Tucker Carlson speculates the COVID vaccine “doesn’t work and they’re simply not telling you that”
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Experts say it is not entirely clear when it will be considered okay for people who are fully vaccinated to stop wearing masks. At some point, no one is asking this but everyone should be, what is this about? If vaccines work, why are vaccinated people still banned from living normal lives? Honestly, what’s the answer to that, it doesn’t make any sense at all. If the vaccine is effective there’s no reason for people who’ve received a vaccine to wear masks or avoid physical contact. So maybe it doesn’t work and they’re simply not telling you that. Well you’d hate to think that especially if you’ve gotten two shots but what’s the other potential explanation? We can’t think of one.
The son of Jerry Falwell Jr. is out of his job as vice president at Liberty University nearly eight months after his father resigned as president of the Christian school amid allegations of inappropriate personal behavior and financial self-dealing.
…
Trey Falwell, who is in his early 30s, served as vice president of university operations, earning a salary of $234,310, according to the university’s most recent tax filing. He was simultaneously a senior official at Liberty while operating a real estate management company that oversees a shopping plaza owned by the university.
Trey’s wife, Sarah, was previously employed by the university as “Executive Director of Career Partnerships & Career Services” and paid $72,211 in 2019, according to tax documents and her LinkedIn profile.
There’s a bigger chance you’ll get a blood clot from Covid itself than there is you’ll get one from any of the vaccines, including the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
(CNN)A Black police officer in Buffalo, New York, who was fired in 2008 for intervening when a White colleague employed a chokehold will be given back pay and a pension, a New York judge ruled. The officer, Cariol Horne, was fired following a 2006 incident in which she tried to stop an officer from using a chokehold on a handcuffed suspect. Horne served on the Buffalo police force for 19 of the 20 years required to receive a pension.
“The message was sent that you don’t cross that blue line and so some officers — many officers don’t,” Horne said in a 2020 interview with CNN’s Brianna Keilar. “I had five children and I lost everything but [the suspect] did not lose his life, so, if I have nothing else to live for in life, at least I can know that I did the right thing and that [he] still breathes.”
Tuesday’s ruling restored Horne’s pension and vacated an earlier court ruling upholding her dismissal.
When asked by CNN’s Don Lemon on Wednesday whether she felt vindicated by the ruling, she said, “It’s getting there.”
If there’s a cliché that summed up Joe Biden’s defeat of an extremely progressive Democratic primary field, it’s the pithy maxim that Twitter is not real life. And since Biden assumed the presidency this past January, his deliberate, plodding, and downright boring communications strategy has followed a similar — but related — rule: TV isn’t governing.
………………………………
For Republicans looking to capitalize on a major misstatement or slip-up, Biden’s less-is-more strategy has meant that the pickings have been slim.
“It’s a nightmare,” said one House Republican campaign operative when asked about his party’s efforts to render Biden — and therefore his agenda — unpalatable to the majority of Americans.
May you never wake up from it.
The GOP campaign consultant — a veteran of both presidential and congressional politics — said Biden’s relative reticence, combined with his age and race, has made it harder to launch culture war-based attacks on him.
“You’ll never get anyone to admit this on the record, but it’s really f**king hard to drive down the negatives of an affable, gentlemanly white man who says nice, positive things most of the time,” he said.
Instead, Republicans have reverted to an unsuccessful tactic first deployed by the man Biden defeated in 2020: Call him senile and suggest he’s a puppet.
Because that worked so well for trump.
Bardella explained that despite Biden’s limited exposure since becoming president, he has been “a very effective communicator in terms of the level of trust and authenticity that he exudes” when he does speak. He added that Cornyn’s claim that Biden is not really in charge because he isn’t omnipresent in the media like his predecessor shows that Republicans “are desperate to do insane anything they can to not have to actually talk about the substance of the Biden agenda, which is overwhelmingly popular, even with Republican voters”.
“The Biden White House is not going to play into the hands of Republicans, nor should they,” he added. “And the more that they whine about it, the more it just cements the certainty that the strategy that they’ve pursued is the right one.”
Well, Republicans could try countering with alternative policies but, they don’t do policy anymore.
@Doug Mataconis: sure, but it’s much worse than that. Chris Cillizza is an idiot, but he’s harmless. Tucker, whether it’s his white supremacy or his vaccine disinformation, is dangerous.
“I’m losing respect for the Trump family. So over this virtue signaling,” said one poster. Another said, “No thanks! Don’t want to be a lab rat. #justsayno.” Yet another replied, “Your personal choice but please don’t push on others.”
“No thanks! With a 99% survival rate, I shall pass. With Bill Gates involved I will not get one,” said Rice448.
“Hell no. Why would you post this?” asked kenny_vv.
“Nope not putting that in my body,” said call_me_g95.
“Bummer. I was hoping you were above this kind of virtue signaling,” rmgvd commented.
“Wow that’s extremely disappointing, but honestly I’m not surprised,” said heather_15la.
“Nope and please stop trying to manipulate us into doing so. It’s surprising to see you doing this now like the left and Hollywood have been,” said the__real__american.
In recent weeks, polling indicates the percent of Americans unwilling to be vaccinated has dropped significantly. However, vaccine refusers remain, with white Republicans being among the most hostile group
@OzarkHillbilly: People once used the term “No Drama Obama,” but in many ways I’ve felt Biden embodies this trait even more, even if there isn’t a rhyme to express it.
@Doug Mataconis:
In her petition, the woman refers to “Prince Harry Middleton” and “Prince Charles Middleton,” so she clearly believes that Charles is married to his daughter-in-law, took her surname, and fathered his son William’s brother with her.
Look at the bright side. If I have to travel north for a vaccine, chances are the J&J will be easier to get if people are worried about the under 1 in 1,000,000 risk of clots.
@Doug Mataconis: Something called celebritynetworth.com estimates Tucker Carlson’s net worth at 30 million and his current salary as 6 million. He’s not an idiot, he’s evil. He knows damn well his advice may kill people. As long as it pays well, he’s good with that.
We flatter Republican professionals when we attribute what they do to stupidity. “Gym” Jordan and Marco Rubio may in fact be as dumb as they look. But some of the other anti-elite populists like Ted Cruz (Princeton and Harvard Law), Tom Cotton (Harvard and Harvard Law), Josh Hawley (Stanford, St. Paul’s School in London, Yale Law), and the oh so folksy Foghorn Leghorn imitator John Kennedy (Vanderbilt, Virginia School of Law, Oxford)?
@Doug Mataconis: Yes, but there are plenty of other idiots who listen to him. I’m becoming very Darwinian in my view of such people. This is nature’s way of ridding the population of an excess of imbeciles.
The late posts on yesterday’s forum about traffic citation mining reminded me of another story from Korea. The national expressway is a toll road and people drive on it and pay tolls via a chip added to the navigation system on the car. It also charges them fines for speeding with pretty much totally automated radar traps.
As one drives on the expressway, one will encounter flashing signs with red and blue strobe lights on them. These are sings warning drivers that they are approaching automated speed traps and notify them of how many meters long the recording zone is. Why would they warn you? Well, the goal isn’t to get fines and cancel licenses (driving on a cancelled license is punishable by a prison term and forfeiture of the car [no matter who owns it], IIRC), it’s to get drivers to slow down on sections of the road that have high accident/collision rates or other hazards.
I wonder if a similar system could work in the US? No, I don’t really wonder at all.
@CSK: Have you considered the possibility that she’s not a dupe and is merely opting for a reliable, non-surgical birth control system? No? I suspected that you hadn’t! [smirk emoji here]
@gVOR08: The thing about Carlson to me is that, there was a time when either he was a serious commentator or he fooled me into believing he was one. I was never a regular watcher of Crossfire, but from my few glimpses of Carlson on the show–including the awesome smackdown by Jon Stewart that led to the show’s cancellation–he struck me as someone who, while I disagreed with nearly everything he said, seemed pretty straight and sincere. I gained a certain grudging respect for him when he reported a private conversation in which Bush had made fun of a death row inmate, and then according to his account the following happened:
Then I heard that [on the campaign bus, Bush communications director] Karen Hughes accused me of lying. And so I called Karen and asked her why she was saying this, and she had this almost Orwellian rap that she laid on me about how things she’d heard — that I watched her hear — she in fact had never heard, and she’d never heard Bush use profanity ever. It was insane.
I’ve obviously been lied to a lot by campaign operatives, but the striking thing about the way she lied was she knew I knew she was lying, and she did it anyway. There is no word in English that captures that. It almost crosses over from bravado into mental illness.
Not only did I view Carlson as courageous for taking on a president from his own party, I found it a pretty moving account of being gaslit by a public official.
From my vantage point, Carlson didn’t start to get into white-nationalist rhetoric until after he left Crossfire and started Daily Caller. Now, I’ve encountered several liberals who, when I tell them that, they insist to me he was always into that stuff. Maybe. I haven’t seen enough of his earlier commentary to know. But I’m skeptical.
I agree with something Kevin Drum said recently, which is that many on the left have come to use the term white supremacist so broadly it’s left them ill-equipped to discuss someone like Carlson. Now let me be clear: I am absolutely not saying, as conservatives often do, that liberals have thrown around the word “racist” so much it’s lost all meaning. I believe there have been fundamentally racist elements to mainstream conservative thought for a long, long time. Liberals were not crying wolf when they pointed this out in the past. But there is still a massive difference between a standard conservative pundit from the late ’90s to early 2000s and, say, David Duke. By that I don’t mean Duke was saying aloud what the standard conservative was thinking. Duke was fundamentally more extreme than almost any mainstream conservative at that time.
But there was at least one commentator back then who did in fact straddle that boundary, and that was the Crossfire co-host who left the show right when Carlson joined: Pat Buchanan. Buchanan in the ’90s, like Carlson now, was appropriating slogans and rhetoric from white nationalists but attempting to place them within the framework of mainstream conservatism. He practically said this aloud when he told his fellow conservatives to “take a hard look at Duke’s portfolio of winning issues,” such as “reverse discrimination against white folks.”
Buchanan was also warning about the threat of demographic change due to mass migration, decades before this argument became commonplace on the right.
Was Carlson during his Crossfire days talking anything like this? I can’t say for sure, but I don’t remember anyone else noticing it; he was viewed (as I viewed him) as a pretty standard Bush-era conservative. Maybe he was holding it in, or maybe he really was someone who started out normal and went off the deep end. But what I can never get past is how nakedly transparent a liar he is now. He may not quite be Mike Lindell obvious, but he’s pushing in that direction. He’s so obviously playing to suckers that, to use his phrasing from so many years ago, it “crosses over from bravado into mental illness.” We know he’s lying, and he knows we know–but he does it anyway.
Here in the US, the system would flash random values for the speed limit, therefore increasing revenue. An update of the old practice of a cop controlling the illumination of the red light in order to give drivers no chance to stop.
@Kylopod: If you talk to yourself enough, you can mentally end up in really weird places. I had a friend who marinated himself in self-pity sufficiently that he went totally gone off the deep end. Did a complete shift from left to right, politically, and also a shift from relatively reasonable to totally cuckoo. I backed off from having contact with him when he accused me of wanting him dead in one of his self-pitying rants. Went from a normal human being to away with the fairies in ten years.
(We all have to be careful of the stories we tell ourselves….)
@Kylopod: I paid even less attention to Tucker Carlson than you did, so my opinions are based on vague impressions. Seemed like he started out as sort of a likable doofus with a bow tie. But when he lost the Crossfire gig nobody wanted him and he had to strike out on his own with the Daily Caller. He came across as hungry, hungry enough to do and say whatever might help get him back into the game. Now he’s back in the game, making good money, and determined to do and say anything to stay in the game.
@grumpy realist: I absolutely agree. I recently read an article about one of the Capitol rioters who was once an Obama canvasser. Another story I saw was a woman describing her mother falling into the QAnon cult after having voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
But it gets more complicated to discern what’s really going on when it comes to public commentators, once you factor in the elements of rank opportunism in right-wing media and the evidence Tucker is knowingly lying. I am absolutely convinced that some of the figures in right-wing media are essentially fictional personas adopted for marketability and profit. And I believe it exists on a spectrum, ranging from people who are lying about practically everything they claim to believe to those who genuinely believe some of it but are willing to lie to achieve their ends.
This is getting a whole lot less attention than it deserves, although that’s probably because a lot of people are saying “yeah, I figured that already” and the rest are either no longer paying attention or wouldn’t accept the truth even if Putin came running into the room like a demented Colonel Jessup screaming “YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I ORDERED THE INFLUENCE OPERATIONS!”
This was as close as Mueller got to demonstrating a connection between Trump’s campaign and the Russian effort to aid his candidacy, an effort that included both a bid to influence public opinion using social media and the release of data stolen from the Democratic Party and a senior staffer for Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 opponent. It left unanswered two questions: How close was Kilimnik to Russian intelligence, and what did he do with the polling information he’d received?…
…On Thursday, the Treasury Department unveiled new sanctions against the Russian government linked to its apparent hack of U.S. government networks. But the news release also included a statement clearly answering our second question above.
“During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy. Additionally, Kilimnik sought to promote the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” the statement read.
Later in the story, a helpful description of the chain of events.
That one sentence, though, appears to finally complete the long-speculated line from Trump’s campaign to Russian intelligence. It goes like this, according to the aggregated information compiled by various parts of the government:
Trump hires
Manafort to run his campaign. Manafort then orders
Gates, his deputy, to provide polling and strategy information to
Kilimnik, their longtime colleague and, according to the Senate committee, a Russian intelligence officer. Kilimnik then shares that information with
Russian intelligence agents.
As to why this line was only now drawn so clearly:
Among the reasons that Mueller’s team couldn’t draw that line clearly in the first place was that Manafort misled investigators (leading to false-statement charges) and otherwise refused to offer a detailed assessment of his time on the campaign.
Two days before Christmas last year, Trump, by then a lame duck, granted Manafort a pardon.
Yeah, Manafort passed useful information to Russian intelligence and then went to prison for lying about it, whereupon Trump pardoned him.
But this is still good, as it brings the issue forward in public debate (well, assuming it does). It’s really harder to make changes seemingly out of the blue, than after an issue has been debated for months or years. Also, it may lead to a less controversial expansion of the number of overall Federal judges, and maybe even circuit courts., even if it leaves the SCOTUS untouched.
Good for Pelosi, forcing the caucus to go on record on an issue that has no chance of passing would be a good definition of masochism. I expect Schumer will bury this deep as well.
If Tucker Carlson isn’t getting paid by Russia, he should demand a stipend. Divisive, fact-free anti-vaccination FUD is exactly what Putin wants to see clogging the information arteries in the US.
Pat Robertson was trending on Twitter and I wondered why…apparently he condemned police violence today on the 700 Club and I’m just wondering if this is a sign of End Times.
I don’t think I’m ready for a return to normal life quite yet.
William Bedsworth in Law Dot Com recently reported an incident in Lafayette Louisiana, where TSA shut down the airport for an hour because of a suspicious x-ray of a package. It turned out the suitcase contained a frozen chicken (stuffed with crawfish) carefully packaged next to a miner’s headlamp with attached battery.
There are a number of increasingly snarky comments that come to mind… most revolving around the idea that this is either a relative of Tucker’s or my maternal family.
The Trump campaign and its joint committees with the GOP raised $255.4 million in the eight weeks after the election to contest the results. Little wonder that Trump is so determined to steer donors to his own political action committee rather than to party organs: He has tapped a geyser of cash, and he doesn’t want to share the spoils. The more outrageously he acts, the more money he brings in.
I’m no economic determinist, but if you want to understand how the right got the way it is, follow the money. The GOP highlights culture-war issues to shake down rank-and-file donors while cutting taxes to please wealthy donors. Republicans have won the presidential popular vote only once since 1988, but they can’t afford to broaden their appeal by embracing a more populist economic agenda or by toning down the divisive social messages because either move would jeopardize the flow of fundraising. The right-wing money machine has become the tail wagging the Republican elephant.
Republicans have won the presidential popular vote only once since 1988
And it’s increasingly important to point out that even that one time was five election cycles ago. The Dems have won the popular vote four times in a row. The last time that happened to either party was the FDR-Truman period.
I know she’s married to a globalist, did she convert to globalistism?
A quick google search confirms that she did convert before marrying Jared, and that this was in fact a requirement for the marriage. Good, good.
What I find most fascinating about the Q stuff is that so many of the terms used are just devoid of meaning. Even when they can be literally applied to Trump and his ilk (or figuratively, like globalist), the Q brigade just doesn’t register them.
Look at their support for Matt Gaetz. Who knew it would ever become “underage girls for me, but not for thee”?
@CSK:
IIRC, I’d commented to Harvard that I wasn’t surprised that Chauvin didn’t testify, because what could he say, “uh, I forgot I was kneeling on his neck?” And pointed out that my brief google-fu research reflected that since 2005, 42 police have been convicted of something in connection to the death of a suspect; only 5 of those were murder. Like the fact that we’re likely to abandon our allies in the ‘Stan, I find it depressing but not surprising. YMMV, but I hope not.
It might have been worth a try–though I’m also sure that his peril is not that great–who knows? You could argue that “I wasn’t even paying that much attention” dropped below the standard of even depraved indifference (no depravity, just brain dead) and argue that negligent homicide was too high a charge.
(And come to think of it, maybe the young men at the home for wayward boys weren’t that far off in thinking that because I had a vowel on the end of my name, I must be able to get them into the Mafia. What kind of cracker would I have become if I’d taken 4 years of Critical Legal Theory? Just like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world will never know. And probably is a better place for it.)
@Gustopher:
I have no idea what a deep state globalist is, or what it means to the people who use the term.* What I do know is that for Trumpkins, it’s one of the deadliest insult you can fling at someone.
*I suspect that a deep state globalist is someone who doesn’t worship the ground upon which Donald Trump treads.
@Jen: Having listened to the clip, I think it’s partially thinking that he was shot for no reason and outrage at putting a gun in the hand of “that girl” in addition to condemning police violence. I’ll take whatever I can get, understand, but I’m never particularly sanguine about ANYTHING Pat Robertson says. Especially since he’s clearly in his dotage now.
Scheduled my first shot for this Monday, yay. Will be nice not to have to stress about getting the shots about 4 weeks from now. I even saved some PTO just in case one or both shots knock me on my butt, lol.
@flat earth luddite: “what could he say, “uh, I forgot I was kneeling on his neck?””
I think if he testified his only possible course would have been “You need me on that wall.” Which might work if this trial were in Alabama and there had been less publicity so that the defense could have suggested that Floyd was really involved with all sorts of terrible crimes. But it’s hard to claim that “you have the luxury of knowing what I know — that Floyd’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives; and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives” when the guy you killed was accused of nothing more than passing a bad bill…
video here
@Teve:
Ivanka Trump announced that she has gotten her shot (Pfizer), and apparently some of her fans are chagrined, according to The Daily Beast.
@CSK: yeah she posted pics yesterday on Twitter and weren’t nobody happy.
@Teve:
Tucker is an idiot
There’s a bigger chance you’ll get a blood clot from Covid itself than there is you’ll get one from any of the vaccines, including the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-vaccine-blood-clots-study-pfizer-astrazeneca-moderna-oxford/
Black Buffalo police officer fired for trying to stop chokehold wins ruling, to get pension
@Doug Mataconis: Over at Balloon Juice, commentor Raven linked this handy graphic illustrating exactly that.
Woman duped by scammers into thinking she was engaged to Prince Harry wants him arrested
https://pagesix.com/2021/04/14/woman-who-thought-she-was-engaged-to-prince-harry-seeks-legal-action/
White Sox pitcher Carlos Rodon pitched t htt e second no-hitter in five days and came one bsttter short of Perfect Game
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/31259879/chicago-white-sox-left-hander-carlos-rodon-throws-no-hitter-cleveland-indians
Biden’s White House communications strategy is driving Republicans insane
May you never wake up from it.
Because that worked so well for trump.
Well, Republicans could try countering with alternative policies but, they don’t do policy anymore.
@Doug Mataconis:
Link doesn’t seem to work.
@Doug Mataconis: sure, but it’s much worse than that. Chris Cillizza is an idiot, but he’s harmless. Tucker, whether it’s his white supremacy or his vaccine disinformation, is dangerous.
@OzarkHillbilly: ❤️
@CSK: from Salon:
Biden administration imposes significant economic sanctions on Russia over cyberspying, efforts to influence presidential election
@Teve:
I’ve been telling you all along it’s that Bill Gates tracking/sterilizing microchip. Ivanka’s just another deep state-globalist dupe.
Republicans will keep up the craziness until they pay a real price
@Doug Mataconis:
I actually disagree–he’s a smart man who knows his audience are idiots. I’ll bet you he’s already gotten the vaccine himself.
@OzarkHillbilly: People once used the term “No Drama Obama,” but in many ways I’ve felt Biden embodies this trait even more, even if there isn’t a rhyme to express it.
@CSK:
I’ve fixed it
@Kylopod:
No doubt about it
“The evil that men do lives after them.”
These companies selling bleach as a cure for COVID and other diseases should not be arrested for fraud, they should be taken in for attempted murder.
@Doug Mataconis:
In her petition, the woman refers to “Prince Harry Middleton” and “Prince Charles Middleton,” so she clearly believes that Charles is married to his daughter-in-law, took her surname, and fathered his son William’s brother with her.
And she’s a lawyer???????
@Doug Mataconis:
Look at the bright side. If I have to travel north for a vaccine, chances are the J&J will be easier to get if people are worried about the under 1 in 1,000,000 risk of clots.
@Kathy:
Except you won’t be able to get it anywhere here in the U.S. for at least 7-10 days.
@Teve:
We’re all waiting with bated breath for R’s to condemn Biden’s actions on Russia and their great friend Vladimir.
@CSK:
That’s ok. I can’t tear myself away from work for longer than that.
@Doug Mataconis: Something called celebritynetworth.com estimates Tucker Carlson’s net worth at 30 million and his current salary as 6 million. He’s not an idiot, he’s evil. He knows damn well his advice may kill people. As long as it pays well, he’s good with that.
We flatter Republican professionals when we attribute what they do to stupidity. “Gym” Jordan and Marco Rubio may in fact be as dumb as they look. But some of the other anti-elite populists like Ted Cruz (Princeton and Harvard Law), Tom Cotton (Harvard and Harvard Law), Josh Hawley (Stanford, St. Paul’s School in London, Yale Law), and the oh so folksy Foghorn Leghorn imitator John Kennedy (Vanderbilt, Virginia School of Law, Oxford)?
@Doug Mataconis: Yes, but there are plenty of other idiots who listen to him. I’m becoming very Darwinian in my view of such people. This is nature’s way of ridding the population of an excess of imbeciles.
The late posts on yesterday’s forum about traffic citation mining reminded me of another story from Korea. The national expressway is a toll road and people drive on it and pay tolls via a chip added to the navigation system on the car. It also charges them fines for speeding with pretty much totally automated radar traps.
As one drives on the expressway, one will encounter flashing signs with red and blue strobe lights on them. These are sings warning drivers that they are approaching automated speed traps and notify them of how many meters long the recording zone is. Why would they warn you? Well, the goal isn’t to get fines and cancel licenses (driving on a cancelled license is punishable by a prison term and forfeiture of the car [no matter who owns it], IIRC), it’s to get drivers to slow down on sections of the road that have high accident/collision rates or other hazards.
I wonder if a similar system could work in the US? No, I don’t really wonder at all.
@CSK: Have you considered the possibility that she’s not a dupe and is merely opting for a reliable, non-surgical birth control system? No? I suspected that you hadn’t! [smirk emoji here]
@gVOR08: The thing about Carlson to me is that, there was a time when either he was a serious commentator or he fooled me into believing he was one. I was never a regular watcher of Crossfire, but from my few glimpses of Carlson on the show–including the awesome smackdown by Jon Stewart that led to the show’s cancellation–he struck me as someone who, while I disagreed with nearly everything he said, seemed pretty straight and sincere. I gained a certain grudging respect for him when he reported a private conversation in which Bush had made fun of a death row inmate, and then according to his account the following happened:
Not only did I view Carlson as courageous for taking on a president from his own party, I found it a pretty moving account of being gaslit by a public official.
From my vantage point, Carlson didn’t start to get into white-nationalist rhetoric until after he left Crossfire and started Daily Caller. Now, I’ve encountered several liberals who, when I tell them that, they insist to me he was always into that stuff. Maybe. I haven’t seen enough of his earlier commentary to know. But I’m skeptical.
I agree with something Kevin Drum said recently, which is that many on the left have come to use the term white supremacist so broadly it’s left them ill-equipped to discuss someone like Carlson. Now let me be clear: I am absolutely not saying, as conservatives often do, that liberals have thrown around the word “racist” so much it’s lost all meaning. I believe there have been fundamentally racist elements to mainstream conservative thought for a long, long time. Liberals were not crying wolf when they pointed this out in the past. But there is still a massive difference between a standard conservative pundit from the late ’90s to early 2000s and, say, David Duke. By that I don’t mean Duke was saying aloud what the standard conservative was thinking. Duke was fundamentally more extreme than almost any mainstream conservative at that time.
But there was at least one commentator back then who did in fact straddle that boundary, and that was the Crossfire co-host who left the show right when Carlson joined: Pat Buchanan. Buchanan in the ’90s, like Carlson now, was appropriating slogans and rhetoric from white nationalists but attempting to place them within the framework of mainstream conservatism. He practically said this aloud when he told his fellow conservatives to “take a hard look at Duke’s portfolio of winning issues,” such as “reverse discrimination against white folks.”
Buchanan was also warning about the threat of demographic change due to mass migration, decades before this argument became commonplace on the right.
Was Carlson during his Crossfire days talking anything like this? I can’t say for sure, but I don’t remember anyone else noticing it; he was viewed (as I viewed him) as a pretty standard Bush-era conservative. Maybe he was holding it in, or maybe he really was someone who started out normal and went off the deep end. But what I can never get past is how nakedly transparent a liar he is now. He may not quite be Mike Lindell obvious, but he’s pushing in that direction. He’s so obviously playing to suckers that, to use his phrasing from so many years ago, it “crosses over from bravado into mental illness.” We know he’s lying, and he knows we know–but he does it anyway.
@just nutha:
If that’s the case, we can hope Jared gets one very, very soon–just to make sure.
@just nutha:
Here in the US, the system would flash random values for the speed limit, therefore increasing revenue. An update of the old practice of a cop controlling the illumination of the red light in order to give drivers no chance to stop.
@Kylopod: If you talk to yourself enough, you can mentally end up in really weird places. I had a friend who marinated himself in self-pity sufficiently that he went totally gone off the deep end. Did a complete shift from left to right, politically, and also a shift from relatively reasonable to totally cuckoo. I backed off from having contact with him when he accused me of wanting him dead in one of his self-pitying rants. Went from a normal human being to away with the fairies in ten years.
(We all have to be careful of the stories we tell ourselves….)
@Kylopod: I paid even less attention to Tucker Carlson than you did, so my opinions are based on vague impressions. Seemed like he started out as sort of a likable doofus with a bow tie. But when he lost the Crossfire gig nobody wanted him and he had to strike out on his own with the Daily Caller. He came across as hungry, hungry enough to do and say whatever might help get him back into the game. Now he’s back in the game, making good money, and determined to do and say anything to stay in the game.
@grumpy realist: I absolutely agree. I recently read an article about one of the Capitol rioters who was once an Obama canvasser. Another story I saw was a woman describing her mother falling into the QAnon cult after having voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
But it gets more complicated to discern what’s really going on when it comes to public commentators, once you factor in the elements of rank opportunism in right-wing media and the evidence Tucker is knowingly lying. I am absolutely convinced that some of the figures in right-wing media are essentially fictional personas adopted for marketability and profit. And I believe it exists on a spectrum, ranging from people who are lying about practically everything they claim to believe to those who genuinely believe some of it but are willing to lie to achieve their ends.
This is getting a whole lot less attention than it deserves, although that’s probably because a lot of people are saying “yeah, I figured that already” and the rest are either no longer paying attention or wouldn’t accept the truth even if Putin came running into the room like a demented Colonel Jessup screaming “YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I ORDERED THE INFLUENCE OPERATIONS!”
The government finally connects the line from Trump’s campaign to Russian intelligence
Later in the story, a helpful description of the chain of events.
As to why this line was only now drawn so clearly:
Yeah, Manafort passed useful information to Russian intelligence and then went to prison for lying about it, whereupon Trump pardoned him.
The defense in the Chauvin trial has rested. As expected Chauvin did not take the stand.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/15/chauvin-wont-testify-at-murder-trial-in-floyds-death-481860
Democrats have introduced a bill to expand the size of the Supreme Court. There is pretty much no chance this will make it through the Senate
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/14/democrats-supreme-court-481640
@Teve: @Doug Mataconis: @Kylopod: @gVOR08: @SC_Birdflyte:
Long piece on Carlson:
http://www.cjr.org/the_profile/tucker-carlson.php
Please commute my sentence to moderation prison.
@Doug Mataconis:
I’d say there’s even less chance without a bill.
But this is still good, as it brings the issue forward in public debate (well, assuming it does). It’s really harder to make changes seemingly out of the blue, than after an issue has been debated for months or years. Also, it may lead to a less controversial expansion of the number of overall Federal judges, and maybe even circuit courts., even if it leaves the SCOTUS untouched.
@Doug Mataconis:
I’m not surprised. Defendants very rarely testify anyway.
Speaker Pelosi says she won’t bring the proposed bill to expand the size of the Supreme Court to the House floor for a vote
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/548443-pelosi-says-she-wont-bring-bill-to-expand-supreme-court-to-the-floor
@Doug Mataconis:
Good for Pelosi, forcing the caucus to go on record on an issue that has no chance of passing would be a good definition of masochism. I expect Schumer will bury this deep as well.
If Tucker Carlson isn’t getting paid by Russia, he should demand a stipend. Divisive, fact-free anti-vaccination FUD is exactly what Putin wants to see clogging the information arteries in the US.
Pat Robertson was trending on Twitter and I wondered why…apparently he condemned police violence today on the 700 Club and I’m just wondering if this is a sign of End Times.
Since my original link to a long profile of Tucker Carlson is still in moderation, let me try again:
http://www.cjr.org/the_profile/tucker-carlson.php
@CSK: that’s a valuable article. I favorited it to read more deliberately later.
@Teve:
Glad you like it. I’ve not finished it yet, but I did want to bring it to everyone’s attention in the basis of what I have read.
Tucker Carlson’s Baffled Bitchface
(A john fugelsang spoof)
I don’t think I’m ready for a return to normal life quite yet.
There are a number of increasingly snarky comments that come to mind… most revolving around the idea that this is either a relative of Tucker’s or my maternal family.
Derek Chauvin Defense Witness Is Being Sued in Another State for Allegedly Covering Up Black Teen’s Death in Police Custody
Maximus Bootus
wapo link
@Teve:
And it’s increasingly important to point out that even that one time was five election cycles ago. The Dems have won the popular vote four times in a row. The last time that happened to either party was the FDR-Truman period.
@CSK: Interesting piece, although I confess I skimmed. I’d forgotten he’s an heir to Swanson food. Doesn’t seem to make him any less hungry.
Mike Pence had a pacemaker installed.
@CSK:
Wait, you mean to tell me they found a heart to connect it to?
@flat earth luddite:
Apparently.
Today marks eight years since the Boston Marathon bombing. The first explosive went off at 2:49 p.m. Three people were killed and 264 were injured.
@CSK:
Apparently we’re in the same cell block. Or else my computer ate my comment. But so it goes.
@flat earth luddite:
I was finally released, possibly for good behavior.
@Kylopod:
The rhyme was too dramatic.
@CSK:
I know she’s married to a globalist, did she convert to globalistism?
A quick google search confirms that she did convert before marrying Jared, and that this was in fact a requirement for the marriage. Good, good.
What I find most fascinating about the Q stuff is that so many of the terms used are just devoid of meaning. Even when they can be literally applied to Trump and his ilk (or figuratively, like globalist), the Q brigade just doesn’t register them.
Look at their support for Matt Gaetz. Who knew it would ever become “underage girls for me, but not for thee”?
@CSK:
IIRC, I’d commented to Harvard that I wasn’t surprised that Chauvin didn’t testify, because what could he say, “uh, I forgot I was kneeling on his neck?” And pointed out that my brief google-fu research reflected that since 2005, 42 police have been convicted of something in connection to the death of a suspect; only 5 of those were murder. Like the fact that we’re likely to abandon our allies in the ‘Stan, I find it depressing but not surprising. YMMV, but I hope not.
@flat earth luddite: “uh, I forgot I was kneeling on his neck?”
It might have been worth a try–though I’m also sure that his peril is not that great–who knows? You could argue that “I wasn’t even paying that much attention” dropped below the standard of even depraved indifference (no depravity, just brain dead) and argue that negligent homicide was too high a charge.
(And come to think of it, maybe the young men at the home for wayward boys weren’t that far off in thinking that because I had a vowel on the end of my name, I must be able to get them into the Mafia. What kind of cracker would I have become if I’d taken 4 years of Critical Legal Theory? Just like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world will never know. And probably is a better place for it.)
@Gustopher:
I have no idea what a deep state globalist is, or what it means to the people who use the term.* What I do know is that for Trumpkins, it’s one of the deadliest insult you can fling at someone.
*I suspect that a deep state globalist is someone who doesn’t worship the ground upon which Donald Trump treads.
@Jen: Having listened to the clip, I think it’s partially thinking that he was shot for no reason and outrage at putting a gun in the hand of “that girl” in addition to condemning police violence. I’ll take whatever I can get, understand, but I’m never particularly sanguine about ANYTHING Pat Robertson says. Especially since he’s clearly in his dotage now.
@CSK:
very often they mean Jew.
@Teve:
I thought Jews were the dastardly neocons.
Scheduled my first shot for this Monday, yay. Will be nice not to have to stress about getting the shots about 4 weeks from now. I even saved some PTO just in case one or both shots knock me on my butt, lol.
@flat earth luddite: “what could he say, “uh, I forgot I was kneeling on his neck?””
I think if he testified his only possible course would have been “You need me on that wall.” Which might work if this trial were in Alabama and there had been less publicity so that the defense could have suggested that Floyd was really involved with all sorts of terrible crimes. But it’s hard to claim that “you have the luxury of knowing what I know — that Floyd’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives; and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives” when the guy you killed was accused of nothing more than passing a bad bill…