I took three Tylenol, thought happy thoughts, and subjected myself to Tucker Carlson’s “opening statement”—I find the use of the term by a non-lawyer in a non-trial context precious and pompous, but then that’s Tucker—last night via YouTube this morning.
Observations:
- When you are making a distinction between liars and yourself, you should probably eschew gross generalities like “people who get angry and wave their arms around are lying.” Tucker, meanwhile, remained calm, which is his style while lying. Yesterday we saw some of his email exchanges while he and the rest of the Fox News crew was giving support to then-President Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent, like ,
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait…. I hate him passionately.” (Jan. 4, 2021), and “Trump has two weeks left. Once he’s out, he becomes incalculably less powerful, even in the minds of his supporters….He’s a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us. I’ve been thinking about this every day for four years.” (Jan. 7, 2021)
Of course, the New York Times article that revealed these (and others) also described the Jan. 6 riot as an”insurrection.”
- Carlson says that the video he had shown in the previous episodes of his show “proved” that media and Democratic narratives about the riot were false. They did not. That’s a lie. In the case of the jerk wearing the horns, what was shown cast doubt on the fairness of his trial and conviction. In the case of Brian Sicknick, the video just confirmed what was already known, though even so, it was not definitive evidence of what may have occurred before or after the video was taken.
- Tucker needs to comprehend the nature of lawyer-speak and deceit. Merrick Garland didn’t clearly say that five officers died “that day.” Garland was careful. He said that five officers died, after he said, in the previous sentence, that over a hundred officers were assaulted. He didn’t say they died “that day,” though one might think that was his meaning. He also didn’t say that the officers who died were among those assaulted. This is, arguably, deceitful speech by Garland, but it is also misleading for Carlson to state that Garland said five officers died “that day.” The AG can legitimately argue that he only said that the officers died, during or after “that day,” without asserting what killed them.
- Carlson’s focus on the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020 amount to an “It’s not the worst thing” (#22 on the list) rationalization. OK, the rioting around the White House was as violent as the January 6 rioting, and no prosecutions followed. That doesn’t mitigate or excuse the Capitol riot. Carlson uses the earlier rioting to contest the repeated ridiculous claim by Democrats that the riot was the “worst” attack on democracy since the Civil War. Of course that claim is beyond nonsense, but using the 2020 George Floyd rioting to make the point just looks like “whataboutism” and a “it wasn’t so bad” argument. Explain that the demonstration that turned into a riot was a misguided protest in support of free elections. We’ve had four presidential assassinations and many more attempt since the Civil War: all were attacks on democracy. So was the four year effort to destroy Donald Trump’s presidency engineered by the resistance, Democrats and the news media.
Carson’s “opening statement” was incompetent, as well as impotent.
Ethics Alarms 
Remember when the good guys are in a shootout and their pistols run out of ammunition? What do they do? They throw their guns at the opposition. That’s all they have.
The old litigator’s assessment of his firm’s client comes to mind around Tucker Carlson: “He may be an asshole, but he’s OUR asshole.”
While I tend to agree that Tucker Carlson was not the best choice to receive and publicize the suppressed video of January 6th, I’m not sure the choice of outlet makes any difference in the end. To wit, observe the treatment being foisted on Matt Taibbi , Michael Schellenberger, and anyone else who is challenging the TDS narratives. Every witness in front of Congress this week who testified to the collusion between social media outlets and federal government agencies and Democratic Party operatives (and to be fair, also a few Republican entities) has been subject to the most outrageous personal attacks and slanderous comments from Democratic lawmakers and their many allies in the corporate press. In other words, I don’t believe there is any type of good faith assessment possible that would result in any bipartisan assessment of what happened on that day. One party has absolutely committed itself to a point of view that it deems necessary to both damage the Trump reelection campaign and to keep Donald Trump in the forefront of its voting base. Any efforts or facts that get in the way of that project are going to be subject to the most derisive and insulting commentary possible. It doesn’t matter whether the person releasing the video is Carlson, Turley, or anyone else. Presumably, McCarthy figured this out and determined that he might as well bolster his bona fides with the red meat base because he wasn’t going to be able to create an acceptable version of events for the Trump-deranged people on the other side.
I found it especially noteworthy that there were some Democrats interviewing Messrs Taibbi & Schellenberger asked them for their sources for the Twitter Files. Evidently, the freedom of the press only matters when it comes to protecting the identity of a whistleblower who claimed Trump denied weapons to Ukraine unless they dug up dirt on Hunter Biden.
For those who forgot, the Ukrainians got their US weapons without dirt on Hunter.
When rebuffed, these members of Congress then asked if their source was Elon Musk, going on to tell the journalists that they were merely repeating what Musk told them to report.
I found it the height of irony when Wasserman Schultz was badgering Talibbi about accepting “cherry picked” facts and tried to paint him as a useful idiot of the Right. He should have answered her by saying if we did not get information from those with slanted agendas we would never interview politicians.
The lack of prosecutions for any of the Black Lives Matter riots is a concern because it shows exactly how corrupt the government is, how corrupt our law enforcement agencies are, and how one political party has been granted free rein to commit as much anarcho-terrorism it wants to. You don’t have to think the January 6 rioters deserve no punishment to find this enormous, in your face disparity relevant. It’s disgusting, blatant, appalling and sickening to look at the discrepancy between how people of one political affiliation are treated while those of another political affiliation are allowed to do absolutely anything they damn well please, no matter how sadistic, psychotic or evil what they chose to do is.
It would not have mattered who you gave the tapes to to people on the left. If Rachel Maddow had been gifted them and for some inconceivable reason decided to show them she would be receiving the same treatment as Tucker Carlson. She would have been canceled, fired, and excoriated in the exact same manner that Tucker Carlson is being excoriated.
The messenger is 100% irrelevant. The audience you want to persuade is a mindless mob of dithering stupidity and rampant hate. They don’t care about the consequences of their actions. They don’t care about reality. They don’t care who gets hurt. They don’t care what they destroy. They don’t care about anything but their own selfish desires.
People are waiting for the mindless mob on the left to wake up from their madness and experience regret for the things they have enabled and encouraged. That is never, ever going to happen. Look at the cities in California. People are shitting in the streets! Copiously! If stepping in piles of human shit left in your driveway doesn’t jolt you awake, what on earth would? Look at Chicago. It’s a war zone! No one waking up there either. No degree of exposure is going to make these people wake up from the mob and realize they are wrong about anything. They don’t care and always have someone else to blame.
Spot on NP.
It is time to fight vigorously the behavior that is reminiscent of how so many young Germans so willingly discarded any moral compass they may have had to become part of the Hitlerjugend. Do we want our American version of this? I hope not.
It reminds me of China during the cultural revolution. All the old ways have to be destroyed to usher in utopia seems to be the reasoning behind the current madness. Nothing backs up the theories of how this utopia will come into existence but magical thinking and hatred.
Much better analogy NP.
This is what needs to be called out whenever we have the opportunity. Making them look squarely in the mirror will slow their march.
“Spot on NP.”
Indeed, I second that Chris.
Carlson is providing a much needed alternative perspective on J6 and I hope that he gets the tapes out to more people. His personal feelings about Trump are irrelevant to me.
Carlson regularly exposes government corruption and hypocrisy on both sides and particularly the neo-fascist woke Left’s oppressive maneuvers. His contribution is a net-plus and he is an invaluable voice that counters the other big name on air MSM players.
“Liberals must also “embrace more aspirational goals of ending the Electoral College and establishing a constitutional right to vote,” it continued, plus more basic aims like the elimination of the Senate filibuster. Should Democrats fail to achieve those aims, the report proposed divisive and punitive measures, like denying certain federal assistance to sections of the country that consistently reject Democrats and yet hold a veto over legislation because the system is tilted in their favor. Perhaps, it suggested, brute fiscal coercion would extract concessions from Trump country.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/03/09/document-predicted-jan-6-warnings-00086180
What exactly were they considering doing? Possibly…blowing up a train full of carcinogenic chemicals and poisoning a town full of conservatives, then refusing government assistance to those people?
Politico advocates for enslaving half the country, and we are quibbling over whether letting Tucker Carlson expose government corruption was the right move.
Yep. But that whole train derailment thingy never really happened. It was a false flag operation.
jvb
“The audience you want to persuade is a mindless mob of dithering stupidity and rampant hate. They don’t care about the consequences of their actions. They don’t care about reality. They don’t care who gets hurt. They don’t care what they destroy. They don’t care about anything but their own selfish desires.”
No one can persuade these people. They have been mainlining the Kool-aid for a very long time and are therefore refractory to anything even slightly different from their programming.
There are however, possibly millions that are slowly coming out if their programmed stupor and beginning to question the government in fundamental ways.
Perhaps the vids will help to move that awakening forward.
I believe a contributing factor to the Capitol riot was the treatment of BLM rioters. During the summer of 2020, police were told to stand down as the BLM protests were deemed “(Fiery, but mostly) peaceful protests. The Democrats shifted the definition of what was a riot and what was a peaceful protest, and some of the January 6th rioters may have believed that they would be greeted by police just as the BLM rioters were.
I watched the event live on television as protestors amassed outside the Capitol, scaling the walls. I suspected that Trump supporters would not be treated the same if for no other reason than it caused actual distress to our politicians; they had been immune from the consequences of their products and now they weren’t.
Naomi Wolf seems to disagree with Ethics Alarms on Carlson and the release of the video footage, though she is critical of some characterizations:
https://open.substack.com/pub/naomiwolf/p/dear-conservatives-i-am-sorry?utm_source=direct&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
jvb
Naomi has been red-pilled in her old age. All that substack post proves is that Kevin McCarthy should have given the footage to Naomi Wolf.