailed for up to $254.99. Health care professionals have faced a large shortage of the masks, which are not recommended for the public, and have pleaded with consumers to stop hoarding them.

As the Food and Drug Administration states, “N95 respirators and surgical masks (face masks) are examples of personal protective equipment that are used to protect the wearer from airborne particles and from liquid contaminating the face.” It adds that the “Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not recommend that the general public wear N95 respirators to protect themselves from respiratory diseases, including coronavirus (COVID-19). The best way to prevent illness is to avoid being exposed to this virus.”

Medical professionals around the country have faced a shortage of N95 masks for various reasons, including hoarding. As a result, they have spent weeks pleading with the public to stop hoarding the masks and to donate them to medical facilities. On February 27, CDC Director Robert Redfield told a congressional subcommittee: “We need to make sure those N95 masks are available for the doctors and nurses that are going to be taking care of individuals that have this illness.”

After receiving criticism, Target recently apologized for selling N95 masks in certain stores in Washington state. 3M CEO Mike Roman, whose company is the largest manufacturer of N95 masks, said that the masks shouldn’t be sold in retail stores to the public because of the shortage.

The N95 masks were recently being sold at Outbreak Provisions, an online store which says that it wishes “to provide you and your family peace of mind by providing essential emergency supplies that can help keep your family safe in a time like this.” Fine print on the website states that it “is operated by Daily Caller Inc”anddoing business as OutbreakProvisions.com.The site appears to be relatively new: Its domain name was privately registered on February 28, 2020. The Daily Caller sent a March 25 email to its list which advertised the site.

The store had been selling “N95 Respirator Dust Masks” in various “survival kits.” Those included its “Survival Kit for Children” (two versions); “1 PersonEliteSurvival Kit” (two versions); “2 Person Survival Kit” (two versions); “4 Person Elite Survival Kit”; “5 Person Survival Kit”; and “10 Person Survival Kit.”The 10-person kit was the most expensive, selling for $254.99.

Outbreak Provisions is no longer selling the N95 masks but the site indicated it was the supplier’s decision, stating, “Due to the increased need for N95 masks at hospitals and other institutions, our supplier has decided to donate the remaining inventory to aid those most impacted by the COVID-19 virus. All orders placed prior to 03/21/20 will still receive masks in their kits however all orders going forward will no longer have this item included.”

Despite that notice, a March 25 commerce article on the Daily Caller still claimed that the Outbreak Provisions had “N95 Respirator Dust Masks.”

The Daily Caller has frequently promoted its Outbreak Provisions store in recent days in commerce articles about the coronavirus. Those articles carry headlines like: “Stronger Together: Here’s How You Can Help Protect Your Family And Close Friends”; “As Experts Warn Covid Crisis Could Drag…Stocking Up On Essentials Remains Key”; and “Worried About Covid-19? Here Are Three Things You Should Be Doing To Prepare Right Now.”

In a February 26 article, the Daily Caller discussed N95 masks by writing that “some aspiring disaster profiteers have taken to listing masks at exorbitant rates on Ebay. Prices for these upcharged masks range from $40 to $1,000 for common 3M brand masks that can usually be had for only a few dollars.”

Update (3/27/20): The article has been updated to include additional information about the “survival kits” that included the N95 masks.

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growing a spine/conscience? nope, the band is baaack

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson goes off on GOP senator caught dumping stocks — says he must explain or resign

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/fox-news-tucker-carlson-goes-off-on-gop-senator-caught-dumping-stocks-says-he-must-explain-or-resign/

• ### Tactic 4: Attack science

The backbone of most climate disinformation is a feigned or real mistrust of science and scientific evidence. It is from this place that climate science, scientists, and the institution where they work are attacked by those whose narratives, worldviews, or values they inconvenience, including Fox News.

The spread of the coronavirus has put our experts in the scientific community in the national spotlight as we rightfully turn to them for information and sound recommendations. It has also triggered one of Fox News’ most oft-employed attacks on the scientific community: They are politicized and therefore compromised.

On the March 6 edition of *Lou Dobbs Tonight*, Fox’s Dr. Marc Siegel claims coronavirus concerns are being intentionally overblown to hurt Trump politically by dismissing the World Health Organization as “overly political” and “incompetent.”

On the March 4 edition of *The Ingraham Angle*, host Laura Ingraham’s guest attempted to discredit the Center for Disease Control by calling it a “highly politicized organization.”

• ### Tactic 5: Legitimize and spread conspiracy theories

The most notorious climate change conspiracy theory -- originating from then-future President Trump -- is that it is a hoax “created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” Another commonly cited conspiracy theory is that climate scientists distort findings or tamper with evidence for financial gain. This claim, which Fox has peddled, was the basis for the manufactured scandal “Climategate,” which Fox News seized on and ferociously promoted.

As the lethal outbreak of coronavirus spread around the world and the U.S. government warned that it would spread within the United States, Fox News was among the right-wing media outlets spreading conspiracy theories. That included one of the most prominent theories, which claims that coronavirus was manufactured and leaked by the Chinese government, and one of the most racist claims, that it was a result of people consuming animals alive.

On February 10, Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson speculated about the unsubstantiated bioweapon theory,asking his guest whether COVID-19 is “not a naturally occurring virus” or was “somehow created by the Chinese government.” His theory was debunked by his guest Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a medical director of a chain of urgent care clinics.

Even though this theory has been widely debunked (even on air during a Fox program), on February 25, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs claimed that “we don’t know yet whether or not this was an engineered virus” and said that there is “a research lab some 300 yards from the epicenter of this outbreak.”

Carlson, on his January 23 show, also blamed the emergence of the virus on Chinese culture, advancing the unproven theory that it was a result of people consuming animals “alive.”

While many of the tactics Fox News has used to misinform and mislead its views about the climate crisis and the coronavirus outbreak are the same, its goals are different. As applied to the climate crisis, Fox wields these tactics in an attempt to blunt aggressive climate action. As applied to the coronavirus, Fox has deployed them to shield Trump from political backlash. Either way, these tactics are shameful and dangerous -- and their impact is not easily corrected.

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maybe too soon on spine?

covid sacrifice zone

aN 320 next day sr found abandoned/dead in spain, after italy said cd not cope

no lnx

Former FBI agent stunned by GOP’s willingness to die for 401ks: I dealt with suicidal cults — this is a ‘new level of craziness’

Written by Sky Palma / Raw Story March 24, 2020

During an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News this Monday, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said that he’s willing to bet there’s plenty of senior citizens in America who would be willing to risk contracting COVID-19 if it meant getting the economy back on track.

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Patrick said that he, as a senior citizen himself, would be “willing to take a chance” on his survival “in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves” for his children and grandchildren, adding that people he’s talked to say the same thing.

The interview went viral and plenty of critics weighed in with reactions, including former FBI Special Agent Ali H. Soufan, who suggested Patrick’s sentiment isn’t unlike the “suicidal death cults” he’s dealt with in the past.

“I dealt with suicidal cults before,” he tweeted. “I encountered people who are willing to die for their faith, ideology, race, etc. But, I never encountered anyone who is willing to die for someone else’s 401k. This is a whole new level of craziness.”

Ali H. Soufan

@Ali_H_Soufan

I dealt with suicidal cults before. I encountered people who are willing to die for their faith, ideology, race, etc. But, I never encountered anyone who is willing to die for someone else’s 401k. This is a whole new level of craziness. https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1242245135129346050 …

Andrew Lawrence

@ndrew_lawrence

Tx Lt Gov Dan Patrick says grandparents would be willing to die to save the economy for their grandchildren

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https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-elizabeth-warren-really-bottomless-well-venom

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mma 220?

Stone was convicted on all counts the next day, November 15. Reacting to the news on air, Jones read an angry text message from one of Stone’s lawyers that said Jones’ broadcast of Stone’s pardon request almost caused Stone to be remanded into custody immediately upon conviction, as the ongoing gag order also prohibited Stone from commenting on his case in public forums through surrogates. Jones defended his conduct by saying he was just “doing what Roger said.” Post-conviction, many other members of right-wing media -- most notably Tucker Carlson on his Fox News broadcast -- publicly pleaded with Trump to issue a pardon. According to reporting from The Daily Beast, sources close to Trump say that “as a platform for pro-Stone messaging,” Carlson’s show “is potent enough that Trump allies who seek leniency for the Stone have specifically sought to appear … in order to get the message to the president” and that Trump watches segments about Stone on the show and discusses them with others.

Between conviction and sentencing, Infowars’ advocacy for Stone crossed into the territory of violent rhetoric. During a late November broadcast, Stone’s former co-host Owen Shroyer said, “Roger Stone’s fate is our fate. So if Roger Stone gets thrown in jail and dies in jail, that’s the rest of our fate. We’re all going to die from these left-wing politicos, whether that’s in jail or from a bullet [in] the head.” Stone’s assistant Engels cited the saying “would you rather die on your knees or die fighting standing up?” and Shroyer responded, “We’re not calling for violence. … But let me tell you, when you start to use the government and these bureaucracies against us, and you take away our freedom of speech, and you take away our right to a fair trial, and you take away our right to bear arms, what are we supposed to do? We’re not going to be your damn slaves.”

Video file

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https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-identity-politics-has-left-us-vulnerable-coronavirus

https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-its-obvious-sanders-hates-country-he-seeks-lead

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220

https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-roger-stones-arrest-means-anyone-can-be-arrested-just-supporting

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5 part series pix of poop needle and crazy homeless in SF? kpfa

trumpista base held together by evil fox trinity: hanty, ingraham and tucker

aha 1/20 promote primary, evil pending; trump only hope to stay in power, so pander to end times homo trans phobia, 1st anti-abortion march; 2x whammy b/c smash and grab anti BO voodoo tax cut to oligarch and corps

Daily Caller News Foundation—$5.2 million

The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) funds much of the content of the Daily Caller website, a site that has several ties to white nationalists and was co-founded by now-Fox News host Tucker Carlson with $3 million from right-wing donor Foster Freiss. As of 2018, Carlson was secretary of the DCNF board of directors.

Charles Koch Foundation officials may express concern over the site’s extremism, but the foundation is DCNF’s biggest donor–by a mile. The Koch Foundation and the Charles Koch Institute combined to give over $3.3 million to the Daily Caller News Foundation from 2015-18, representing 37 percent of the group’s contribution revenue during that time period. Including grants from DonorsTrust, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and others, conservative nonprofits researched by CMD provided the DCNF with 58 percent of its donation revenue.

Charles Koch alleges he is not a fan of Trump, but Daily Caller and other Koch grant recipients has often been generous to the president. In fact, Daily Caller accepted an estimated $150,000 from the 2016 Trump campaign to rent its email list. Recently, reporting revealed that Trump family friend Tom Hicks, Jr. said last year that the Daily Caller editor could be counted on to advance Trump’s personal political goals regarding Ukraine.

Middle East Media and Research Institute—$5.1 million

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cf mma RU solanli 1/24/20 split screen silent // scroll of djt accomplishments

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/fox-news-coverage-of-trumps-impeachment-trial-has-been-an-embarrassing-joke/

no lnx

Fox News’ coverage of Trump’s impeachment trial has been an embarrassing joke

Written by Alex Henderson January 24, 2020

When Rep. Hakeem Jeffries addressed the U.S. Senate on Thursday night as part of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, there was a crucial difference between how Jeffries’ speech was covered on different cable news outlets: while CNN and MSNBC broadcast the speech, Fox News muted the speech while its pundits offered pro-Trump talking points. CNN and MSNBC allowed viewers to hear Jeffries making a compelling case for removing Trump from office; Fox News let views see Jeffries but not hear him. And that Trump-friendly way of covering the trial is the subject of an article journalist Aaron Rupar wrote for Vox this week.

“Starting with ‘The Five,’ the network’s early evening roundtable commentary show, and continuing throughout the evening, Fox News broadcast portions of screen-in-screen video of the trial,” Rupar explains in his Vox article. “But instead of playing the audio, network hosts provided the normal Trumpian spin. So while someone who just looked at the screen may have concluded Fox News was covering the trial, in fact it wasn’t covering it at all.”

Fox News, Rupar adds, “went as far as to broadcast screen-in-screen video of the trial during commercial breaks — but again, without the sound that was necessary to make any sense of what was being discussed.”

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Fox News has the optics of covering the #ImpeachmentTrial without actually covering it. They've been showing screen-in-screen video of the proceedings without audio. Instead, hosts are providing Trumpian spin. It's propaganda giving the illusion of journalism. Remarkable.

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Lis Power

@LisPower1

Step 1: Dems try repeatedly to get new evidence into the trial

Step 2: Republicans repeatedly vote it down

Step 3: Fox criticizes Dems for having no new evidence.

Rinse and repeat.

Fox's Jason Chaffetz: "It had nothing to do with proving the facts, there was no new evidence"

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Millions of Fox News viewers, Rupar points out, have been fed a steady diet of “propaganda” and misinformation during Trump’s impeachment trial.

“The 2.7 million people who have been watching Fox News’ impeachment trial coverage at any given time are being told a story about it that’s completely untethered from reality — one that reinforces America’s deep polarization between the roughly 50% of voters who want Trump removed from office and the 40 to 45% who continue to support him through scandal after scandal.”

Like Jeffries, Rep. Adam Schiff (the California Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee) has, during the trial, made convincing arguments in favor of removing Trump from office for his impeachable offenses — which, according to Schiff, include trying to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, and withholding military aid to Ukraine in the hope of getting that investigation. Someone who watched MSNBC or CNN got to hear Schiff skillfully laying out fact after fact after fact showing that Trump committed impeachable offenses. But Fox News carnival barkers like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, as Rupar points out in Vox, haven’t seriously addressed the facts Schiff presented — only insulted and defamed him.

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Tucker Carlson began his show dismissing the #ImpeachmentTrial by comparing it to "a movie written & directed by children whose ending you already know, & by the way, it's 20 hours long, in Hungarian, with misspelled subtitles." That's how his viewers will process things.

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Andrew Lawrence

@ndrew_lawrence

Fox News added scary music and, in one section, a red overtone to an Adam Schiff supercut from today

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“There’s nothing Schiff could have said on Wednesday that Fox News’ evening and primetime hosts wouldn’t have spun as evidence of his mental instability, his obsession with taking down Trump,” Rupar asserts. “And while viewers were being spun on Wednesday, they were shown soundless video of the trial, the misleading implication being that they don’t have to bother watching it since Fox News is on top of it for them.”

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https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-rep-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-open-bigot-nihilist-whos-got-no-kids-and

 CARLSON (HOST): Well, I kind of agree, and it -- and it -- maybe it seems like the problem is nobody's in charge. I mean, you have [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi who's, you know, clearly no genius, but she does understand politics. And I think, you know, she -- she does have grandchildren in real life and she wants the country to continue. She's on the one side, and then you have people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who's like an open bigot nihilist who's got no kids and, like, doesn't care at all about the country and she's pushing it in another direction. So maybe, that -- like, nobody's running the thing. 

https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/fox-news-year-climate-denial-and-conspiracy-theories

12/21/19 9:18 AM EST

In 2019, Fox took climate change denial to insane new levels even as global temperatures reached record heights, natural disasters wreaked havoc, and youth environmental activism led millions of people in protests around the world. Even if you just look at news of the past few weeks, Australia is on fire, the oceans are running out of oxygen, and the Amazon rainforest is at a “tipping point.”

The climate denial narratives on Fox run the gamut from claims that “there’s science on both sides of this issue” to dismissals of the climate crisis as “medieval witchcraft.” Naturally, the hosts and guests also pushed a number of right-wing agenda items like government deregulation and protecting the wealthy.

Of course, Fox host Tucker Carlson managed to bring discussion of the issue back to his own racist agenda, noting in one segment that “more people were killed last year in the United States by illegal aliens than were killed by climate change.”

[vid]

payne

https://www.mediamatters.org/charles-payne/fox-host-likens-action-climate-change-people-who-sacrifice-humans-volcano-god

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https://www.mediamatters.org/white-nationalism/list-tucker-carlson-guests-who-have-links-white-nationalism

On December 6, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson hosted Pete D’Abrosca, a blogger with ties to white nationalist movements, to promote his run for Congress. This is not the first time the Fox host, who has a long history of promoting white supremacy, has brought on a guest who associates with far-right extremism or has promoted narratives championed by the movement.

Here’s a noncomprehensive list of past guests on Tucker Carlson Tonight who have connections to far-right extremism:

Scott Greer

Carlson hosted Greer to promote his book No Campus for White Men in February 2017. Greer, who at the time of his appearance on Fox was a columnist at The Daily Caller, was outed in July 2018 by The Atlantic as having written for the white supremacist journal Radix under a pseudonym. This wasn’t the first time The Daily Caller, a website co-founded by Carlson, has published a white nationalist.

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson

In August 2018, Carlson hosted far-right British activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who goes by the name Tommy Robinson, after he was released from prison pending trial for contempt of court charges. Robinson is the former leader of the English Defense League, an anti-Muslim extremist group.

Katie Hopkins

Hopkins has appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight 15 times in 2017 and 2018 according to Media Matters’ internal database. Hopkins is a far-right British commentator, (thought she appears to have left her employer) who has built a media grift around being virulently xenophobic. Her racist comments include calling for a “final solution” following a terror attack in the U.K., labeling refugees as “cockroaches,” and calling for London police to profile young Black men. Hopkins has also promoted a conspiracy theory about “white genocide” in South Africa circulated by white nationalists (she shares this position with Carlson). She has numerous ties to far-right figures, including Robinson, Infowars’ Alex Jones, white nationalist and “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist Brittany Pettibone, and white nationalist Lauren Southern.

Ernst Roets

Carlson hosted apartheid apologist Ernst Roets of AfriForum in May 2018 to fearmonger about the South African government’s effort to correct unequal distribution of land ownership that occurred during apartheid. AfriForum is the South African Afrikaners’ rights group pushing the white nationalist conspiracy theory that a land reform proposal in South Africa is part of a plot for “white genocide.” Roets was on a tour of America promoting the conspiracy theory with his AfriForum colleague Kallie Kriel, who is also an apartheid apologist. Roets has appeared on white nationalist Stefan Molyneux’s YouTube talk show and gave an interview to The New American, the magazine founded by the conspiratorial far-right group the John Birch Society. When Carlson held a subsequent segment on the conspiracy theory a few months later, President Donald Trump asked the secretary of state to look into the issue.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

Carlson has hosted white supremacist Rep. Steve King (R-IA) seven times since 2017. One of these appearances included a cleanup interview after King tweeted that Americans “can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies” (which echoes the white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory). During the interview, Carlson defended the congressman’s racist comments, saying, “Everything you said I think is defensible and probably right.” After King expressed explicit support for white nationalists and white supremacy in an interview with The New York Times, Carlson first ignored the interview except to attack the media and then deflected when pressed, saying, “Steve King, whatever he said, he didn’t call for an ethnostate.” King’s racist views have been known for years.

Andrew Torba

In September 2017, Carlson hosted Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab, an alternative social media platform dubbed a “haven for white nationalists” and a “magnet for the alt-right,” after it was removed from the Apple and Google app stores for violating hate speech rules. A little over a year later, Torba and Gab were in the news again after one of the site’s users posted a message there before murdering 11 Jewish people during a worship service at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill, Pennsylvania. The site has since almost completely fallen apart.

Joey Gibson

Carlson four times Joey Gibson, leader of the Portland, Oregon-based far-right group Patriot Prayer, which has been involved in violent street fights. Gibson is currently facing criminal and civil charges related to a fight that broke out at a bar this past May in which a woman was knocked unconscious. The group is also closely connected to the violent far-right extremist group the Proud Boys. In 2015, Carlson gave an interview to Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes in which Carlson defended statutory rape. He also posed for a picture with members of the group in 2018.

Roger Stone

Since 2017, Tucker Carlson has hosted racist conspiracy theorist Roger Stone eight times. Stone has been an Infowars regular, has close connections to the violent street gang the Proud Boys, and has a long legacy of violent, racist, and sexist comments. Carlson has repeatedly used his show to lobby President Trump to pardon Stone, who in November 2019 was found guilty on charges related to his September 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. Carlson has also appeared in a and wrote an introduction to one of his books.

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1219

Ocasio-Cortez calls out Fox News host Tucker Carlson as a ‘white supremacist sympathizer’

https://www.vox.com/2019/10/1/20893112/fox-news-trump-identity-crisis-ukraine-whistleblower-chris-wallace-andrew-napolitano

no lnx many,  vid

48 hours illustrating how Trump’s abuse-of-power scandal has split Fox News

Hannity is pushing Clinton conspiracy theories while the network’s top judicial analyst talks about impeachment.

By Aaron Rupar@atrupar  Oct 1, 2019, 12:30pm EDT

Sean Hannity at the Republican National Convention.

[pix Fox News personality Sean Hannity at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 18, 2016. Benjamin Lowy/Getty Images

What a difference a few hours makes.

Had you tuned in to Fox News for Monday’s edition of Sean Hannity’s show, you would’ve been treated to President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pushing nonsensical conspiracy theories about prominent Democrats colluding with Ukraine after the 2016 presidential election to dig up dirt on Trump — claims that were met with zero pushback from Hannity.

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Giuliani begins his Hannity interview by pushing a conspiracy theory about Obama and Hillary Clinton colluding with Ukraine to dig up dirt on Trump in January 2017 -- which doesn't make much sense since the presidential election had come and gone by then

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But had you been watching Neil Cavuto’s late-afternoon show earlier that day, you would’ve seen Fox News senior legal analyst Andrew Napolitano making a case for Trump’s impeachment.

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano: "The president of the United States using foreign governments to influence domestic politics -- that was the fear of the framers when they put that impeachment clause in the Constitution."

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To be clear, none of the above is especially new. Hannity has been the staunchest of staunch Trump backers for years, while more establishment conservative figures like Napolitano and Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace have established reputations as bastions of rationality amid the surrounding sea of MAGA on their network.

But the juxtaposition between Monday’s versions of Cavuto and Hannity illustrates the split that Trump’s abuse-of-power scandal and the growing support for Trump’s impeachment has wrought at Fox News. The network has spent years serving as something akin to an unofficial arm of the Trump campaign, but it reportedly has started thinking about life after Trump, at least behind the scenes.

The split between daytime and primetime burst into public view

While Fox News has a well-earned reputation for riding the Trump train, network personalities like Napolitano and Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace haven’t been shy about occasionally criticizing Trump. But now, with a presidency seemingly on the line, the stakes are a bit higher.

Primetime hosts like Hannity and Tucker Carlson along with Fox & Friends are still doing everything possible to spin for the president — including, in Carlson’s case, devoting part of Monday’s show to pushing conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton — but any criticisms of Trump made elsewhere on the network are increasingly being interpreted as veiled shots at other Fox News personalities. For instance, Wallace went viral last Thursday for sounding off about the “astonishing” and “deeply misleading” talking points being used by Trump’s defenders in the wake of the whistleblower report that accused Trump of abusing his office during his dealings with Ukraine.

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Here's Fox News' Chris Wallace saying that "the spinning that's been done by the president's defenders over the last 24 hours since this very damaging whistleblower complaint came out ... [is] not surprising but it is astonishing and I think deeply misleading." ??

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Trump — who has been slowly souring on Fox News for weeks now, in part because it won’t rig polls for him — indicated on Sunday that he’s especially sensitive to even the mildest criticism coming from network personalities. After chief national correspondent and occasional Fox & Friends host Ed Henry did an interview with right-wing pundit Mark Levin in which Henry gently pushed back on Levin’s pro-Trump talking points, Trump became so incensed that he started retweeting any and all anti-Henry tweets he could find, including one posted by a parody account that makes fun of him for disliking sharks.

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Replying to @atrupar

The President of the United States retweeted a parody account that makes fun of him for disliking sharks

Notably, however, Trump has had nothing to say about Wallace’s remarkably hard-hitting interview with White House adviser Stephen Miller on Fox News Sunday a few hours later — one in which Wallace demolished Miller’s talking points and wouldn’t let him get away with deflections that are standard fare on Hannity.

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Replying to @atrupar

"This is an exercise in obfuscation" -- Stephen Miller has no response when Chris Wallace presses him about why Trump went against his own Pentagon & State Department and withheld Ukrainian aid

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(Trump has posted many tweets over the years praising Wallace but attacked him for interviewing Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg in May, writing, “Fox is moving more and more to the losing (wrong) side in covering the Dems ... They forgot the people [who] got them there. Chris Wallace said, ‘I actually think, whether you like his opinions or not, that Mayor Pete has a lot of substance ... fascinating biography.’ Gee, he never speaks well of me — I like Mike Wallace better.)”

Again, Wallace conducting a tough interview with a Trump administration official is far from unprecedented. But the split between Fox News’ daytime and primetime burst into public view last week when afternoon host (and arguably the network’s most outspoken Trump critic) Shepard Smith feuded for two days with Tucker Carlson, a primetime host who, like Hannity, reliably defends the president. The conflict erupted after Smith’s show featured commentary from Napolitano last Tuesday in which he suggested Trump’s dealings with Ukraine amounted to crimes.

Carlson fired back that night by giving former prosecutor and frequent Fox News primetime guest Joseph diGenova a platform to bash Napolitano, calling him “a fool.” Smith responded the next day by characterizing diGenova as “a partisan guest” and criticizing Carlson for not defending his colleague. According to Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman, thefeud only came to an end after network brass admonished Smith to stop attacking Carlson or risk losing his show.

If Sherman’s reporting is correct about Carlson effectively winning that feud, he and diGenova weren’t able to savor it for long. In yet another stark illustration of how complicated the dynamic at Fox News has become, Wallace reported on the same edition of Fox News Sunday in which he interviewed Miller that diGenova has been “working off the books” with Giuliani to help Trump dig up dirt on Joe Biden — a revelation diGenova has since admitted to.And yet Wallace, while breaking that news, failed to mention that despite his secret work for Trump, diGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, have made over 90 Fox News appearances this year alone.

Fox News execs are reportedly tiring of Trump’s act — but you wouldn’t know it from watching the product yet

The split that erupted in front of cameras last week reportedly reflects behind-the-scenes tensions. In his Vanity Fair piece, Sherman reports that Lachlan Murdoch, eldest son of Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, has recently “been holding strategy conversations with Fox executives and anchors about how Fox News should prepare for life after Trump.”

Those conversations have apparently been expedited by the whistleblower complaint and the broader abuse-of-power scandal, which Sherman reports that even Hannity is concerned about:

Sean Hannity told friends the whistle-blower’s allegations are “really bad,” a person briefed on Hannity’s conversations told me. (Hannity did not respond to a request for comment). And according to four sources, Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch is already thinking about how to position the network for a post-Trump future. A person close to Lachlan told me that Fox News has been the highest rated cable network for seventeen years, and “the success has never depended on any one administration.” (A Fox Corp spokesperson declined to comment.)

But whatever private concerns Hannity has, they haven’t yet manifested themselves on his show, which remains all Trump talking points all the time — even if he seems to be a little less enthusiastic about the act than he used to be.

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

Replying to @atrupar

I gotta say, Hannity's heart doesn't really seem to be in this

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If Sherman is right about network brass siding with Carlson instead of Smith, that indicates that higher-ups aren’t dismounting the Trump train just yet.Ultimately, viewers will know that Fox News is really changing when primetime hosts either start criticizing the president or are replaced with hosts who will — and we aren’t anywhere near that point yet.

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Tucker Carlson defends Vladimir Putin and says American media hate the United States more than Putin

12/02/19 8:38 PM EST

Trump accuser Karen McDougal sues Fox News for slander after Tucker Carlson alleges ‘extortion’Igor Derysh / Salon

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https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-spreads-disinformation-about-deadly-chemical-attack-syria

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an 1119

DNC vice chair asks Fox News host point-blank: Why the hell does Carlson still have a job?

When asked on live air about Carlson's predictions about Michelle…

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/fox-news-host-tucker-carlson-invokes-adam-schiffs-body-fluids-in-bizarre-rant-about-impeachment

jodi foster movie ref

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an 1119

Carlson is not ‘just joking’ about rooting for Russia. His anti-democratic goal suits the current iteration of the Republican Party

Image via Screengrab.

Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon November 26, 2019

There is an air of inevitability to Fox News host Tucker Carlson declaring, as he did on Monday night, “Why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Which I am.”

The topic on “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” the highly rated cable news program that is a particular favorite of white supremacists and neo-Nazis, was the impeachment of Donald Trump. Carlson, unsurprisingly, wants to minimize the evidence that Trump was running an extortion scheme aimed at forcing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to offer public support for a smear campaign against former Vice President Joe Biden. The crux of Carlson’s argument was that it’s silly to care about all this: So Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine in an effort to blackmail Zelensky into backing Trump’s lies. So what?

“[P]eople are dying on the front lines,” said Richard Goodstein, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton who foolishly accepted the role of the evening’s punching bag during Carlson’s propaganda blitz. “You think it’s a joke.”

Carlson was not to be shamed about his total indifference to the lives of Ukrainians who trying to defend their nation against Russian aggression.

“Why do I care what is going on in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia?” he declared. “And I’m serious. Why do I care? Why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Which I am.”

:{

Towards the end of the episode, Carlson moved to cover his booty by claiming, “Of course, I’m joking,” arguing that he only said it to troll the left.

Notably, however, Carlson declined to offer any support for Ukrainian independence, obnoxiously hiding behind some pablum about how he’s “only rooting for America.”}:

No one should be fooled by this half-hearted retcon. Of course Carlson is rooting for Russia, an anti-democratic autocracy, to overwhelm and destroy Ukraine’s efforts to establish a free and open democracy. That’s completely on-brand forCarlson, who has been a champion of Trump’s more fascistic urges and who has been the most aggressive Fox News personality in helping reshape American conservatism into an openly white nationalist movement.

Ever since he took over his prime-time spot from the disgraced Bill O’Reilly, Carlson has acted as the tip of the spear for a more authoritarian and frankly fascist brand of conservatism. Carlson has kept up a steady drumbeat of segments designed to mainstream talking points from neo-Nazis and other white nationalist groups as “common sense” conservatism. This, of course, aligns with the agenda of Trump, who employs Stephen Miller, an overt white nationalist, as his primary speechwriter and one of his main advisers.

Trump also adores Russian President Vladimir Putin — for reasons that have never been adequately explained — and openly longs for Putin’s dictator-style powers to assassinate journalists, steal elections and otherwise crush dissent. And so, just as he has promoted Trump’s racist values, Carlson is now moving more openly toward helping justify Trump’s enthusiasm for Russia’s authoritarian government.

The “just joking” gambit should be familiar to anyone who has observed the behavior of the fascist trolls who adore Carlson so much. It’s a standard rhetorical strategy for testing and pushing boundaries. By hiding behind the claim to be “joking,” fascists can gauge reactions to their ideas and help gradually normalize certain ideas or areas of discussion. Online neo-Nazis, for instance, hid for years behind claims that their racism was “ironic” and “just for the lulz” in order to test and popularize racist ideas. The neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer even put out a guide for how to use the fake “just joking” stance to spread racist propaganda.

Carlson is playing the same game with his Russia “joke.” For years now, there’s been genuine, if sublimated, conflict on the right over how to think about Russia and the war it’s waging in Ukraine. Ostensibly, Republicans support the spread of Western-style democracy and oppose Russian efforts to undermine democracy around the world. But in the face of Trump’s flagrant preference for Russia and for dictatorships over democracy, Republicans have gone squishy on Russia, starting with the party’s decision to weaken its support for Ukrainian independence and democracy in the 2016 party platform, at Trump’s behest.

That internal confusion was on full display over the past two weeks of impeachment hearings. A series of witnesses — some of whom, like former National Security Council Russia adviser Fiona Hill, are pretty clearly conservatives — reiterated the importance of supporting Ukraine in the war with Russia. But Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., along with others of the Trump faithful on the House Intelligence Committee, spent much their time demonizing Ukraine and defending Trump’s hatred of that country. Other Republicans, however, insisted that, even though they were defending Trump, they still believed in Ukrainian independence.

Clearly, the question of whom to “root for,” between Ukrainian democracy and Russian authoritarianism, remains unresolved in the Republican Party. Which is why Carlson popped a “just joking” on there to cover his bases. But it’s also clear that he’s moving closer to Moscow, and if history is predictive, Carlson will gradually turn up the heat on this issue, as he did in promoting white nationalist ideas.

Honestly, it makes sense for Carlson, and Republicans generally, to do this. While the Putin-directed hacking conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election was done to benefit Trump, the point was more to benefit Putin’s long-term goal of undermining democracy worldwide.

Unfortunately, that anti-democratic goal also suits the current iteration of the Republican Party which, for demographic reasons, cannot win nationally in truly democratic elections. Instead, the party has been relying on our outdated constitutional design, which awards disproportionate electoral weight to rural areas over urban ones. So even though Democrats get far more votes in almost every election than Republicans do, the latter cling to a share of power they haven’t earned.

But even with that unfair advantage, Republican power is threatened. So the party has turned ever more to undermining democracy: Voter suppression, gerrymandering and campaign finance deregulation. All of it is meant to ensure that voters are unable to determine their own leaders in fair and free elections. So it’s not surprising that Republicans aren’t just minimizing the amount of Russian-directed cheating in the 2016 election, but also the evident fact that Trump was conspiring to cheat in the 2020 election as well.

Carlson’s segment on the Ukraine-Russian war was, in large part, about turning impeachment into an incomprehensible foreign policy issue, so he can convince Fox News viewers that it has nothing to do with them and they can safely ignore it.

As Adam Serwer of the Atlantic pointed out, it isn’t just Ukraine Trump has victimized. Indeed, “the core reason for the impeachment inquiry” is that “the Trump administration was engaged in a conspiracy against American democracy.”

But, of course, the Trumpian opposition to Ukrainian democracy goes hand in hand with the Trumpian opposition to American democracy. The thread throughout is a hostility to the idea that people should actually get to choose their own leaders — an anti-democratic stance Trump shares with Putin.

It’s also a stance Carlson has been selling to Fox News viewers for years by framing white conservatives as the only legitimate Americans, a view incompatible with democracy. Gradually turning up the volume of support for Russia’s worldwide assault on democracy is an unsurprising and inevitable — if deeply disturbing — part of Carlson’s larger agenda.

==

fox News’ Tucker Carlson smears Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as an ‘unapologetic bigot’ toward white people

Matthew Rozsa / Salon

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an 1019

** Fox News host**Tucker Carlson and YouTube personality Dave Rubin on Tuesday attempted Tuesday to cast blame on the wildfires ravaging California on “woke” culture.

“PG&E strikes me as almost a metaphor for the destruction of the state,” Carlson said in reference to how some (though not all) of the California wildfires may have been caused by PG&E’s technical errors. He claimed that the company “doesn’t really know anything about its own infrastructure” even though it “knows everything about the race of its employees.”

Rubin replied by saying that “the problem right now is that everything — everything from academia, to public utilities, to politics, everything that goes woke, that buys into this ridiculous progressive ideology that cares about what contractors are LGBT, or how many black firemen we have, or white this or Asian — that everything that goes that road eventually breaks down.”

Carlson agreed with Rubin, who said that this is “not how freedom is supposed to operate” and compared it to people asking about the “gender or sexuality” of the people who came to put out a fire in their home. He also cited the preemptive blackouts occurring in California. Rubin blamed the problem on the fact that California does not have “enough clear thinking, say, more libertarian or conservative-minded people in California to fight what the progressives are doing to the state.”

Carlson agreed, adding that “if you can’t keep the lights on and you can’t keep the place from burning down, you’ve reached the point where there is no kind of lying about it anymore. Like it’s falling apart. It’s a disaster. It’s not civilized anymore."

There is no evidence that the incidents with PG&E had anything to do with the demographic composition of their employees, despite Carlson’s and Rubin’s assertions. There is also no evidence that PG&E’s technical issues were the primary factor behind the California wildfires. Global warming, however, has been a major contributor to the fires.

As climatologist Kevin Trenberth told Salon earlier this week, “the increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by human activities create extra heating. While it is small on a daily basis, it is always in the same direction. And in dry conditions, it accumulates so that plants dry out faster and wilt, and wild fire risk increases on the time scale of a month.”

Carlson has long been a critic of what he describes as “identity politics,” telling Salon earlier this year that “I would never make the case that racism doesn’t exist, or it’s not a factor. Of course it does and it is. But in the end, our racial differences or sex differences are immutable differences that can’t be fixed. They can’t be changed.”

He added, “They’re set at birth, so it’s not only counterproductive, but in my opinion, it is an intentional diversion away from conversations about things that we could potentially change, like tax rates.”

mma 1019

As the last credible journalist to have a daily show on Fox News, Shep Smith probably should have resigned a long time ago. The network has been a right-wing propaganda network for years, and under Trump has turned into regime TV. On Friday, he finally did resign, and initial reports have indicated that his actions were driven by how bad the network has gotten.

Smith's resignation comes shortly after Fox News executives reportedly sided against him in an on-air feud with Fox News host Tucker Carlson over the seriousness of Trump's behavior in regards to Ukraine. In the end, Carlson said thatSmith was giving partisan opinion and not news. The entire episode was extremely telling: Tucker Carlson portrayed Smith's show -- at first implicitly and then explicitly -- as leftist fake news, much the same way he does nightly with CNN and MSNBC, even teaming up with close Trump ally Joseph diGenova. And Fox News executives were fine with it.

Smith's departure is a disaster for Fox News. As Media Matters' Matt Gertz wrote in the wake of Smith's announcement, "Smith’s willingness to push back against the misinformation rampant elsewhere on the network had made him extremely valuable to Fox. It provided the network’s executives with a fig leaf they could wave whenever critics argued that Fox was nothing more than a propaganda apparatus on behalf of the president and his allies. That fig leaf is gone. Fox belongs to the Seans Hannity and Lous Dobbs. And now, everyone knows it."

Gird your loins: Fox News is about to get even worse.

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/fox-news-outs-two-network-analysts-for-working-off-the-books-with-trump-and-giuliani-to-find-biden-dirt/

kos

Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace broke a bit of genuine news on Sunday morning when he reported that two of Fox News’ own frequent guests and Trump supporters may themselves be enmeshed in the Trump-Ukraine scandal.

Lawyers Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing have been working with Rudy Giuliani in his attempts to conduct opposition research on former Vice President Joe Biden, said Wallace. “According to a top U.S. official, all three were working off the books apart from the administration. The only person in government who knows what they were doing is President Trump.” This is a significant nugget for several reasons. First, Rudy Giuliani is still flatly denying he worked with other lawyers to collect Biden “dirt”; the Fox News anchor is therefore calling Giuliani a liar. Well, even more of a liar.

And second, the top-of-the-program callout of two of the network’s own frequent guests and analysts for undisclosed, “off the books” involvement in one of the scandals the network has been hosting them to opine on is, regardless of the obvious conflict of interest, nearly unheard of. From Lou Dobbs to Sean Hannity, the network has taken a notably lax attitude when it comes to network mouths splitting their time between the network and the needs of the Trump administration. They normally wouldn’t so much as peep about overtly conflicted guests!

Whatever’s going on, diGenova and Toensing seem to have peeved someone in the network off mightily.

That’s not quite the idle speculation it would appear to be. DiGenova appeared recently on Tucker Carlson’s show to defend Trump in the Ukraine scandal—an appearance that led to Carlson directly attacking “straight news” anchor Shepard Smith’s credibility. But Fox News as an entity relies on maintaining a largely fictional separation between the loud-mouthed opinion hosts and the self-described “trustworthy” news side of the business; if Tucker is going to threaten that separation by suggesting that the news side is itself biased, it’s going to threaten the paychecks of everyone in the building.

Wallace’s high-profile knifing of Tucker’s recent guest diGenova might signify, then, that the “straight news” producers have had just about enough lip from the likes of Tucker and his guests. Fox has been doing next to no original reporting on the Ukrainian scandal; suddenly, though, it has a line on new scandal participants that just happen to be two of its own network’s favorite guests?

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/life-after-trump-paul-ryan-is-now-embarrassed-by-the-president-and-is-pushing-fox-news-to-dump-the-him

report describes the behind-the-scenes crisis emerging at Fox, which has been thrown into turmoil as the Democrats’ rapid impeachment push knocks the network off-kilter. Most dramatically, that disruption has played out in an on-air feud between hosts Shep Smith and Tucker Carlson. Sherman found that Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace felt compelled to intervene and tell Smith to back off, though a spokesperson for the network denied this claim.

The report continued:

The ultimate referee of this fight will be Lachlan Murdoch. In recent months, Rupert’s oldest son has been holding strategy conversations with Fox executives and anchors about how Fox News should prepare for life after Trump. Among the powerful voices advising Lachlan that Fox should decisively break with the president is former House speaker Paul Ryan, who joined the Fox board in March. “Paul is embarrassed about Trump and now he has the power to do something about it,” an executive who’s spoken with Ryan told me. (Ryan did not return a call seeking comment.) But a person more sympathetic to Trump has told Lachlan that Fox should remain loyal to Trump’s supporters, even if the network has to break from the man.

==

==

mma

• In the latest attempt to blame anything but guns, Tucker Carlson suggested a link between mass shootings and marijuana use.

an

no lnx

Leaked e-mails reveal the ways white nationalists have infiltrated right-wing media: report

Written by Alex Henderson August 30, 2019

Much of the racism that comes from the right-wing media uses dog whistles rather outright slurs. But in a report for Splinter News, journalist Hannah Gais addresses the ways in which white nationalist views have successfully infiltrated some right-wing media outlets — and screenshots of leaked alt-right e-mails published with Gais’ article aren’t the least bit subtle in their racism and anti-Semitism.

“Indeed, there is a burgeoning underground network of group chats, message boards and e-mail chains serving as the breeding ground for incubating white nationalist ideas, and as a forum to strategize around how to launder those ideas through mainstream conservative publications,” Gais reports. “And, judging from a large series of messages from one of those e-mail groups obtained by Splinter, it’s working.”

Gais cites some links between right-wing media and white nationalists, noting that in September 2018, for example, The Atlantic reported that Scott Greer (former editor/columnist for the Daily Caller — which was co-founded by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson) had written for white nationalist Richard Spencer’s Radix Journal under the name Michael McGregor.

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}:

Gais reports that Splinter has obtained a “trove of e-mails from a private white nationalist group chat” that Jonah Bennett, a formerDaily Caller employee, was a big part of. Bennett, according to Gais, “repeatedly used his perch at the site” to incorporate extremist viewpoints “into an ostensibly mainstream publication.” Those 2015-2018 e-mails, Gais reports, demonstrate that white nationalists “have steadily increased their influence within the conservative media infrastructure.”

On the surface, Gais writes, Bennett’s career seems like that of a “run-of-the-mill” conservative. But the 2015-2018 e-mails came from a private thread called Morning Hate, which according to Gais, was “steered in large part” by an extremist named John Elliott — and where participants “were free to make their racist opinions known, while laying the groundwork for leading their double lives, of sorts, in more mainstream conservative institutions.”

In the thread, Gais reports, participants used code words for racial slurs — for example, “Alaskans” for the n-word when insulting blacks, or “Hawaiians” as a substitute for “Hebes” when insulting Jews. “Our Good Friend” referred to Adolf Hitler, while “Our Good Friend’s Son” referred to Donald Trump. The code names were outlined in an e-mail dated December 17, 2015.

Splinter News published screenshots of some of those e-mails with Gais’ article, and the bigotry was overt. For example, a December 26, 2016 e-mail from Elliott contained the subject heading, “Take a shower, Jew Boy,” and Bennett was among the many recipients.

In a screenshot of a January 7, 2016 e-mail, Morning Hate is seen praising “Our Friend” — that is, Hitler — for being “way ahead of his enemies” in 1932. And in a May 12, 2017 e-mail, Morning Hate discusses friendly interactions with white nationalist Richard Spencer.

Gais describes Elliott as “the most prolific and undoubtedly the most well-connected” Morning Hate participant, noting that he had a history of “helping libertarian and conservative journalists make their way into the media world by placing them at various affiliated media organizations for internships.” But the Morning Hate e-mails, Gais observes, “show that Elliott was leading something of a shadow life.”

Gais wraps up the report by asserting that the alt-right has become an integral part of right-wing media.

“People like Bennett and Elliott have long been aware of the weaknesses of conservative institutions, and it is through this knowledge that the ‘alt-right’ has, far from disappearing, made itself an almost indispensable part of the American conservative movement,” Gais stresses. “It has, in that sense, succeeded well beyond its proponents’ vile, hate-fueled dreams.”

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==

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has insisted that white supremacist violence is not a pressing issue in America. But such a declaration has not stoppedactual white supremacists in several instances of apparent domestic terror plots that have been thwarted by authorities in just the past two weeks.

On the August 6 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight — broadcast just days after a suspected gunman killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, and after the gunman allegedly posted a white nationalist manifesto online — Carlson declared that it was a “lie” that white supremacy is even an urgent problem in America.

Since that statement, however, multiple suspects across the country have been arrested on charges related to plotting attacks motivated by white nationalism.

MSNBC host Chris Hayes did a very strong monologue on how white supremacist violence and the threat of it fits into American history, going back to the fallout from the Civil War. It's worth your time, especially considering, as Hayes mentions, that many Americans simply are not taught this history.

==

mebbe like trump  sometimes pouts leftist or mebbe just (pseudo-) populist eg booktv interview?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/this-is-the-path-to-civil-war-fox-news-tucker-carlson-spouts-nonsensical-conspiracy-theory-about-why-hes-called-racist/

AN et all ID as key enabler/ of white supr, so mebbe desperate deflection defense?

no lnx

‘This is the path to civil war’: Fox News’ Tucker Carlson spouts nonsensical conspiracy theory about why he’s called racist

Written by Cody Fenwick August 8, 2019

Fox News’ resident white supremacist Tucker Carlson is outraged that anyone cares about white supremacy.

On Tuesday night, he issued the inflammatory declaration thatwhite supremacy is not a problem in the United States and is, he claimed, “a hoax.” He was, of course, maliciously lying.

But on Wednesday he dug in his heels, spinning a delusional conspiracy theory about why people are lobbing around accusations of white supremacy — including at him.

“Ever wonder why rich people seem most hysterical on this subject?” Carlson pondered, offering no evidence for this baseless claim. “Ever notice that it’s the highest-paid people on television who are the most determined to convince you that white supremacy is America’s biggest problem?” Again, he provided no evidence for this implied assertion and absurdly suggested that viewers know who is most highly paid on television.

He then argued that these rich people [the global elite?] talk about white supremacy so that Americans “aren’t thinking about class, which, of course, is the real divide in this country.”

He continued: “They whip you into a frenzy of racial fear so that it never enters your mind. It’s a diversion. Everyone else hates each other, they get to keep their money. Pretty tricky. Unfortunately, it’s also destroying the country. This is the path to civil war. Obviously.”

It was actually a Marxist argument, a rather simplistic one that has been made repeatedly on the far left. But that simple fact exposes the obvious falsity of Carlson’s version of the claim. Carlson, of course, hates the left. It’s the Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warrens, Kamala Harrises, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes of the world who talk about the problem of racism in politics, and they also argue for greatly redistributive policies in the United States. These policies would, in fact, address class disparities — and thus also reduce race inequality.

It’s Carlson, Trump, and their allies who actively oppose redistributive policies. They call a higher minimum wage, universal health care, and higher taxes “socialist” and “communist” and “class warfare.” And, indeed, they drum up fears about immigrants taking jobs and “welfare queens” on the government dole to scare voters out of supporting policies that would actually make the poor and middle class better off. While screaming about immigrants and the supposed horrors of Obamacare, Trump and his defenders worked to pass a massive tax cut for the rich and ensure that more low-income Americans go without health coverage.

And, for what it’s worth, even as he attacks other news anchors for being rich, it’s Carlson who called himself a “trust fund baby.”

“I’m like extraordinarily loaded, just like from money I inherited from my number of trust funds… I go out and beat some servants, I’ll wrap my Lamborghini around a tree, go pick up a kilo,” he said in 2008. “I never needed to work, the whole cable news thing was just a total pose, it was just like a phase I was going through.”

Indeed, the history of the conservative movement is wealthy, powerful people exploiting racism in the United States to prevent the federal government from adopting more left-wing policies. Tucker Carlson wants you to think the exact opposite — but his version of the theory makes no sense.

Watch the clip below:

Andrew Lawrence

@ndrew_lawrence

Jesus Christ, Tucker Carlson just said that calling out and criticizing white supremacy is leading us down "the path to civil war. Obviously"

Embedded video

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819 3x mass shooter several ppl note that he and laura I (and trump?) hannity

soft peddle white nat'l

‘A new low’: Washington Post media critic blows up Tucker Carlson’s absurd lies about white nationalism

Alex HendersonAugust 7, 2019

On Saturday, August 3, El Paso became the scene of a terrorist attack that left 22 people dead — and the suspect, according to police, had written a manifesto indicating…

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2/28/19

~GND no

cars, no planes, no kids burger, AOC cos ate one, __[crawler aoc: "I'm the boss"

prez of env progress

omg seetucker b/c of quilette ~ wind and solar, unreliable 40% of year

he calims to be on BO team on 1st try of new green deal 2003-7 orig founder, $150 billion on renewables, 10-40% of year

low density of fuel, the bigger envir impact eg lots of land [ "WE"] our friends said what about nuke? how few ppl died in chernbly (no #)

bio-mass kills ppl (wood smoke, he does say ff too) 7 mil/yr (coal? charcoal?) in nuke accident only a tiny am't escapes ?! how much _ escapes?

3 reasons: 1) assoc w/ atomic bomb but 2 diff technol; 60's cheap too much energy --> pop explosion, overconsumption 3) harmonize w/ natural world

==

marcotte

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/fox-news-has-gone-so-deep-into-white-nationalism-that-donald-trump-now-believes-its-how-hell-win-in-2020/

Trump thinks white nationalism is going to win him the 2020 election. This much is clear. Trump’s racist Twitter rant on Sunday — in which he suggested that four nonwhite congresswomen, three of whom were born in the United States, are “originally” from somewhere else and should therefore “go back” — might have seemed at first like a spontaneous eruption of racist rage from the simmering bigot in the White House.

Soon, however, it became clear that this was strategic. Trump thinks it’s a winning move to echo the claims of David Duke and other white nationalists who believe the United States is for white people. He justified his racism by saying that “many people agree with me,” and by continuing to rave on Twitter abou As Heather Digby Parton argued for Salon, this is more than an explosion of racist anger. Trump “believes that most Americans are as racist as he is and that he will be rewarded for this indecency with a second term.”

There’s good reason to think Trump and his boosters are wrong about this. As New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie pointed out on Twitter, “Trump’s popularity has taken its sharpest dips whenever he goes full racist,” and that even that seemingly rock-solid level of support that sits right around 42% in opinion polls has dipped into the 30s when Trump openly aligns himself with white nationalist views. Thanks largely to his racism (as well as his stunning lack of competence), Trump has spent his entire term in office with lower overall approval ratings than any president in more than 60 years.

So where does Trump getting this idea that ever more extreme racism is the way to win over voters? One major source is likely his favorite TV network and the only source of information he tends to take seriously: Fox News.

For years now, Fox News has been mainstreaming arguments that used to be the province of  fringe websites run by neo-Nazis and other groups who believe the U.S. is meant to be a country of white people and for white people — perhaps with others permitted in small numbers of they stay quiet and keep to themselves. Trump was a major factor in the early rumblings of white nationalism on the network, which gave him considerable airtime during his reality TV days to air conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Such “birther” theories rested fairly obviously, in the first place, on the belief that black people cannot be “real” Americans.

Since Trump was elected, the Fox News programming that promotes white nationalist ideas has slowly grown both in airtime and in severity. At Salon, we sounded the alarm in the early months of Trump’s presidency, when prime-time Fox News host Tucker Carlson began to experiment with segments that used euphemisms like “Western civilization” to package the idea that white people are inherently more civilized while people of color are a threat to national stability.

Since then, Carlson and many of other Fox News pundits have only grown bolder. “Replacement theory” — the white nationalist idea that has spurred multiple terrorist attacks, holding that white people will somehow be removed and “replaced” by people of color — used to be confined to fringe neo-Nazi websites with atrocious early-2000s design aesthetics. Now that’s become a regular feature of slick Fox News segments, which suggest that immigrants of color are “invading the country” and can never be “fully American,” and that demographic changes from immigration are “more change than human beings are designed to digest” and inherently a threat to “your neighborhood.”

The network also hypes the idea that nonwhite immigrants are dirty and diseased, as well as inherently criminal. (For about the 400th time: Immigrants, documented or otherwise, are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens. There is no serious dispute about this.) Furthermore, because many immigrants speak languages other than English and may eat unfamiliar food or bring cultural practices that appear foreign to some, American society will soon be “tipping over a cliff.” is is the same kind of rhetoric that was used to demonize the Irish and Italian immigrants of the past, who were seen as threats to American culture due to scary foreign practices like putting garlic in food and praying with the Rosary. One hardly needs to mention the bigotry and discrimination directed at Jewish immigrants, who were barred from certain neighborhoods and many commercial establishments well into the 20th century. Unfortunately, most of the Fox News audience for this rhetoric, the president included,  doesn’t know anything about that history, or care to learn.

It’s true that Fox News ratings are high, and that is incredibly meaningful to Trump, who has a long-standing obsession with TV ratings dating back to his days as host of “The Apprentice.” More important still, Trump tends to view TV ratings as the single  most meaningful metric of public opinion, one that far outweighs more statistically significant measures like political polling.

In looking over Trump’s Twitter obsession with TV ratings, it’s clear that he believes — or at least pretends to believe — that ratings are tied tightly to alliance with his racist agenda. It’s not just that he routinely mocks CNN and MSNBC for supposedly having poor ratings. Any TV product that deviates too far from a racist agenda, he believes, takes a ratings hit for it. When NFL players were protesting racism, Trump gleefully declared it was hurting TV ratings. When the Oscars tried to improve racial diversity and attendees decried Trump’s bigotry, he gloated that it was the “Lowest rated Oscars in HISTORY”. He even repeatedly (and falsely) tried to argue that his inauguration ratings exceeded Barack Obama’s.

The pattern is clear: Trump believes racism is more popular than anti-racism, because, he believes, racism gets TV viewers and anti-racism doesn’t. And getting TV viewers is the only measurement he takes seriously.

By any measure of cable viewership, there is no denying that Fox News has disturbingly high ratings. Its daytime audience is 1.3 million viewers on average and the prime time shows pull 2.4 million people. That doesn’t just outdo other cable news networks, but mainstays like TNT and HGTV. Carlson gets nearly 3 million viewers a night, numbers that far exceed his rabid fan base of open white nationalists. Racism does sell, and the audience for white nationalist rhetoric is not small. Nearly 129 million Americans voted in 2016, meaning that only about 2% of the electorate is tuning into Carlson’s show on any given night. By contrast, the CBS sitcom “The Big Bang Theory” has nearly 19 million viewers. Racism sells, sure — but exponentially less well than unfunny sitcoms with aggressive laugh tracks.

Trump’s racism is wildly popular with his base, in other words, but a large majority of Americans find it repulsive. No amount of the president’s obsessive dissection of cable ratings will change that. That’s not to say Trump’s opponents should become complacent or assume that his unpopularity will automatically translate into a 2020 defeat.Unfortunately, racists are dramatically overrepresented in politics, due to the outdated mechanism of the Electoral College, which is how Trump won the 2016 election while getting nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. He could certainly pull it off again.

Still, Trump’s apparently adamant belief that white nationalism will pay off in electoral terms doesn’t reflect any reputable political polling. It appears instead to be an artifact of his obsession with TV and with Fox News in particular. It’s a closed loop of awfulness: The more Trump pushes his racist agenda, the more the network amplifies his message, and the more he believes his bigotry is massively popular. Unless and until Trump takes a decisive L in 2020, he’s going to keep believing the majority of Americans are secretly on his side.

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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tucker-carlson-fox-news-ilhan-omar-857295/

...Using their “public whatever,” Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib pushed back against Pelosi’s comments, bringing themselves to the forefront of the news cycle.

Tucker Carlson was waiting for them. The Fox News host devoted time on his first two shows of the week to making clear that he feels the lawmakers are speaking out of turn. Considering Carlson’s history of attacking immigrants and people of color, it isn’t difficult to figure out why.

On Tuesday night, Carlson took aim at Omar, an immigrant from Somalia who last November became (along with Tlaib) the first Muslim woman elected to Congress. Like her colleagues who voted against the bill, Omar has been a vocal critic of the conditions of federal facilities housing migrants at the border.

“Omar isn’t disappointed by America, she’s enraged by it,” Carlson said. “This is an immoral country, she says. She has undisguised contempt for the United States and its people. This should worry you, and not just because Omar is now a sitting member of Congress. Ilhan Omar is living proof that the way we practice immigration has become dangerous to this country. A system designed to strengthen America is instead undermining it.Some of the very people we try hardest to help have come to hate us passionately."

[twt]

Feigning confusion, Carlson then wondered if maybe America should be asking more of its immigrants, or if the nation should stop “importing” people nations whose “values are antithetical” to those of the United States. “No country can import large numbers of people who hate it and expect to survive,” he said, going on to call Omar a “fire alarm” signaling what could happen if America doesn’t change its immigration system — presumably to keep out anyone who won’t swear a blood oath to defend the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants at the border.

Omar was quick to respond to the segment. “Not gonna lie, it’s kinda fun watching a racist fool like this weeping about my presence in Congress,” she tweeted. “No lies will stamp out my love for this country or my resolve to make our union more perfect. They will just have to get used to calling me Congresswoman!”

A night earlier, Carlson attacked Reps. Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez, calling their suggestion that more women of color should be represented in Congress “repugnant.”

“Give us power because of our skin color,” he said. “By definition, it is a racist pitch. It’s every bit as repugnant as a white candidate making the same appeal. Many Democrats did make that appeal, that racial appeal, under Jim Crow: Vote for me because of my race. It’s disgusting.”

...

==

619 mma

Tucker Carlson guest attacks credibility of E. Jean Carroll: "She’s selling a book”

Tucker Carlson shames rape victims who don't immediately report the assault

Before Tucker Carlson's Tuesday show, Fox News has spent just four minutes covering Carroll’s report Trump sexually assaulted her

Major newspapers largely left Carroll's story off their front pages

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/what-war-with-iran-really-depends-on/

tucker oppose iran  strike so called off?!

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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/tucker-carlson-metric-system-tyranny-global

Cristina Cabrera

June 6, 2019 10:53 am

As a red-blooded American, Fox News host Tucker Carlson will not give in to the tyranny of measuring things using units of 10, thank you very much!

Near the end of his show on Wednesday night, Carlson spared a few minutes to rip the metric system and its “milinmeters” and “keye-lo-grams.”

“Almost every nation on Earth has fallen under the yoke of tyranny: The metric system,” Carlson declared. “The United States is the only country that has resisted, but we have no reason to be ashamed for using feet and pounds.”

“I’m taking a stand against the metric system,” show guest James Panero told Carlson. “The original system of global revolution andnew world orders.”

“God bless you, and that’s exactly what it is,” the Fox host responded. “Esperanto died, but the metric system continues, this weird utopian, inelegant, creepy system that we alone have resisted.”

At the end of the program, Carlson swore to “keep fighting against the global tyranny of the metric system.”

“I’ll accept the kilometer when we accept the Euro: Never!” Carlson vowed.

Watch below:

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AN

https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/the-mask-on-the-beltway-medias-embrace-of-white-nationalism-keeps-rearing-its-ugly-head/

One of the important factors in the rise of white nationalism is the way it has been normalized within the national media — treated at best as an afterthought, a purely fringe phenomenon that we really needn’t worry our heads about, with coverage often accompanied by warm fuzzy features remarking on how normal these neo-Nazi types can seem in real life.

People both inside and outside the media business often wind up scratching their heads in wonder that this sort of thing can happen even in an age when there is ample information on the toxicity that white nationalism represents. But the more we learn about the alt-right and its tentacles, the clearer it’s become that there are people situated within the media mainstream who in reality are silently sympathetic to these causes, and they are influencing the decisions over what gets covered and how. BuzzFeed piece by Rosie Gray does an excellent job of exposing how white nationalism has managed to insinuate itself inside the Beltway media ecosystem, mainly through a coterie of ostensibly mainstream conservatives who, it seems, are extraordinarily tolerant of neo-Nazism. It recounts the saga of Katie McHugh, an alt-right provocateur who moved in the right-wing Washington circles of Breitbart, The Daily Caller, GotNews, and WorldNetDaily, and who now deeply regrets the error of her ways.

It’s not entirely clear from the piece that McHugh has come to terms with the deeper issues around the work she did in helping propagate a vicious brand of white nationalism surreptitiously, under the guise of “conservatism.” It’s certainly not clear that she has yet reckoned with the real damage she did and her obligation now to do what she can to repair it, but time will tell on that front.

On the other hand, she clearly is regretful for her past actions, which is where everyone needs to start on the road to recovery from the grip of hateful ideologies. And she deserves credit for taking that biggest of all steps.

She also has started out by performing what is probably a huge public service in exposing much of the inner workings of the Beltway media white nationalist coterie. Editors and other reporters who operate with supposedly mainstream credentials are shown to be co-players in the white nationalist propaganda they all engaged in, though they all deny doing so.

Appropriately enough, the nexus of this coterie is none other than Tucker Carlson, both his Daily Caller news operation, of which he is co-founder but no longer publisher, as well as his daily Fox News program. As McHugh describes it, the vast majority of the surreptitious white nationalist organizing occurred within the ranks of Daily Caller staffers, heavily flanked by a full complement of Breitbart writers.

Some of the more prominent white nationalist movement figures—such as Kevin DeAnna, McHugh’s former boyfriend, who has long been on the radar of the Southern Poverty Law Center for his youthful organization of campus white nationalists in the 2000s—apparently operated more on the periphery, while their close friends occupied media positions inside the Beltway.

McHugh, you may recall, was fired from Breitbart for an overtly racist tweet about Muslims (“There would be no terror attacks in the UK if Muslims didn’t live there”). Of course, it was not actually the most racist thing she had ever tweeted out, but her timing was indiscreet, and she got caught in a media crossfire and was shown the door after having been a protégé of Steve Bannon’s, all while attending truly weird neopagan events:

McHugh sometimes accompanied DeAnna on weekend trips down to the Wolves’ headquarters for what they called a “moot” — a ceremony in which the assembled Wolves would smear ash on their bodies around a fire and give what McHugh described as “dramatic speeches” about self-sufficiency and relying on the other group members. They would then sit around the fire and drink beers.

The Wolves placed a heavy emphasis on masculinity. The women would prepare food for the gatherings earlier in the day before the moot commenced, according to McHugh. The Wolves were into a “Centurion Method” of physical fitness; a video still on YouTube shows DeAnna and Paul Waggener, one of the founders of the group who used the pseudonym “Grimnir,” taking turns lifting up the trunk of a car filled with cement blocks, scrambling around on a bunch of debris, and squatting while holding logs.

What we also learn is that there is a reason the same fellows grunting around campfires to establish their masculinity are eager viewers of Tucker Carlson: his news operation has provided a home for a number of them. Indeed, Snopes.com last year explored the striking extent to which Daily Caller writers have expressed white-nationalist views. Now it’s also clear why that is.

There is a reason that white nationalists avidly watch Carlson’s nightly Fox program in hopes of gleaning talking points and ideas. There is a reason the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer’s favorite pundit is Carlson (Andrew Anglin calls him “literally our greatest ally”). There is a reason the chat boards and other white nationalist haunts positively hum with chatter over Carlson’s TV broadcasts (“Tucker is a national treasure and will be the catalyst for real social change”; “At best, he’s a gateway for us and they know it”).

Of course, Carlson is not alone in the Beltway media in promoting white nationalist talking points. His cohort at Fox Business, Lou Dobbs—one of Donald Trump’s favorite pundits—mouths an endless stream of white nationalist and authoritarian talking points as well.

However, it’s obvious that Carlson’s sphere extends well beyond just the frame of the Fox network, and into a much darker world altogether. Nor is he alone.

==

https://www.ecowatch.com/facebook-factchecking-science-climate-denial-2635927165.html

no lnx twits

CLIMATE DENIER

Facebook Hires Koch-Funded Climate Deniers for 'Fact-Checking'

Oil Change International Apr. 30, 2019 10:10AM EST BUSINESS

Isriya Paireepairit / Flickr

By Andy Rowell

It may not come as a surprise that leading climate denier Donald Trump has made more than 10,000 false or misleading claims since he became president, according to fact-checkers at the Washington Post.

As the Post reports, Trump's "tsunami of untruths just keeps looming larger and larger."

Much of this tsunami of untruths will get reposted on Facebook as fact. Those hoping that Facebook will accurately check Trump's statements and clean up the torrent of fake news on its platform will have to think again, especially if you are concerned about climate change.

In what can only be described as verging on the bizarre, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has given the contract to fight fake news to an organization that pushes fake news on climate change.

According to reports in Think Progress and Grist, Facebook has announced that it was teaming up with CheckYourFact.com, which is an offshoot of the anti-science media site, The Daily Caller.

The CheckYourFact website brags that: "Our mission is a non-partisan one. We're loyal to neither people nor parties — only the truth. And while the fact-checking industry continues to grow, there are still countless assertions that go unchecked. We exist to fill in the gaps."

In fact, the opposite seems to be true. As Think Progress outlines:

The Daily Caller, which has published misinformation about climate science for years, was co-founded by the science-denying Fox News host Tucker Carlson and is backed by major conservative donors, including Charles and David Koch, the billionaire fossil fuel barons who are the single biggest funders of climate science misinformation.

Think Progress includes a link back to 2015, when a peer-reviewed paper from scientists at Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute was published in the journal Nature Geoscience. The Daily Caller tried to twist the research to argue that "global warming is nothing new."

It is hardly surprising that leading climate scientists and academics are outspoken about the Facebook fact-check tie up.

One of the world's leading climatologists, professor Michael Mann, whose own work has been distorted by The Daily Caller, told Think Progress: "It is appalling that Facebook has teamed up with a Koch-funded organization that promotes climate change denial. Facebook must disassociate itself from this organization."

Mann also tweeted:

Michael E. Mann

?

@MichaelEMann

"The Koch brothers are funding @Facebook’s newest fact-checking partner" by Paola Rosa-Aquino (@prosaaquino) for @Grist:https://grist.org/article/the-koch-brothers-are-funding-facebooks-newest-fact-checking-partner/ …

88

2:55 PM - Apr 29, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

The Koch brothers are funding Facebook’s newest fact-checking partner

Is Facebook trying to solve its fake news problem by partnering with … climate deniers?

grist.org

Environmental sociologist, professor Robert Brulle, who is an authority on the climate denial network, asked, "Why they are partnering with an organization that is part of the right wing echo chamber?" He added that: "Facebook should cancel this contract."

But as both websites point out this is not the first time Facebook has joined forces with a climate denial website: In the fall of 2017, Facebook named the right-wing, partisan Weekly Standard as a fact-checking partner.

Last year, Tessa Lyons, a product manager for Facebook wrote about the company's actions on Fake News:

False news is a money maker for spammers and a weapon of state actors and agitators around the world … Misinformation is bad for our community and bad for our business. It's why we're investing significant time and resources to fight it.

Fighting fake news with more fake news is a sure recipe for disaster. Especially during a climate emergency.

EcoWatch

@EcoWatch

@Greenpeace Calls BS After Trump Cites 'Paid Lobbyist' Masquerading as Co-Founder to Peddle Climate Denial @greenpeaceusa @AOC #GreenNewDeal http://bit.ly/2Ty5bfd

Greenpeace Calls BS After Trump Cites 'Paid Lobbyist' Masquerading as Co-Founder to Peddle Climate...

"Patrick Moore was not a co-founder of Greenpeace. He does not represent Greenpeace," the group wrote.

ecowatch.com

See EcoWatch's other Tweets

Reposted with permission from our media associate Oil Change International.

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Wheeler Appoints Climate Denier to EPA Science Board - EcoWatch ›

Former 'climate change denier' explains his shift » Yale Climate ... ›

How to change the minds of climate deniers | US news | The Guardian ›

PolitiFact statements about Climate Change ›

A climate denial video has 6 million views. Facebook doesn't care ... ›

==

mma week in dumb 419 random

• Right-wing outlets like The Wall Street Journal editorial page are touting a deeply flawed new study attacking electric vehicles.
• Trump Fed pick Stephen Moore repeatedly said that he liked working at Fox News because he met "a lot of beautiful women" there. Moore has also praised slave-owning Confederate general Robert E. Lee and hates climate science so much that he even attacked Ivanka Trump.
• Tucker Carlson's wild new talking point is that abortion is somehow a tool of "corporate" oppression.
• A Fox host blamed bank regulation for high tuition and the student loan crisis.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/far-right-tucker-carlson-guest-given-airtime-to-rage-against-godless-and-post-christian-france-after-notre-dame-fire/

After surviving everything from two world wars to the French Revolution to the Black Plague of the 1340s-1350s, the historic Medieval cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris, was rocked by a major blaze on Monday. The fire has been extinguished, although the building suffered extensive damage and will need to be rebuilt. And when he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News on Monday night, far-right pundit Mark Steyn used the fire as an opportunity to insult France as a “godless” and “post-Christian” society that is being overtaken by Muslims.

Steyn, who has guest-hosted “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News as well as Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, told Carlson, “Christendom is in retreat in Europe, and in France particularly. France has actually quite an aggressive belief in secularism, and according to some polls, the French are—even by the standards of the modern Western world—among the most godless people.” Steyn went on to describe the Basilica of St. Denis north of Paris as “a Christian museum in the heart of what is now a Muslim suburb, in effect.” And he claimed that at Notre Dame Cathedral, Christianity is not a “living, breathing faith” but rather, “is just becoming, actually, a museum, an art gallery, a storage facility.”

Speaking to Carlson, Steyn had a hard time pinpointing exactly why France is mourning the damage at Notre Dame. Steyn told Carlson, “The French who were on the streets in tears this evening on the streets of Paris—I don’t think they’re mourning just history or architecture or art or culture. They are mourning something else. But what that something else, post-Christian France—can’t quite identify it. That’s really the conundrum.”

Steyn added that when French President Emmanuel Macron “says we’re going to rebuild it—rebuild it for what? When people talk about, ‘Oh, the heart of France has died’—what is in the soul of France? What is this? Is it just the building or something more?”

The notion that Muslims are overrunning western countries with the help of secular liberals has been a recurring theme in Steyn’s books, which include 2006’s “America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It” and 2011’s “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon.”

Watch the video below:

==

2x?

==

CMD

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson is under fire this week for racist, sexist, and homophobic comments he made while chatting on “Bubba the Love Sponge” a shock jock radio show between 2006-2011. Groups are scrutinizing Fox’s advertisers and demanding that they drop the show.

But Carlson also publishes The Daily Caller, a controversial online media outlet with ties to white nationalists that has infamously peddled everything from climate denial and anti-Islamic tropes to false prostitution charges and violence against protesters.

Carlson’s moonlighting as an extremist at The Daily Caller is heavily bankrolled by — you guessed it — the Koch brothers. An investigation by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) finds that the Charles Koch Foundation has poured more than $2.7 million into the Daily Caller’s non-profit “charity” since 2012, which generates the lion’s share of the “news” that the Caller publishes.

Indeed, in 2016, Koch cash accounted for 83 percent of the The Daily Caller News Foundation’s $1.1 million in revenues.

Carlson Under Fire

As if catering to white supremacists was not bad enough, Media Matters published an inventory of hateful comments made by Carlson as a guest on the show between 2006-2011.

The radio host discusses Warren Jeffs, the religious leader who was investigated in 2007 for marrying off underage girls to older men and was eventually jailed for sexual assault of minors in 2011. When the radio host condemned Jeffs for being an “accessory to the rape of children,” Carlson said “whatever the hell that means,” and going on to suggest that forcible underage marriage is not as serious as forcible child rape. Listen to the tape here.

In other interviews, Carlson called Iraqis “semi-literate primitive monkeys,” who “don’t use toilet paper or forks.” They should just “shut the fuck up and obey.” Carlson spoke about his desire for a presidential candidate to blame the “lunatic Muslims who are behaving like animals.” That candidate would be “elected king” if they vowed to “kill as many of them as [they] can.” Carlson also said Afghanistan is “never going to be a civilized country because the people aren’t civilized.” Listen to the tape here.

The release of the older audio tapes gives “context and insight” on his nightly programming today, on MSNBC.

So far, Carlson has failed to apologize. As Fox News scrambles to control the damage, at least three advertisers — Allergan, letgo, and GreatCall — have had enough.

But with the focus on advertisers, it’s important to remember who else bankrolls Carlson’s mini media empire.

The Koch Caller?

The Kochs have long underwritten The Daily Caller. Previously, CMD reported that the Kochs gave $805,512 to The Daily Caller News Foundation between 2012 and 2015, predominantly from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. Since then, the numbers have continued to grow.

The Koch foundation gave another $946,000 in 2016 and $960,000 in 2017, the last year publicly available — for a total of $2.7 million.

In 2017, CMD analyzed emails sent by the Trump campaign to The Daily Caller subscribers and estimated that the outlet also received at least $150,000 from the Trump campaign in the months right before the November election, based on the fee charged for mailings to its list. The funding was never disclosed by Carlson or The Daily Caller as they reported on the Trump campaign.

In addition, CMD also examined the relationship between the non-profit and for-profit arms of Tucker Carlson’s operation. The mechanics of how they operate together raise serious concerns about whether Carlson’s tax-free nonprofit is operating primarily for the private benefit of his for-profit media outlet, which would be a violation of tax law.

CMD’s story was picked up by numerous media outlets including the Washington Post, which interviewed tax experts on the legality of the scheme.

“It really does look like the reason for the existence of this 501(c)(3) organization is to provide benefits to the for-profit company, and that should be a private benefit that is not acceptable,” Linda Sugin, a law professor at Fordham University, told the *Post* and other media outlets. “You can’t have money going into the foundation being used for purposes that are really to support the for-profit organization.”

==

==

random week in dumb

• Tucker Carlson on Russia's 2016 election interference: "I don't think it really hurt the country, actually."
• Turning Point USA's Benny Johnson kicked off a speech by saying that "Oh my god, I've never seen so many white people in one room, this is incredible!"
• Fox & Friends does not see any reason to release the entire Mueller report.
• Fox's flagship news show hosted Rush Limbaugh for a softball interview. Limbaugh's recent conspiracy theory that the New Zealand shootings were a false flag never came up.
• Laura Ingraham and Pat Buchanan agreed that immigration is pushing "Western civilization" off a "cliff." Buchanan also told Ingraham that "we haven't fully assimilated African-American citizens."
• Tucker Carlson said that climate change may make natural disasters less catastrophic.

n Austrian Identitarian leader with a presence on YouTube reportedly received a payment from the man charged over the Christchurch attacks. According to Reuters, Martin Sellner received roughly $1,690 last year from a man with the same name as the suspect, which prompted Austrian law enforcement to raid Sellner’s house on March 25.

Sellner subsequently acknowledged that he had pointed the New Zealand shooter to his English-language YouTube videos after receiving praise for his work. Sellner addressed the Christchurch shooter donation in a YouTube video, and in doing so, collected donations via the "super chats" feature.

Sellner’s group is a white supremacist organization focused on sanitizing its image to maintain mainstream appeal. Aided by glossy media coverage and YouTube influencers, Sellner has been able to get donations by spreading anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim messaging to a global far-right audience.

The Daily Beast's Kelly Weill described Sellner's "fascist" organization thusly:"This fascist movement falsely characterizes itself as under attack by immigrants, people of color, Muslims, and Jews. Sellner and his movement spread conspiracy theories about these racial and religious groups “replacing” white people. Generation Identity hosts a web page explaining the conspiracy theory. That page’s title was the also title of the manifesto Tarrant released before opening fire on Muslims, killing children as young as three."

In 2018, Tucker Carlson passionately defended Sellner and his partner Brittany Pettibone when they were refused entry to the United Kingdom, claiming the U.K.’s actions were evidence that the country “hates itself, its heritage, [and] its own people.”

==

https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/03/22/sean-hannity-hosts-tucker-carlson**-thumb-nose-advertisers**/223219

TUCKER CARLSON (FOX NEWS HOST): A very surprising appearance tonight from the Empire State, 215 miles to the North, Sean Hannity, in tonight at 9 o'clock.

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): You know, I am really proud of you because you have been a champion of speaking out for freedom of speech. And you've never been better, and everybody's got to understand that we're under fire all the time, and you have been strong, articulate, in the face of many attacks. And we all support you, so congratulations. 

CARLSON: If our viewers knew how much time you and I spend on the phone together talking about this and how grateful we are that the Fox News channel supports us, as strongly as it does.

HANNITY: Absolutely. Yes.

CARLSON: Thank you.Thanks Sean.

HANNITY: The country needs at least some conservative voices. They want 99.9 percent liberal voices only.

:{These are Tucker Carlson’s leading advertisers:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

:{Unearthed audio shows Tucker Carlson using white nationalist rhetoric and making racist remarks:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

:{In unearthed audio, Tucker Carlson makes numerous misogynistic and perverted comments:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

==

American Action Forum, a nonprofit organization with considerable ties to the fossil fuel industry, recently produced deeply flawed analysis about the cost of the Green New Deal.

Right-wing, industry-funded organization's, like AAF, exist to produce academic analysis that look and feel legitimate, but have no basis in reality. Their recent analysis that proclaimed the Green New Deal would come with the absurd price tag of "$93 trillion," or "94 trillion," was quickly shot down byPolitico, PolitiFact, and more. Because the Green New Deal at this point is just a broad outline of goals with no policy specifics, determining a cost is practically impossible. PolitiFact described the cost as "only about as strong as a clothespin in high wind."

However, these seemingly authentic analyses give license to Fox News and other right-wing outlets to amplify radical claims about the Green New Deal.

Sean Hannity, Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt, The Daily Caller, and many others have uncritically used the industry-funded analysis to push misinformation about the Green New Deal.

Defining any attempt to address climate change off limits politically is the new climate denial. Tucker Carlson wasn't specifically talking about the Green New Deal this week, but he might as well have been, when he complained that taking action on climate change is "clearly political, not science speaking." Carlson was speaking with a longtime climate change denier.

==

• ## Tucker Carlson: "I don't care how the U.S. government treats foreign citizens. I don't care on the border, and I don't care if they are Russian agents"

March 22, 2019 9:02 PM EDT

• ## Tucker Carlson: Roger Stone should be pardoned

==

ref

https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/03/20/hosting-climate-change-denier-tucker-carlson-complains-about-relentless-propaganda-about-climate/223199 [vid]

CARLSON (HOST): Is it surprising to you that after 25 years of really relentless propaganda beginning in children's cartoons going all the way up, probably, [un]til the moment of death that Americans rate climate change at 2 percent concern -- 2 percent are most concerned about climate change. Are you shocked?

JOE BASTARDI (GUEST): Well, not really that shocked because I think my experience is, is a much greater percentage of people in their 20s that believe what's going on. I think it's because they don't look at everything. I have said hundreds of times that if all I looked at and all that I was told was the global warming issue, I'd say "Well, I believe it too. CO2 is causing this." But when you start looking at the entire picture, the totality of the picture and you put some perspective into it, that the last forty years are the equivalent of six seconds out of an eighty-year-old man's life, you realize that there is a very, very different story here. It is like, it is like one scene in a movie for five seconds determining the whole movie. That's not the case here at all. The foundation you stand on today was built yesterday to reach for tomorrow. It's the same thing with weather and climate, folks. What happens is you have to go back and look at the big picture. In our business, and what I do at weather bell is, we need to supply accurate forecasts for energy companies -- that includes wind and solar, retail companies -- and knowing what happened yesterday, and putting in perspective and say, "guys, this can happen again," is something that we do.

CARLSON: So I just want to be clear. I'm not denying -- and I'm not a meteorologist, unlike you, or a climate expert -- that climate changes. It does change of course and ... has from the beginning, since the planet cooled. Can I ask a question?

BASTARDI: Absolutely.

CARLSON: Why, since more people were killed last year in the United States by illegal aliens than were killed by climate change -- why do you think they are so focused on scaring us, and telling us that we are all going to die? Why did they need to tell us that, when they don't know that?

BASTARDI: Well, I think H. L. Mencken -- and I quoted this in my book, said it best, that practical politics always tries to whip up this kind of thing. Most of them are imaginary, and the urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it.

Now, that is a Democrat that said that, he passed away, 1956, but since I come from that kind of background, from an old Democrat background, I knew who H. L. Mencken was. So, I think that's what's involved here. I wrote that book because the purity of what I've loved since I was three -- my dad is a meteorologist, right? This is all I ever wanted to do. I can't believe that this is what it's come to.

CARLSON: That's right.

BASTARDI: It's turned into this political football or whatever. It's really bad.

CARLSON: It is, and it's clearly political, not science speaking.

Previously:

In Hannity segment attacking Green New Deal, climate denier Joe Bastardi says “people are ungrateful” for fossil fuels

On Fox News, climate denier Joe Bastardi calls Green New Deal "the weaponization of weather, the weaponization of climate"

Hannity invites climate denier Joe Bastardi on his show to deny link between climate change and extreme weather -- again

==

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2019/03/13/who-bankrolls-tucker-carlsons-hateful-propaganda-why-the-kochs-of-course/

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson is under fire this week for racist, sexist, and homophobic comments he made while chatting on “Bubba the Love Sponge” a shock jock radio show between 2006-2011. Groups are scrutinizing Fox’s advertisers and demanding that they drop the show.

But Carlson also publishes The Daily Caller, a controversial online media outlet with ties to white nationalists that has infamously peddled everything from climate denial and anti-Islamic tropes to false prostitution charges and violence against protesters.

Carlson’s moonlighting as an extremist at The Daily Caller is heavily bankrolled by — you guessed it — the Koch brothers. An investigation by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) finds that the Charles Koch Foundation has poured more than $2.7 million into the Daily Caller’s non-profit “charity” since 2012, which generates the lion’s share of the “news” that the Caller publishes.

Indeed, in 2016, Koch cash accounted for 83 percent of the The Daily Caller News Foundation’s $1.1 million in revenues.

Carlson Under Fire

As if catering to white supremacists was not bad enough, Media Matters published an inventory of hateful comments made by Carlson as a guest on the show between 2006-2011.

The radio host discusses Warren Jeffs, the religious leader who was investigated in 2007 for marrying off underage girls to older men and was eventually jailed for sexual assault of minors in 2011. When the radio host condemned Jeffs for being an “accessory to the rape of children,” Carlson said “whatever the hell that means,” and going on to suggest that forcible underage marriage is not as serious as forcible child rape. Listen to the tape here.

In other interviews, Carlson called Iraqis “semi-literate primitive monkeys,” who “don’t use toilet paper or forks.” They should just “shut the fuck up and obey.” Carlson spoke about his desire for a presidential candidate to blame the “lunatic Muslims who are behaving like animals.” That candidate would be “elected king” if they vowed to “kill as many of them as [they] can.” Carlson also said Afghanistan is “never going to be a civilized country because the people aren’t civilized.” Listen to the tape here.

The release of the older audio tapes gives “context and insight” on his nightly programming today, on MSNBC.

So far, Carlson has failed to apologize. As Fox News scrambles to control the damage, at least three advertisers — Allergan, letgo, and GreatCall — have had enough.

But with the focus on advertisers, it’s important to remember who else bankrolls Carlson’s mini media empire.

The Koch Caller?

The Kochs have long underwritten The Daily Caller. Previously, CMD reported that the Kochs gave $805,512 to The Daily Caller News Foundation between 2012 and 2015, predominantly from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. Since then, the numbers have continued to grow.

The Koch foundation gave another $946,000 in 2016 and $960,000 in 2017, the last year publicly available — for a total of $2.7 million.

In 2017, CMD analyzed emails sent by the Trump campaign to The Daily Caller subscribers and estimated that the outlet also received at least $150,000 from the Trump campaign in the months right before the November election, based on the fee charged for mailings to its list. The funding was never disclosed by Carlson or The Daily Caller as they reported on the Trump campaign.

In addition, CMD also examined the relationship between the non-profit and for-profit arms of Tucker Carlson’s operation. The mechanics of how they operate together raise serious concerns about whether Carlson’s tax-free nonprofit is operating primarily for the private benefit of his for-profit media outlet, which would be a violation of tax law.

CMD’s story was picked up by numerous media outlets including the Washington Post, which interviewed tax experts on the legality of the scheme.

“It really does look like the reason for the existence of this 501(c)(3) organization is to provide benefits to the for-profit company, and that should be a private benefit that is not acceptable,” Linda Sugin, a law professor at Fordham University, told the *Post* and other media outlets. “You can’t have money going into the foundation being used for purposes that are really to support the for-profit organization.”

mma

trove of leaked chat messages reportedly from members of white supremacist group Identity Evropa shows the group’s appreciation for Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Members praised segments from Tucker Carlson Tonight and fantasized about the idea of him running for president someday.

The nonprofit media organization Unicorn Riot released chat logs used by members of Identity Evropa, a group attempting to sanitize white supremacy by rebranding its racist beliefs as pro-white “identitarianism.” We reviewed hundreds of these messages mentioning Carlson.

The chats show many users praising Carlson for his subtlety in delivering extremist talking points as a strategic way of remaining on the airwaves, explicitly crediting Carlson with “normalizing 80% of [Identity Evropa’s] talking points,” and pointing out that figures like Carlson and Nazi sympathizer Ann Coulter “know exactly what they’re doing” to “nudge people further to the right.” Members praise Carlson for “doing divine work” that has “done more for” white supremacists than they “could ever hope to” do.

Carlson has also been praised by white supremacist and neo-Nazi podcasts. We've also put together a full timeline of Carlson's white supremacy.

==

an

news broke Sunday evening, and spread virally. Now there are calls for **Fox News** to fire its top host, **Tucker Carlson**, and some on social media are urging a boycott of Carlson’s advertisers.

Media Matters revealed in audio recordings they unearthed that Carlson over a five year period (2006 – 2011) repeatedly made extremely misogynistic remarks and grotesquely attacked about a half-dozen women by name. But perhaps most disturbing, Carlson, 49 and a father of four, appeared to condone statutory rape of both girls and boys and admitted he “would love” a “scenario” in which two underaged girls “explore” each others’ bodies. Carlson sloughed off his remarks as just “something naughty,” adamantly refusing to apologize.

On Twitter, the hashtag #FireTuckerCarlson is trending:...

just saw him on booktv, bit of populism there, is he getting ready to jump ship trump?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/fox-news-tucker-carlson-bashes-capitalism-and-says-he-might-vote-for-elizabeth-warren/

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/viral-video-showing-covington-catholic-high-school-students-prompts-propaganda-warfare-2

many lnx images (vid?)

Viral Video Showing Covington Catholic High School Students Prompts Propaganda Warfare

By Jared Holt | January 22, 2019 2:33 pm

(Screenshot / Fox News Channel)

In a video that went viral, a group of students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky appeared to mock indigenous activist Nathan Phillips, who encountered the teens at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., after participating in last weekend’s Indigenous Peoples March. The teens had just taken part in the annual March for Life, a parade of Catholic high schools and right-wing groups who oppose reproductive rights and hope to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal in all 50 states. After the video spread on Twitter over the weekend, the teens’ families hired a communications firm to launch multi-level public relations campaign to wage war against the press.

The viral video shows a young man who has publicly identified himself as Nicholas Sandmann, grinning and standing silently, facing Phillips, just inches from the Omaha tribe elder’s face, while Phillips plays a drum and sings. Sandmann’s classmates parody Phillips as he plays. Twitter has suspended the account that first sent video of the incident viral. Since that video achieved virality, more video clips of the events that day have emerged.

With each new video clip, right-wing hucksters alleged there was additional proof that the Covington Catholic boys should be exonerated for their display, despite the fact that none of the subsequent video clips prove that the boys did not demonstrate disrespectful behavior toward Phillips—rather, all video evidence reaffirmed that interpretation. What the clips did do, however, is provide documentation of verbal harassment of the boys by demonstrators from a Black Hebrew Israelite group prior to their encounter with indigenous activists. Despite the fact that additional footage showed the kids had been riled up before encountering Phillips, the clips do not change the facts of what happened after they did.

A response to the viral video first launched in a part of right-wing internet that could be aptly likened to a landfill and ascended into the stratosphere. The pushback campaign first took off with fame-hungry media personalities like YouTube hoaxer Joey Salads, climbed through a mill of pro-Trump propagandists, thrust itself into “respectable” conservative outlets, and eventually reached its cruising altitude at Fox News—an elevation where President Donald Trump encountered the narrative and tweeted out its message to the nation[djt tweet]

Right-wing activists created and spread hashtags like #VerifiedBullies and #StandWithCovington. Others began building a database of verified Twitter users who had criticized the teens—and in extreme cases provoked harassment and violent rhetoric against the students—and demanded that those users be suspended and, if they were media professionals, to be fired. So far, that campaign has cost at least one media professional their job. All the while, right-wing personalities siphoned off the outrage campaign to promote their own personally branded media efforts.

Charlie Kirk, president of Turning Point USA, asked how “anyone still trust the media after this weekend” and declared that journalism “is dead.”

...

5 dumb wk 1/19 AN

1. Tucker Carlson warns women being paid more than men will destroy society.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson is by now well-known for his on-air appeals to white nationalism. Last month, his remarks that immigrants make America “poorer and dirtier” have caused him to lose a raft of advertisers in recent weeks. But he also has a serious problem with women — and according to his broadcast on Wednesday, rising pay for women will lead to “men in decline.”

Carlson claimed that because “male-dominated” industries like manufacturing are in decline in some parts of the country, but schools, hospitals, and other places that employ large numbers of women are in as high demand as ever, “in many areas, women suddenly made more than men … Study after study shows that when men make less than women, women generally no longer want to marry them.”

“Over big populations this causes a drop in marriage, a spike in out-of-wedlock births and all the familiar disasters that inevitably follow. More drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed in the next generation,” Carlson warned.

Watch below:

Tucker Carlson says women making more money than men leads to “more drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed for the next generation” >Naturally, Carlson doesn’t provide any sourcing for these claims. Nor does he seem to have noticed that women in fact earn less than men on average, not more.

1. Lou Dobbs calls Mitt Romney “treasonous” for his op-ed mildly criticizing Trump.

Carlson was not the only right-wing anchor eager to share his opinion this week. Also in the spotlight was Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs, a psychotically pro-Trump anchor whoover the Washington Post op-ed by incoming Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), rebuking Trump’s failure of leadership and moral character.

“We have Romney,” said Dobbs, “who is basically saying to all of the great Americans in Utah, ‘Go to hell, please! You were a bunch of suckers! And I accepted the Trump endorsement. And now I’m telling Trump what I really think of him.’ What an ignorant — his character?! He’s talking about character?! He’s a traitor, he is treasonous, and betrayed the people of Utah!”

Contrary to Dobbs’ assertion, it is not “treasonous” for a member of a co-equal branch of government to criticize the presidency. And in reality, 64 percent of Utah voters wantRomney to stand up to Trump in office. The good news for Dobbs, though, is that Romney is unlikely to follow through on his anti-Trump posturing beyond empty words. He noted in his op-ed that he supports Trump’s policy agenda, and clarified he intends to vote for Trump’s border wall.

---

https://www.alternet.org/tucker-carlson-losing-advertisers-fox-news-response

Fox News host Tucker Carlson is facing an advertiser boycott in response to his racist attacks on immigrants. As of Tuesday afternoon, 11 companies have pulled advertising from Carlson's program, including Pacific Life, Indeed, SmileDirectClub, Minted, IHOP, Ancestry.com, ScotteVest, Nerdwallet, Zenni, TD Ameritrade, and Nautilus.[many just switch show? kpfa]

But the response from Fox News [lnx lost] is not to take any responsibility for his hateful rhetoric. Rather, they are attacking Sleeping Giants and Media Matters for America, two of the groups spearheading the boycott on social media: ...Fox News is referring to an incident in November in which protestors surrounded Carlson's house, called him a racist, and spray-painted his driveway. The event drew condemnation from both sides of the aisle, although some reports now suggest the unruliness of the demonstrators was somewhat exaggerated. Ironically, given they now claim they "do not advocate boycotts," Fox News responded to that incident by boycotting Twitter.

In recent months, Carlson has been engaging in increasingly racist bile on his show, with his rhetoric sometimes bordering on outright white nationalism to the point where neo-Nazi Richard Spencer and KKK grand wizard David Duke have praised him for mainstreaming their beliefs. Carlson has claimed that white people aren't "designed" to live around immigrants, that the original motto of the United States proves diversity is bad, and promoted a white nationalist conspiracy theory that South Africa is trying to push white farmers off their land and kill them (which President Donald Trump then tweeted about and caused an international incident).

But the remark that prompted the advertiser boycott was a segment on Thursday in which Carlson openly disdained immigrants as unclean."Our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this. We have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our country poorer and dirtier and more divided," he said. On Monday, he doubled down on this attack.

Fox News has reason to be jittery about advertiser boycotts. In April 2017, Bill O'Reilly, the longtime right-wing host who previously held Carlson's time slot, was forced out after revelations about his multimillion-dollar settlements to female colleagues he sexually harassed prompted advertisers to flee. Another boycott this March targeted Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham after she mocked Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg for not getting into his top choice of college, although she managed to weather the firestorm.

If Fox News wants to prevent advertiser boycotts, they should stop giving legitimacy on air to morally reprehensible people.

==

==

Fox News host Tucker Carlson is currently facing a crisis with one of his advertisers due to controversial remarks he made last week about immigration.

The insurance company Pacific Life issued a statement on Friday expressing extreme dissatisfaction with comments made by Carlson about immigration on the previous night's program. In a public statement, Pacific Life explained that "as a company, we strongly disagree with Mr. Carlson's statements. Our customer base and our workforce reflect the diversity of our great nation, something we take great pride in. We will not be advertising on Mr. Carlson's show in the coming weeks as we reevaluate our relationship with his program."

...

==

https://www.cjr.org/the_profile/tucker-carlson.php

myst of tc 9/18

TUCKER CARLSON IS SHOUTING when he tells me he isn’t shouting. The barrage of his voice has been relentless throughout the interview.

“I don’t want to be John McLaughlin yelling at people. Why would I want to do that? I don’t need to do that,” he insists. “I actually don’t think the audience likes that. I don’t like it. But the idea that I win debates because I yell louder, it’s, like, absurd.”

“I didn’t say you win because you shouted. I just said there is a lot of shouting.”

“There is not a lot of shouting. I do the show every night. I know what’s on it.”

“Okay,” I say, “but you are shouting right now.”

“It’s because I talk loud. I was shouting before."

I am confused. “You were definitely shouting before. That’s why this is funny,” I say laughing nervously. “Because you are like, “I AM NOT SHOUTING!”

Carlson then tells me how he is the loudest person in the restaurant. Just ask his family. I mean, sure he was shouting, but he’s a loud guy, We’ve moved from denial to acceptance in less than a minute. It’s pure Tucker Carlson, a move I’ve seen hundreds of times in the over 40 hours of Tucker Carlson Tonight:{:{ clips I’ve watched on Fox News in recent months. }::{Reporters go on his show believing they’ll be discussing health care or Donald Trump’s mental health, only to be met with the question, }:}

Reeling guests stumble and fall. “Answer the question,” Carlson demands. “Answer the question!” But the question is unanswerable.

WHAT HAPPENED TO TUCKER CARLSON? People in media ask themselves this question with the same pearl-clutching, righteous tone they use when discussing their aunt in Connecticut who voted for Trump.

In a tweet, Jon Lovett of Crooked Media and Pod Save America, noted, “Tucker Carlson’s transition from conservative serious-ish writer to blustery CNN guy to Daily Caller troll to race-baiting Fox News host is like ice core data on what led to this moment in our politics.” Carlson squandered his considerable God-given talent for scrupulously true commentary, opting instead for clickbait at The Daily Caller or dumbed-down demagoguery at Fox.”

There’s something to all the liberal hand-wringing. In a speech Carlson gave to CPAC in 2009, he pleaded with conservative journalists to focus on reporting rather than punditry. :{He held up :(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:*:{The:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:* *:{New York Times:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:*:{ as a standard bearer:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:, begging writers “to go out there and find what is happening….not just interpret things they hear in the mainstream media.” His pleas were met with boos.

But just six years later, Carlson was calling out The New York Times:{ for}:{, and in June 2018 accused }:{ lying to the American people about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Bashar Al-Assad, and Russian interference in the 2016 elections.}:

If we can figure out how an intelligent writer and conservative can go from writing National Magazine Award–nominated articles to shouting about immigrants on Fox News, perhaps we can understand what is happening to this country, or at least to journalism, in 2018.

If you ask his former editors, they’ll say they’re wistful when they think about the old Tucker Carlson.

Mark Warren, who edited him at Esquire: “He is an extremely talented writer. [Tucker’s] writing was done with such energy and vitality.”

Paul Greenberg, who edited Carlson at The Arkansas Democrat Gazette: “Tucker was a pleasure to work with. I knew he would fit right in in Arkansas when I discovered that he chewed tobacco.”

Adam Myerson, Policy Review: “Tucker was an enterprising, hard-working shoe-leather reporter.”

Tina Brown, who worked with Carlson at her short-lived Talkmagazine: “Tucker is a tremendously good writer and I always thought it was a real shame that he kind of like got sucked into this TV mania thing. “

Perhaps fearful of what Carlson has become, few of his former editors were willing to talk on the record about his evolution, except for Brown, who noted crisply in an efficient, six-minute phone interview, “I really think Tucker is better than that.”

ICYMI: In a front-page story, *NYT* summed up McCain’s’s ability to control media—even in death

Ask Tucker Carlson whatever happened to Tucker Carlson, and he gets upset.

“Who thinks I’ve changed?” he demands. I didn’t want to give up any of my sources, a few of whom still count him as a friend, so I stammered out my editor’s name.

“Uh, Kyle Pope,” I said.

“Is Kyle kind of dumb?” Carlson responds.

(Editor’s note: Arguable.)

The question, What happened to Tucker Carlson? is worth answering. If we can figure out how an intelligent writer and conservative can go from writing National Magazine Award–nominated articles and being hailed by some of the best editors in the business, to shouting about immigrants on Fox News, perhaps we can understand what is happening to this country, or at least to journalism, in 2018.

TUCKER MCNEAR SWANSON CARLSON was always going to be a journalist, if only through inertia and nepotism; the talent was a bonus. Carlson is the son of Dick Carlson, a media executive, who used to direct the Voice of America and is a former CEO of The Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Tucker was born in 1969, the older of two boys. Their mother, Lisa McNear Carlson, left the family when he was six. “Totally bizarre situation—which I never talk about, because it was actually not really part of my life at all,” :{Carlson told :(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:*:{The New Yorker:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:*:{ in 2017:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:.

When Tucker was 10, Dick remarried to Patricia Swanson of the Swanson frozen dinner fortune; her uncle was Senator J. William Fulbright. Carlson and his brother Buckley went to the Rhode Island private school St. George’s and, later, Tucker attended Trinity College, where, as he told the CJR in an interview, he spent his days mostly drunk. He graduated in 1992 and married his high school sweetheart, Susan Anderson.

Carlson applied to the CIA, but his application was denied, so he turned to journalism. “You should consider journalism,” his father told him. “They’ll take anybody.”

And they did.

Carlson began working for Policy Review as a fact-checker. “I ended up working for this magazine because the standards are so low,” he explains.

The quip is Carlsonesque—disarming, self-effacing, self-aggrandizing, and a tad insulting. I’m a single mom, a freelance writer with two kids, swiftly facing a future with no healthcare. I’m cobbling together ghostwriting jobs, but it’s not enough. I tell Carlson this and he tells me it’s “all impressive.” The implication is clear. It’s fine for me, but he’snot good at that sort of thing.

“I have all kinds of problems with authority and being told what to do,” he says. “I was not suited for that kind of work.”

I think about the application I just filled out for Starbucks. Me neither.

Yet Carlson insists he, too, was motivated only by the needs of a growing family. He maintains that if someone handed him $5 million he wouldn’t have gotten out of bed. (And he’d be easy to believe, if he wasn’t, in fact, worth over $8 million, and hadn’t himself stood to inherit enough to keep him in a rotating series of beds until retirement.)

But it’s the story he’s sticking to. He had to do what he had to do. He didn’t have a choice. He has kids. DC has terrible public schools. His hands were tied. So, in addition to his staff positions, he took freelance jobs. He didn’t want to disappoint his family.

“I think this is true of almost everybody unless you happen to inherit a bunch of dough at a young age.” Carlson sounds cavalier as he says this, like the plight of sending kids to a private school in DC is the most relatable thing in history. I wonder about my own career in media. If providing for my kids was my only goal, I’d be back in my marketing job. Which reminds me, I need to check my bank account to make sure I can afford back-to-school shoes and after-school care.

I wonder which one of us is supposed to be the liberal elite media.

But Carlson’s story is the story of the working man. He is, in this way, a Trumpish avatar—roguish, rich, independent, and confusing as hell. Despite his pedigree, or more likely because of it, Carlson has managed to become a vox populi of the deplorables. His show attracts an audience of 2.7 million people who see him as a voice of independent Americans. His book Ship of Fools, which rails against the liberal media establishment, is due out in October. The man’s voice and his power are only growing.

SinceBill O’Reilly was fired from Fox News in October 2017, Carlson has cannibalized O’Reilly’s audience. According to Nielsen Media Research, the top-rated markets for the show are Ft. Myers, Florida; Knoxville, Tennessee; Jacksonville, Florida; West Palm Beach, Florida; Las Vegas, Nevada; Birmingham, Alabama; Orlando, Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; Greenville, South Carolina; and Buffalo, New York. Only half of these cities went for Trump in the 2016 election, but they are (with the exception of Birmingham and Atlanta) overwhelmingly white and middle class, with an average age of 36. A large part of the jobs held by men in each city are in retail or construction.

Despite his pedigree, or more likely because of it, Carlson has managed to become a vox populi of the deplorables. His show attracts an audience of 2.7 million people who see him as a voice of independent Americans.

These fans consider themselves independent thinkers, like Carlson; they love him for his unanswerable questions. Colleen H., from Utah, told me through Facebook Messenger, “I like the way he has his guests on and they can’t say anything but the truth. He asks them a simple question and they go round and round the truth. He stays right on top of the subject at hand, if his guests don’t…. They only have so long to answer. When they don’t, they’re gone.”

A man who goes by the name The Watchman on Twitter, and lives in West Virginia, explained that he likes Carlson because “he seems honest and sincere. I like how he always [asks] what seems to the Democratic Socialist/Liberals as tough questions and they never answer him.”

Carlson also has one very big fan in the president of the United States, who watches his show and gleans policy ideas. Only weeks ago, after Carlson spoke on his show about a South African policy of seizing property from white landowners, the president tweeted that he was having his Secretary of State look into the matter. (Both Carlson and Trump misinterpreted the policy. Carlson later clarified his remarks on the issue; Donald Trump has not.)

Other vocal fans of Carlson include Richard Spencer, David Duke, and white nationalist website The Daily Stormer. On August 24, 2018, The Daily Stormer published a post that noted gleefully, “Tucker Carlson is basically ‘Daily Stormer: The Show.’ Other than the language used, he is covering all of our talking points.”

Pointing out the similarities between Nazi supporters and positions advocated by Carlson has become a subgenre of DC media. The most thorough examination was by Carlos Maza, a journalist for Vox, who recently broke down the ways in which Carlson’s talking points resonate with professional racists. His video is worth watching in full, but he points out how Carlson’s show cherrypicks stories of immigrants committing crime and ties illegal immigration to the crime rate. (Studies from the FBI and the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, have proven no link between immigration—illegal or otherwise—and crime.)

But he’snot a racist, Carlson insists. It’s bogus. Just because he believes everyone should be able to say what they want without being punished for it, doesn’t mean he supports them.

“If you think my views are bad tell me how. But [my accusers] don’t, because they’re either too dumb or they don’t care. They are trying to silence people they disagree with…And they are leading the effort to silence people they disagree with, without any debate, with out any intellectual due process, not legal, intellectual due process.”

Carlson’s voice is rising. He begins to mimic liberals in a higher pitched voice. “Shut up, Nazi. I get to punch you now.”

That, he says, is where the world is going.

So is he a racist? “My god, I’m not a racist. I hate racism. Tell me how.”

He kept going, mimicking the debate he believes his accusers/liberals/me are having about him. “It’s like ‘Oh, creepy people like your show. Therefore, you shouldn’t have a show.’ What? How could you go along with that? I don’t understand. Like, that’s the lowest form…that’s so contemptible. And it’s, it’s amazing to me that that kind of goes on uniformly. Shut up. You’re a bad person. Go away. You’re fired now. What? Tell me what he did wrong. Speak slowly so that I can understand. What did he say that’s untrue? What did he say that’s not allowed? What’s the right position? Why don’t you explain it to me? Shut up, Nazi.”

His publicist calls after our interview to make sure I know that Carlson is not a racist.

LIKE MANY WHITE MALE JOURNALISTS, Carlson used to idolize Hunter S. Thompson. And his own early journalism is indeed gonzo-like: freewheeling, voice-driven, squibbish narratives. It is as if Thompson donned a bow-tie, and thought maybe poor people should work a little harder. 

At Policy Review Carlson made a mark for himself with pieces like a cringey look at Dunbar High School in Washington, DC.Carlson depicts the historically black high school as on the decline. Fair enough. The high school is one of DC’sworst-performers. But then he traces the roots of the decline to the desegregation of DC schools. The kicker of the article reads, “By heeding its past, Dunbar could once again inspire greatness.”

That past is one of segregation. He advocated this line of thinking again in 1996 in an article about the “Lost Black Aristocracy” of Washington. According to Carlson, desegregation meant the loss of rich black people in the city. These black aristocrats, Carlson notes, “had both light skin and, like their ancestors, profoundly integrationist views—seemed like museum pieces in a city whose local politics were increasingly defined by black nationalism.”

With them gone, Carlson mourns, “no force remained to keep the excesses of the civil rights class in check. Political leaders stopped identifying with bourgeois values and began pandering in earnest to the underclass.”

Carlson left Policy Review, to work under Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist Paul Greenberg at the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. In 1995, he left to work for the *:{Weekly Standard:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:*:{,:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}: where he profiled James Carville. The 1996 article, “James Carville: Populist Plutocrat” skewers Carville for getting rich off his message of populism. It’s a fun piece. Carlson writes with the hooks and jabs he’s famous for on TV, but they’re rendered more deftly on the page:

A wine aficionado (northern Rhones are his favorite), Carville once consumed no fewer than 11 drinks in the company of a reporter on a flight to Los Angeles. He and his wife (former Bush partisan and talk-show host Mary Matalin) have what he calls a “country house” in rural Virginia. He enjoys quality room service, plush bath towels, and cars that come with drivers. He’s a frequent patron of The Palm, one of Washington’s most expensive restaurants. And, as if to make the caricature complete, he loves to play the stock market.

Then, in case you think he’s a conservative in good standing, in 1999, Carlson profiled George W. Bush for Tina Brown’s Talkmagazine. He quoted Bush saying “fuck” a lot and had him mimicking a panicked Karla Faye Tucker, a murderer on death row, pleading for her life. Carlson writes: “‘Please’, Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, ‘don’t kill me.’”

Karen Hughes, Bush’s communications director, denied Carlson’s version of the events. But it was enough to mark Carlson as a journalistic rascal. “He really could’ve been one of the very great journalists,” Brown says. “You know because he had an amazing eye for observation. He’s terribly funny and you know he’s just a great stylist. There was a kind of flair to it that I thought was great.”

Probably the pinnacle of this journalism career was a 2003 articleabout traveling to Liberia with Al Sharpton; Cornel West; and Franzo King, archbishop and lead sax player of the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, in San Francisco. About King he writes, “King tends to speak in riddles and dictums and parables, and at an almost inaudible volume. One day I told him that I considered some person or other a bit of a phony. King looked at me intently for a moment, then put his hand on the back of my head and pulled my ear to his lips. ‘Is a tree phony because it loses its leaves in winter?’ he whispered.”

In this article, Carlson all but accuses Sharpton of reverse racism. His argument in the article, 15 years ago, will sound familiar to anyone who watches his show today. “The idea that I’d be responsible for the sins (or, for that matter, share in the glory of the accomplishments) of dead people who happened to share my skin tone has always confused me,” he wrote. “Racial solidarity wasn’t a working concept in my Southern California hometown. Most people barely had last names, much less ethnic identities. I grew up feeling about as much connection to nineteenth-century slave owners as I did to bus drivers in Helsinki or astronomers in Tirana. We’re all capable of getting sunburned. That’s it.”

For this, he was nominated for a National Magazine Award.

He didn’t win, but who cares? “I can’t imagine a less coveted accolade than an award from sad, alcoholic former newspaper editorialists, you know?”

Go on. “I don’t respect my peers at all. I mean, I just can’t imagine a group whose approval I’m less interested in, because I think so many of them are just so unbelievably mediocre. I mean, mediocre.”

“It’s like ‘Oh, creepy people like your show. Therefore, you shouldn’t have a show.’ What? How could you go along with that? I don’t understand. Like, that’s the lowest form…that’s so contemptible. And it’s, it’s amazing to me that that kind of goes on uniformly. Shut up. You’re a bad person. Go away. You’re fired now. What? Tell me what he did wrong. Speak slowly so that I can understand.”

Despite the loathing of his own profession, Carlson went to Pakistan for *:{The New York Times Magazine:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}:*:{ right after 9/11:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;list-style:none"):}: and almost died in a plane crash. He traveled to Iraq and wrote a sympathetic profile of military contractors and interviewed Paul Ryan, both for Esquire. (None of those assignments, it seems obvious to say, would likely go to Carlson today.)

Along the way, Tucker pivoted to video. Which, in some estimations, was (and is always) a big mistake. To hear Carlson tell it, he stumbled into television the same way he wandered into journalism, because it was quick, easy, and they’d take him. In his 2003 book Politics, Partisans, and Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News, Carlson recounts that his first television appearance happened because he came home early from lunch.

I was heading back to my desk with a take-out hot dog one afternoon when I ran into the receptionist. She asked me what I knew about the O.J. trial. My instinct was to answer honestly (“just about nothing”), but for some reason I caught myself. I asked her why she wanted to know. Well, she explained, Dan Rather’s booker just called looking for an O.J. expert to go on 48 Hours tonight. Everyone else is still at lunch. Can you do it?

After that, Carlson was on TV regularly as a talking head. Five years later, in 2000, he was asked to go on CNN to give commentary after the Lieberman-Cheney debate. That analysis launched the CNN show The Spin Room,co-hosted by Carlson and Bill Press. It aired at 1 in the morning, then 11 and 11:30 at night, before finally coming to rest at 10:30. The show was short-lived, and little-loved: “Press is a hopeless, dithering wimp who makes Carlson’s bow-tied twit look like The Rock,” wrote a critic in Entertainment Weekly in 2001. “Between them, Carlson and Press would be hard-pressed to win a debate with network weatherman Flip Spiceland over whether or not the sun is out in Atlanta.”:{

}:

But somehow, despite the cancellation of his debut show, Carlson’s career as player in political TV was on. In 2001, Carlson was asked to co-host Crossfire with Paul Begala. He also hosted a weekly public affairs show on PBS, Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered. The most notable moment of Crossfire, the one everyone remembers, aired on October 15, 2004. That was theday Jon Stewart came onCrossfireand called Tucker Carlson a dick.

It’s an infamous moment in cable news history. Carlson and Begala seem to think Stewart is there to promote his book, but he immediately begins criticizing the show. Any attempt by the co-hosts to retake control comes off as weak and wheedling. They try to bait him, but Stewart won’t budge. He defends himself as saying he’s just entertainment, a defense that in hindsight feels misleading considering the way The Daily Show changed news and comedy. In response, Carlson stutters. He’s defensive. He laughs nervously, an early sign of what would become a trademark tic. 

“Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America,” Stewart begs Begala and Carlson. The conversation escalates from there, with Stewart lecturing the duo on their cable news theater which masquerades as journalism. Begala says little. It’s Carlson who tries to parry Stewart’s blows. But Stewart does what Carlson would later learn to do so well, he comes out of the gate with an impossible line of questioning and a disingenuous defense.

ICYMI: “I had consumed five or six pills of Tylenol, of 800 milligrams each. I tried to lessen my physical pain.”

At one point, Carlson notes, “I do think you’re more fun on your show. Just my opinion.”

Stewart doesn’t miss a beat. “You know what’s interesting, though? You’re as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.”

Carlson clearly still has scars from the exchange. “Jon Stewart was far more popular than I was,” he says, “and so he was recorded as having won the argument. But I never understood what the argument was.”

The argument, of course, was that Carlson was hurting America with his rhetoric. And in some ways, that’s still the argument. The power dynamic has changed. And now, Carlson is the one making people stutter defensively.

:{Though Stewart has long been off the air, the parallels between the two men still resonate. Today on his show, Carlson often comes right out of the gate with impossible and leading questions, like Stewart did. He recently asked Julissa Arce, an immigrant rights activist and author, i}:{. And }:{when it became acceptable to generalize about people based on race. In 2004, people saw Stewart as a rogue, a truth teller, someone who skewered both sides equally. Carlson sees himself the same way. “I think you’ll find a lot of people who say I’m repugnant or expired or whatever, but I don’t think I’m fake.”}:

Crossfirewas cancelled a few months after the Stewart appearance, and former CNN President Jon Klein tells CJR that yes, he did agree with Stewart. He cancelled the show in order to change the culture at CNN. “The original premise that two intelligent people from opposite sides of the spectrum could shed some fascinating light on the issues of the day had devolved in a predictable Punch and Judy show.”

Then he goes even further. “Canceling Crossfire was one of the best decisions I made,” says Klein. In response to Klein, Carlson shot back, “I was long gone from CNN and employed at another network by the time Crossfire got canceled. But for the record Jon Klein is a small and dishonest person.”

For about a second, the moment marked a watershed for Carlson. He seemed to change. He got an MSNBC show and told people it would be different. He wouldn’t shout. He ditched the bow tie.

In a 2005 interview about his now-cancelled MSNBC show, Carlson told Television Week, “This is not ever a show that will ever have guests debating each other. Ever. That is the form in cable news. We’re never doing that. Ever. That’s a worn-out format, and I am not going to do that…‘I’m right, you’re wrong.’ I hate that.” That same article described Carlson as saying “no” to shouting matches.

He then went on Dancing with the Stars and was immediately voted off.

AFTER MSNBC CANCELLED CARLSON’S SHOW, in 2008, he and his college roommate, former Dick Cheney aide Neil Patel, launched a media start-up, The Daily Caller. The Caller was supposed to be a new kind of conservative outlet—thoughtful, responsible, researched. They hired Megan Mulligan from TheGuardian to run the day-to-day editorial operations, and for awhile at least, Carlson was hands on. He’d go to editorial meetings with note cards full of ideas.

But the site was probably doomed from the beginning. To start with, The Daily Caller was funded by conservative philanthropist Foster Friess, who is famous for telling Andrea Mitchell that in his day, “gals” used to clutch aspirin between their knees as a form of birth control. Editorially, Carlson insisted the site would be independent, and in March 2010, the Caller ran a story about RNC chair Michael Steele using party funds on a private plane and an evening at a bondage-themed nightclub. The story was poorly sourced and drew more skepticism than accolades.

When writer Mickey Kaus published an article criticizing Fox News, Carlson immediately removed it. Carlson had a contract with the network as a commentator and, according to Kaus, he said he couldn’t criticize Carlson’s employer. So much for independence. Kaus insists he respects Carlson’s decision and that it’s all “water under the bridge,” but the dream of a rogue outlet of hard-hitting, conservative journalism was never realized. And the site withered from there. Right now the site highlights sensationalist stories about “illegal aliens,” justifiable homicide, and a hit piece on Beto O’Rourke.

What The Daily Caller became, a former employee told me, was far different than what it was intended to be. “They used all the technology that told them who was reading the site and what they wanted. So, they gave the people what they wanted.”

Which brings us to where we find Carlson today and what the hell happened to him.

Every segment and every outburst that “media elites” criticize just make his fans love him more. The more outrage he inspires, the braver, the bolder, the more courageous he seems to his audience.

So, the question What happened to Tucker Carlson? is, in the words of Carlson, Are you dumb? If you are asking it, he isn’t for you, and perhaps he was never for you.

:{The two ways of seeing Tucker Carlson are best explained through the titles of YouTube videos: }:{ one Tucker Carlson clip is titled. “}:{” another claims. They both link to essentially the same video footage, the day Carlson was lectured by Stewart. Similarly, }:{ and }:{ show the same clip. These clips are a lesson in the disconnect between the Americas.}:

For his fans, the criticisms of him and the controversy drummed up by the show create the perception of Carlson (a rich white man who owns multiple homes and could inherit even more money) as an underdog. A charming rogue. Someone who succeeds no matter what the liberal media tries to smear on him. “My role is really simple,” he tells me, “I want to tell the truth as I see it. I want to be as honest as I can. I don’t think of myself as representing any group of people anywhere.”

Every segment and every outburst that “media elites” criticize just make his fans love him more. The more outrage he inspires, the braver, the bolder, the more courageous he seems to his audience.

And who doesn’t love a rogue? Since the day Hermes stole Apollo’s cattle, people have always loved a renegade. Hell, America voted for a rogue as president. In that way, Carlson is perfect for this moment in history. A man without loyalties, except to the truth. And for what it’s worth, Carlson has always characterized himself this way. He belongs to no clubs except a fly fishing one. He belongs to no party. He even says he has a spotty history of voting.

A former co-worker likens Carlson’s appeal to that of a rowdy prep school frat boy. “What’s the reputation of frat boys? They go get drunk, chase after women, okay?… What’s not to like? What’s not to identify with? It’s basically what a lot of American culture is about.”

And Carlson has a rowdy frat-boy reputation. He is rumored to have dumped a drink on the head of Grover Norquist, after Norquist insulted his father. (Carlson clarified to me through his PR person that it was not water.) Carlson also once gave a party for Jack Abramoff, as a way to spit in the eye of the DC elite. Additionally, according to an account he wrote about in Politics, Partisans, and Parasites, he was almost brought down by scandal when was accused of raping a woman in Indiana. The woman, whom he names in the book, Kimberly Carter, accused Carlson of drugging and raping her at Harper’s Restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky. CJR tried to speak to Carter about the incident, but was unable to reach her and her lawyer did not return calls and emails requesting comment. But according to the book, the incident was groundless. Carter and Carlson were never in the same room together, the charges were dropped and Carter recanted.

The book itself is a frustrating compilation of anecdotes that includes a vigorous defense of Gary Condit and the line, “I couldn’t imagine [Monica Lewinsky] wearing a thong. I couldn’t imagine wanting to see it.”

I’m sorry, are you offended? That’s the whole point of the book—his irascible and contrarian humor. And if you don’t find it funny, well, he writes, “Liberals used to be funny. They edited magazines like National Lampoon. They had a claim on cool. Then something happened. They became sour and earnest and neurotic about secondhand smoke. The Democratic party became the party of the uptight establishment, the that’s-not-funny-young-man party, the party of no fun.”

Immediately after his musings on the dour moralizing of liberals, Carlson describes a drunk Jim Traficant’s attempting to assault a cable news employee. It’s a funny anecdote for him. “It was always acceptable to be amused by Jim Traficant, and I usually was,” he writes. It’s the equivalent of a man telling you to go make him a goddamn sandwich, then calling you uptight when you cross your arms and frown. I can imagine Carlson telling me I was humorless for writing this. He’d be bored by my moralizing, and as a former employee of his told me, “Tucker hates to be bored.”

It’s like Carlson wrote about Bill O’Reilly: “[He is a] guy who tells the truth and demands that others do the same. A man who won’t be pushed around or take maybe for an answer … And like everyone in media he has a schtick … It works. But there’s a price. O’Reilly’s success is built on the perception that he really is who he claims to be. If he ever gets caught out of character, it’s over.”

He then concludes that O’Reilly won’t get caught out of character, because his real life persona and TV character have merged. It’s an insight that feels jarring in light of O’Reilly’s sexual misconduct allegations. And it’s something I heard people say over and over about Carlson—that on TV he was a persona. But by the time I spoke to him, I couldn’t see the difference. It’s a Shakespearean conundrum, one Hamlet grappled with as he pretended to be mad. Insisting, until the end, that he knew a “hawk from a handsaw.”

Spoiler alert: The stories of O’Reilly and Hamlet don’t end well for anyone.

Yet whatever grand unified theory of Carlson you believe impacts how you see his career. How you see America.

And we could go round and round. All theories seem to be truth and untrue. But this wily incongruity of Carlson—his refusal to be pinned down, his legendary contrarianism—is why his audience loves him. He’s an independent thinker, just like them. He’s not loyal to a party, just like them. He tells them to think for themselves. To trust no one. The mainstream media is lying to you, he says. Everyone, except him of course. It’s like the scene in the movie, The Life of Brian where Brian, tells a crowd of people, “You are all individuals.”

“We are all individuals!” they yell in unison.

“Well not me,” one man pipes up from the back.

Carlson’s “independence,” says Richard West, professor of communications at Emerson College and author of five books on interpersonal communications, is “change-the-subject conservatism.” Meaning that Carlson’s deftness in defying any one party or ideology and is more about a winning rhetorical strategy than a noble enterprise.

“It’s quite a remarkable tactic,” West explains, “because you don’t give people an opportunity to digest … I do believe he’s a conversational narcissist. He hijacks the conversation and contorts it to his own value structure.”

Carlson, through his PR person, stated, “I have no idea what that means and West is welcome to come on the show anytime. But I bet you dinner, he is too afraid.”

What Carlson’s fans hear, in response to that kind of intellectual moralizing from West, is just another boring lib who doesn’t get it. In a Kindle single titled *Bill O’Reilly and Tucker Carlson: The Transition of Very Different Conservative Hosts at Fox News* the author, Richard West (but not the communications professor from Emerson), revels in Carlson’s tricksterism. This West notes that in August of 2017, Carlson stated that Donald Trump staring at the eclipse without protective eyewear was the “the most impressive thing a president has ever done.“

This comment catalyzed a lot of people to mock Carlson. But for Carlson and his supporters, it was an inside joke.Carlson later told Business Insider, “It was a test to see if liberals are really as slow and humorless as people claim,” Carlson said. “Turns out they are.”

It’s a neat trick. Say something and when challenged, insist it was a joke. As if jokes themselves rise above criticism. Or by not laughing you are a humorless bore—a liberal. It’s just a play on another Carlson rhetorical move: Say something and then, when criticized, insist that criticism is an attempt to infringe on free speech.

This was the circle of hell I found myself stuck in during my interview with Carlson. I had expected a genial conversation. Every profile of Carlson depicts him as a lovely, rational man—fly fishing, making pancakes, leaning back in a chair and chewing Nicorette. Sources have told me he’s charming. He’s engaging. He’s fun and interesting. And all of that was from people who think his politics are abhorrent. My editor offered to send me out to meet him, but Carlson declined. I got a phone call instead. Which, okay, maybe he was busy and besides, I’m not famous. But after our initial conversation about how much we both love Cheetos and both wish we had more kids, the conversation devolved into a lecture on free speech. It was a kind of boring lecture, the kind Carlson abhors. It seemed like a moot point. He has a large platform and all the money and privilege. Who is censoring him? And by that token, conservatives have won. They have the White House and congress. So much winning, right?

After our initial conversation about how much we both love Cheetos and both wish we had more kids, the conversation devolved into a lecture on free speech.

But according to Carlson, censorship is everywhere. Liberals are suppressing free speech in America by saying they are offended by everything, he tells me.The tech guy at Google, he says, who was fired for exercising his free speech. Carlson is referring to the ex-Google employee James Damore who wrote posts on an internal company message board attributing psychological differences between men and women as the reason there was a gender gap at Google. Damore, Carlson argues, was fired for exercising his free speech. He was the epitome of diversity. And he got fired in the name of diversity. America, what a country. It’s totally Orwellian.

And did I know that biologists have proven there are only two genders? Just two. And no high school teacher in the world would tell me otherwise. But it makes liberals mad when you say the truth. Get a biologist to say he’s wrong and he’ll listen but until then. No.

I point out that sexuality and gender are inherently different and maybe he’s conflating the two. “Look biological reality is… super deep and exists apart from whatever social construct you’re buying into…and that comes with all kinds of physical consequences,” he explains, explaining nothing.

After the interview, I sent his PR person a link to an article that explains how science has indeed concluded that gender is not binary. His PR person told me “he has no comment on that.”

Carlson sees himself as brave for pointing out these truths in the minefield of liberal feelings. He likens it to Galileo, put to death for saying the earth is round. “You should be allowed to say what is provably true and I guess if you don’t agree with that…. that’s by definition irrational and it freaks me out when a large organization punishes people on the basis of irrational belief, because once that starts happening, like, why not kill the people that disagree with you?”

“Is this censorship,” I manage to ask, “or just consequences? Doesn’t speech have consequences?” But Carlson dodges.

“You agreed there are some things we are not allowed to say because of diversity,” he says.

“No, I don’t agree with that.”

“You did.”

“No. No. No. No.”

“Because consequences. Yeah you did.”

So apparently, by asking, I’m censoring.

I think about the power imbalance. This man. Who has money. Status. 2.7 million viewers. He holds the attention of the president. And me? I might be “the liberal elite,” but I buy groceries at Wal-Mart, live in Iowa, and after 12 years of working as a writer, I still can’t get many outlets to even respond to my pitches.

Carlson’s PR person was concerned about silencing, too. She demanded that Carlson be able to respond to every criticism in this piece. And then, if the people who made those criticisms had a response, that Carlson be able to respond to that.

“You want him to have the last word?” I asked.

“Yes!” she shouted. She was shouting at me, too.

I told her he has a show. He has a large audience. He has a website. He has a Twitter following. I was sure he’d be able to find a way to respond without an endless feedback loop. She insisted. She didn’t want him to be silenced.

But Carlson isn’t being silenced. He’s plenty loud enough. And anyway I don’t want to silence him. I don’t want to end free speech, I just want to tell him speech has consequences. I tell him that a year after Trump was elected I ended my 12-year marriage to a Republican.

“I’ve seen speech have real disastrous consequences. I am going through a divorce right now because of the way speech and politics and religion have worked out in my own marriage. So yes, I see intellectually, free speech. But personally, I see the deep pain. Like everyone, I see a problem in America and I don’t know a way around it.”

“You don’t know,” says Carlson, “Well, I do know… You oughta let people say what they think and you shouldn’t punish them for that, period. That’s how I feel.”

I am trying to listen. I am trying to understand. I want to understand. If I can figure out what happened to Tucker Carlson, how he went from successful magazine writer to contrarian journalist to raving Fox News host, I believe I will understand what happened to my country, my life even. What happened to make a rich white man the vox populi? How did I, a mom in the Midwest who can’t afford health care, become the humorless, censoring, liberal elite? How are the winners still insisting they are losers? What happened to this whole mess of a world? So I listen and listen. But I get no answers. Most of the quotes I get don’t make any sense. And I’m no closer to an answer now than when I started.

All I know is, he was definitely shouting.

ICYMI: The FBI’s secret investigation of a journalist

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