Maybe Fox Should Extend Tucker Carlson's Exile To... Forever

Fox News sent Tucker Carlson away on a little unannounced vacation until the heat dies down on his white nationalist TV show. Most normal people didn't know Fox was running a nightly KKK rally in prime time until the media exploded in a frenzy about Carlson's claim that White Supremacy is nothing but a hoax, immediately after the white supremacist mass murders in Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton. At the end of his Wednesday show, Carlson announced: By the way, I am taking several days off-- headed to the wilderness to fish with my son. Politics is important, fishing with your son, sometimes more important. So I’m doing it, saying he'd be off on Thursday, back on Friday for something he called "a special investigation," and then off for all of next week. New York Daily News columnist Leonard Greene noted around the same time that Carlson had earned the backlash he's getting. in response to Carlson's flawed "reasoning"-- that "the combined membership of every white supremacist organization in this country would be able to fit inside a college football stadium"-- he pointed out that "not every white supremacist is a member of a white supremacist organization. Only a fraction probably are, so we can quickly dispense with Carlson’s college football stadium theory. And to be in denial about the very philosophy that our country was founded and built on is not only racist-- it’s delusional... Never mind that Hispanics were in Texas long before there was a Texas... The real hoax is when people like Trump and Carlson pretend that what they say doesn’t have bigoted and violent consequences. So, if I’m out of line for suggesting Carlson might be a racist, then I’m sorry. I also apologize for saying that sugar is sweet."




Yesterday, writing for the Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan took issue with Carlson's premise, as though he were a normal pundit rather than a neo-Nazi propaganda agent. "In his ongoing and remarkably successful quest to be the worst of the Fox News nighttime hosts," she noted, "Tucker Carlson hit a new low on his Tuesday show. White supremacy, he claimed, isn’t a real problem in America: 'This is a hoax, just like the Russia hoax. It’s a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power.' (Let’s set aside, for a moment, the truth that the Russian attacks on America’s voting integrity, to help Donald Trump become president, are anything but a hoax, as the Mueller report made abundantly clear.) And, Carlson insisted, he has empirical evidence: 'I’ve lived here 50 years and I’ve never met anybody, not one person who ascribes to white supremacy,' he said, adding, 'I don’t know a single person who thinks that’s a good idea.' Hmm. Maybe his sample size is a bit flawed." Or maybe he gave up looking in the mirror decades ago.

Anyway, Carlson’s wrong. Here’s the dictionary definition of white supremacy: the belief that white people are superior to people of other races and therefore should be dominant over them.

It’s undeniably one of the core tenets of the opinion-mongers at Fox News-- and of some portion of its supposedly straight news coverage, too. (Remember the network’s feverish attention to “the caravan” of migrants moving northward toward the United States-- and how abruptly that coverage faded after it was no longer useful as a Republican talking point in the 2018 midterms?)

Understand: I’m not suggesting that Carlson or his Fox colleagues are stashing their Klan robes in the newsroom closet. They may not display the most obvious and virulent strain of white supremacy or belong to organizations dedicated to the cause or pick up assault weapons and destroy innocent lives, as the El Paso gunman did on Saturday. (Remember, the 2,300-word screed-- let’s not dignify it with the term “manifesto”-- that authorities linked to the suspect stated: “This attack is a response to Hispanic invasion of Texas.”)

Nevertheless, Carlson’s nightly show does a great deal to portray nonwhites as the dangerous “other,” a force to be beaten back to save America.

His denials and rhetoric must be called out for the lies that they are.

Consider his and his Fox colleagues’ insistence on using the word “invasion” to describe migrants coming to America-- generally people of color from countries south of the border.

Here’s what a recent Media Matters study found about the use of that term so far this year on Fox News: There have been more than 70 on-air references to an invasion of migrants; there have been at least 55 clips of President Trump calling migrants an invasion. And Carlson himself spoke of the United States being invaded nine times, including “This is an invasion, and it’s terrifying.”

Carlson’s colleague Brian Kilmeade argued: “If you use the term ‘an invasion,’ that’s not anti-Hispanic. It’s a fact.”

No, it’s racist propaganda.

As Ben Zimmer wrote recently in The Atlantic, exploring the ugly history of the term: “The American brand of nativism has long relied on menacing images of immigrant invaders. The ‘invasion’ trope has gone hand in hand with similar metaphors of contamination and infestation.”

Or, as Rolling Stone’s Jamil Smith put it: “By likening people to insects or vermin, even if he considers them criminals, [Trump] provides himself license to be an exterminator. We know that story.”

Recognizing the white supremacy at work here does not deny that there is a real need for sensible, humanitarian immigration reform, including aid to the countries from which immigrants are fleeing as they try desperately to find a better life. Nor does it translate to support for open borders.

I really don’t know what drives Carlson to be so hate-filled and divisive. Is it all about ginning up ratings by playing to audience prejudices, rage and fear of “replacement” by immigrants?

Does he really believe what he says? Is he an egalitarian, tolerant fellow in his heart of hearts?

The cause of this damaging rhetoric doesn’t matter. But the results certainly do.

The Fox-Trump feedback loop constantly reinforces the notion that black and brown people are to be feared and despised-- whether they are in “rat-infested” cities like Baltimore, as Trump would have it, or at the Mexico-Texas border.

Tucker Carlson has become one of the most high-profile perpetrators of this appalling and divisive message, one constantly amplified by the president.

So if Carlson thinks he hasn’t met a single white supremacist, he might want to take a searching look in the mirror.

One of Carlson's Fox colleagues-- the one Señor Trumpanzee was having a conniption over this week-- also took Carlson to task for claiming white supremacy isn't real and just a hoax. I don't think Fox anchors are allowed to attack each other so Shepard Smith said "White nationalism is without question a serious problem in America," without mentioning Carlson by name. Commenting on the speech one of Biden's aides wrote for him, Smith noted that Biden was "calling us to our better souls, to recognize that white nationalism is real, that white nationalism is on the rise, that white nationalism is without question a very serious problem in America and beating down those who would help facilitate it and encourage it."

Everyone Is On The Edge Of Their Seat To See How The Trump Regime Finally Comes Crashing Down

By this weekend, even Fox viewers were finding out about Trump-- or at least his campaign-- conspiring to collude with the Russians. This Shep Smith segment on the video above could literally be on MSNBC or any other legitimate news outlet.

By last night everyone was going crazy over Greg Miller's story in the Washington Post about how Trump had concealed details of his meetings with Putin from senior officials in administration. Is that news? We didn't know that already? Yeah, Trump went to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Putin. Oh, but this... on at least one occasion he took "possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials." I guess that's new information, albeit probably not to Mueller. That episode was "after a meeting with Putin in 2017 in Hamburg that was also attended by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. U.S. officials learned of Trump’s actions when a White House adviser and a senior State Department official sought information from the interpreter beyond a readout shared by Tillerson. There is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader over the past two years… Such a gap would be unusual in any presidency, let alone one that Russia sought to install through what U.S. intelligence agencies have described as an unprecedented campaign of election interference."

OK, that's kind of a big deal and maybe why right-wing journalist Stephen Hayes decided to explain to Post readers on Friday why his party needs to mount a primary challenge to Trump in 2020. Successful or not he wrote that "If ever there were a time for a serious intraparty challenge, it’s now. He has strong support from elements of the Republican base, but he has alienated virtually everyone else, especially those segments of the electorate that are growing the fastest. The ideal challenger would be a committed, articulate conservative-- maybe a governor, such as Maryland’s Larry Hogan, or a senator, such as Nebraska’s Ben Sasse-- who would make a case for limited government that will otherwise go unmade, and who would show voters that conservatism and Trumpism are not one and the same... The 2018 midterm elections were a clear and unmistakable rebuke of the chaos of his first two years as president. And it’s getting worse. Trump’s steady stream of lies has picked up over the past six months. His Twitter feed is more unhinged... There’s reason to believe this will all get worse over the next year. The Mueller investigation is testing whatever sanity Trump still possesses. Democrats controlling the House will use their newfound power to investigate every corner of the Trump administration-- an administration already marked by malfeasance and corruption."



And that brings us right to Andrew Sullivan's question at New York Magazine: Welcome to Act III of the Trump Tragedy: "When is the moment we can say that Trump has clearly gone over the line in erasing democratic and constitutional restraints on his personal power?" He posits it would be declaring a national emergency just because he can't get Congress to fund his vanity wall. "He couldn’t manage to get his wall funded," wrote Sullivan, "when his own party controlled the entire government. He even turned down a bipartisan offer to build a “wall” in return for a path to citizenship for Dreamers last year, because he wanted a reduction in legal immigration as well. He petulantly refuses to accept greater funding for border control and immigration enforcement if his symbolic wall isn’t part of the package." He warned that "We all knew this was coming. Our liberal democracy is in abeyance. We now wait to see what the replacement will be. It could come sooner than we think." OK, but how many acts in this play?

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

It's always been obvious that FOX "News" was never meant to be anything but a propaganda outlet for the Republican Party. Even its origins lie in Roger Ailes plans for what he called a "GOP TV" network that he proposed to his then boss, President Nixon, back in the early 1970s. From the start, right down to the hiring of openly racist tools like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, shit-stirring crazies like Glenn Beck and Pam Geller, astounding hypocrites like Mike Huckabee, smarmy, truth-bending psychos like Newt Gingrich, and even downright morons like Sarah Palin, it's been clear that FOX would always be a tool of the far right. Shepard Smith? Well, what about Shepard Smith? He is an actual journalist and he is a token. There's no other reasonable way to put it. People that I have known and met over the years that have worked at FOX have always told me that, within the corridors and bunkers at FOX, Smith and those closest to him were regarded simultaneously as being there to provide a thin veneer of needed credibility, and, alien infiltrators that were to be kept at arms length.

Ironically, on Monday afternoon, it fell to Shep Smith to break the news about Sean Hannity's previously undisclosed relationship with Señor Trumpanzee's consigliere, Michael Cohen to FOX viewers. 'Previously undisclosed' is a key here. Hannity has been jumping through hoops into dimensions rarely heard of or seen in his defense of both Trumpanzee and Cohen, even more so since the FBI, with the OK of Republican judicial officials, including Trump appointees, got their warrants and paid their visits to Cohen and his offices and his residence. At no time, during his nightly spewing of Republican pro-Cohen anti-Robert Mueller bullshit, did Hannity bother to disclose his relationship to Cohen. Hey, maybe he just forgot to mention it? It was bad enough that Hannity frequently dines with Trump to discuss Republican Party propaganda strategy, but this presents another layer. Hannity, working closely with Trump and Cohen, under the polluted auspices of FOX "News," amounts to nothing less than an extremist cabal, the kind you would see in any totalitarian dictatorship, whether it was Russia, Germany, Argentina, Cuba, or North Korea, just to name a few in humankind's sordid political history.

As for the goons with the forced smiles in tonight's meme, well they, no doubt, came from a carny row in deepest Florida or Alabama, or they simply escaped from some backwoods asylum for inbreds or the severely mentally challenged. Their ongoing buffoonery and combined IQ of 120, on a good day, has been shown, time and time again, to be the source of "news" and opinion presented in their false idol's morning misspelled and syntax-challenged tweet storms. It's been quite a game on social media to match up whatever nonsense goes back and forth between the curvy couch of "FOX And Friends" and the golden toilet of the Trump bathroom.

None of this is going to change anytime soon, though. The founders of Russia's Pravda and Josef Goebbels will continue rubbing their hands in perverted glee about it all down in Hell. The viewers of FOX "News" are so brainwashed in their state of nihilistic devotion that any sort of rehabilitation is now impossible. They have the glassy-eyed stares of crackheads in a downward spiral. Roger Ailes may be gone, but for him, Rupert Murdoch, and their corporate sponsors, it is "Mission Accomplished" for real.