Cynicism and lies
Now here’s a poignant pairing of articles on the BBC front page (and probably a lot of other front pages, unless they’re mashed into one article):
Tucker Carlson slammed by Republicans for sharing and lying about the riot footage
Tucker Carlson said he passionately hates Trump
We knew he was cynical and in it for himself, but…
First the slam:
Senate Republicans and Capitol police have criticised Fox News after one of its hosts aired previously unseen clips of the riot two years ago at Congress, and played down the violent disorder.
…
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday it had been a “mistake for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks” about the riot.
Mistake? No. Bad, yes, evil, yes, cynical and self-serving, yes, but a mistake, no. Very much on purpose.
Mr McConnell pointed to an internal memo by Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger, whose agency is responsible for protecting the buildings where the lawmakers meet. In that memo, Mr Manger says the primetime Monday broadcast was “filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6 attack”.
“The programme conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video,” he wrote. “The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments.”
And now it turns out Tucker Carlson can’t even stand the guy.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in a text message after the 2020 election that he “passionately hated” Donald Trump, according to new court filings.
Mr Carlson’s message to a colleague in January 2021 emerged as part of a defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News. The latest filings in the case suggest Mr Carlson expressed his dislike of the outgoing US president two days before Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to derail lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden’s election win.
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” he wrote in a text sent on 4 January 2021. “I truly can’t wait. I hate him passionately.”
Mr Carlson, the top-rated host on the conservative network, also appeared to denigrate the Trump presidency in these private messages, despite lauding his achievements on air.
“That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”
Can this be the end of Carlson’s squalid career?
If the pattern continues, the next one will be even worse.
“I’m not a cowardly, hypocritical lapdog with zero integrity, I just play one on TV.” — Tucker Carlson
Carlson lying and pretending to like Trump is a feature, not a bug, for most Trump supporters.
They love the fact that Trump is able to reduce so many such people to groveling sycophants. It’s a display of dominance.
It’s like how theocrats want prayer in public schools or government functions — they don’t really mind if atheists and non-Christian theists don’t believe a word of it, it’s about making them “bend the knee,” metaphorically and sometimes literally.
Do they lose some respect for Carlson? I suppose in some sense. But really I think they regard Carlson as like the golden retriever that fetches Trump’s slippers for him — it is right and proper in their view for the former to be serving the latter. (It helps that Carlson has mastered the “confused golden retriever” facial expression.)
He is so dispassionate about his “passionate hatred” for DJT, that his “passionate hatred” is nowhere to be seen. He can’t really hate the guy and do what he has done. His “passionate hatred” for DJT is indistinguishable from wholehearted support for DJT. I don’t believe him. He is a lying liar.
Oh, I believe it.
Carlson resents having to defend so much nonsense from Trump, and having to pander to his audience. The only thing he hates more is the idea of not having a big audience.
With enemies like that, who needs friends…