Primarily based on his non-public statements to colleagues, we all know that former Fox Information character Tucker Carlson didn’t imagine Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s wild claims about systematic fraud within the 2020 presidential election. “Sidney Powell is mendacity,” Carlson flatly said in a November 16, 2020, textual content message to fellow Fox Information host Laura Ingraham that got here to gentle because of the defamation lawsuit that Dominion Voting Methods filed towards the channel. Ingraham agreed that Powell couldn’t be trusted: “Sidney is an entire nut. Nobody will work along with her. Ditto with Rudy [Giuliani].”
We additionally know, once more due to discovery within the Dominion lawsuit, that Carlson had a low opinion of Donald Trump. In a November 10, 2020, textual content message, he known as Trump’s resolution to not attend Biden’s inauguration “onerous to imagine,” “so harmful,” and “disgusting.” He was extra broadly essential in a January 4, 2021, textual content message to his employees. “There is not actually an upside to Trump,” he mentioned, describing “the final 4 years” as “a catastrophe.” Carlson was longing for a change: “We’re very, very near with the ability to ignore Trump most nights. I really cannot wait. I hate him passionately.” The day after the January 6 Capitol riot by Trump supporters, Carlson privately known as him “a demonic power” and “a destroyer.”
Carlson, who launched a brand new present on Twitter after Fox Information fired him in April, was singing a distinct tune yesterday on the Turning Level Motion Convention in West Palm Seashore, Florida. “Why have been they so mad?” he mentioned throughout a giddy, meandering 44-minute speech on the pro-Trump gathering, referring to the Capitol rioters. “Why do they take the bus from Tennessee to go bounce up and down in entrance of the Capitol?” The reply, he mentioned, is that they have been annoyed by the patronizing, dismissive response to their reliable issues about how the presidential election had been performed.
Carlson recommended it was laughably implausible that Joe Biden had acquired “81 million votes”—”15 million greater than Barack Obama,” which “looks like so much”—particularly “contemplating [that] he did not marketing campaign and he cannot discuss.” However as a substitute of taking that response severely, Carlson mentioned, the political and journalistic institution informed Trump’s supporters to “quiet down,” saying, “We have now the supply code within the voting machine software program, and we have checked out it, and it’s very on the extent. We have double-checked. We would not let an digital voting [company] cover their software program from us.”
The unfounded declare that intentionally corrupted Dominion software program enabled Biden to steal the election, after all, was the central concern within the firm’s lawsuit towards Fox, which the events settled for a jaw-dropping $788 million shortly earlier than Carlson acquired the boot. It was additionally the declare that Carlson privately dismissed as harmful nonsense. “It is unbelievably offensive to me,” he informed Ingraham. “Our viewers are good folks and so they imagine it.”
The following day, Carlson made his doubts public, albeit in much less categorical phrases. If what Powell mentioned have been true, he mentioned on his present, it could be “the only biggest crime in American historical past.” However he famous that Powell, regardless of repeated requests from his employees, had declined to again up her claims with proof.
But now Carlson, who was transparently craving the adulation of the Trump supporters in West Palm Seashore, is reinforcing their conviction that Biden may have received the election solely by an unlimited prison conspiracy that Carlson publicly known as unsubstantiated and privately known as a lie. He apparently has swallowed any disgust he as soon as felt at Powell et al.’s deception of “good folks.”
What concerning the politician who persistently promoted that conspiracy idea and embraces it to today? “Republicans elected a man principally on the promise to explode the Republican Get together,” Carlson mentioned, which ought to have been trigger for reflection inside the GOP institution. However mainstream Republican politicians didn’t take the teachings of Trump’s victory to coronary heart, he complained, and at this time they’re abetting Biden’s “perversion of management” vis-à-vis the conflict in Ukraine, a failure that Carlson mentioned is “disgusting” as a result of it fosters “chaos.”
Within the fast aftermath of the Capitol riot, Carlson privately seen Trump as an agent of chaos, and never in a great way. The earlier the GOP was rid of Trump’s affect, Carlson thought, the higher. “Trump has two weeks left,” he informed his employees the day after the riot. “As soon as he is out, he turns into incalculably much less highly effective, even within the minds of his supporters.”
That’s not fairly the best way issues labored out. Trump at the moment is by far the main contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, about 30 factors forward of his closest competitor. And so Carlson, just like the Republican politicians whose phoniness he detests, has adjusted to the fact that Trump continues to dominate the GOP. “No matter you consider Trump,” Carlson mentioned, “he is fairly clear on this [i.e., the need for decisive leadership in foreign affairs], and so they hate him for it really. They hate him for it.”
Carlson’s try and have it each methods concerning Trump’s stolen-election fantasy was obvious from the January 26, 2021, present wherein he gave MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell a discussion board to regurgitate that story. Greater than two months after Carlson had publicly rebuked Powell for making unsubstantiated claims about machine-facilitated election fraud, he interviewed Lindell, ostensibly with regards to “cancel tradition.” Lindell predictably seized the chance to repeat the cost that Carlson had dismissed—the identical cost that might ultimately value Fox $788 million.
Lindell mentioned “now we have all of the proof” to point out Dominion’s complicity in election fraud and complained that “they only say, ‘Oh, you are flawed.'” As a substitute of asking Lindell to elaborate on that “proof,” Carlson sympathized along with his criticism. “They don’t seem to be making conspiracy theories go away by doing that,” Carlson mentioned. “You…do not make folks sort of relax and get affordable and reasonable by censoring them. You make them get crazier, after all. That is…ridiculous.”
That remark, Fox argued, implied skepticism by referring to “conspiracy theories.” Dominion argued that “an everyday viewer of Carlson’s would seemingly have thought Carlson modified his thoughts on the topic, given how otherwise he handled Lindell than he had handled Powell.”
Now Carlson is doubling down on the place he took throughout that interview. The true scandal, he claims to assume, will not be that the president of america refused to just accept an electoral loss and as a substitute promoted one specious declare after one other in an effort to overturn, or at the least forged doubt on, the result. The true scandal, Carlson says, is that these claims weren’t taken severely sufficient.
Carlson positions himself as a daring reality teller who’s unafraid to inform it like it’s. However his slippery dealing with of Trump’s tall story reveals he’s no extra reliable than the politicians he despises.
