Fox’s Tucker Carlson suggested that it will be Google’s fault if Donald Trump is not reelected – while Trump suggested he is singlehandedly keeping Twitter afloat.
Although Tucker Carlson ended his show as usual by saying it’s the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity and groupthink,” he was happy to float an irresponsible conspiracy theory (and not for the first time) coupled with a dishonest suggestion that Trump is not the least popular resident of the Oval Office in polling history:
CARLSON: Google, by some measures, the most powerful company in the world -- all information flows through it -- they're against you. They don't want you reelected. Can you get reelected if Google is against you?
Crybaby-in-Chief Trump agreed, of course, but just as predictably held himself up as just too awesome to be defeated by anyone or anything!
TRUMP: But you're right, Google is very powerful, but I won. And a poll just came out today I'm at 54 or 55, and they do say you can add 10 to whatever poll I have, okay? And I never get good press. I mean, I haven't had a good story. I used to get the best press in the world. You remember the old days when I was an entrepreneur, I used to get great press. Now, I get -- because of what I stand for and represent and nobody has ever had, I think 93 percent -- it came out the other day, 93 percent, and I'm talking about stories that should be good, they make them bad or should be great, they make them like neutral. And yet I won, and I'll win again.
So when they say it's the most powerful, it may be, but they were against me. Facebook was against me. They were all against me. Twitter was against me. Twitter -- I've been very good for Twitter. I don't think Twitter would be the same without what I do on Twitter.
FACT CHECK: I’m sure Twitter would be just fine without Trump’s tweets. The real question is whether Trump would be the same without Twitter.
But more significantly, Trump’s approval rating has never risen above the 40s. That’s as much due to his policies as his disliked persona. Even the GOP-friendly Rasmussen poll has his favorability at 48% today. FiveThirtyEight.com, which gives Rasmussen a C+, adjusted the poll as a more likely 42%.
So why would “truthteller” Carlson not only allow this BS but promote it? Because like so much else on Fox, it’s propaganda first, facts last. Oh, and also? Carlson is full of s***.
Watch it below, from the July 1, 2019 Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Take Google. Conservatives whine the search results are rigged far-left. One method is to use the Sharyl Attkisson scale to rate websites’ political bias then run Google searches to see if liberal ones get preference. If you’re familiar with right-wing crank Sharyl Attkisson you’ll immediately be suspicious of anything she came up with and you’d be right.
Predictably the most prestigious newspapers in America, namely the Washington Post and the New York Times, are rated so far left they fall off the edge. Meanwhile totally crackpot conspiracy site InfoWars is given equal weight but rated only middling conservative. Huh? In what world?
The bottom line is so many of the conservative web sites – that’s the ones I’ve even heard of – aren’t even news sites. They’re opinion sites like Hot Air, The Blaze, or American Thinker. The Drudge Report is listed but it’s an aggregator, not a news originator.
Since, as Republicans suspect, facts have a liberal bias it’s unsurprising any fact-checking site is rated as liberally biased: PolitiFact, Snopes, and FactCheck. Too funny!
FaceBook and Twitter? Didn’t they let the Russians help Trump in 2016 enough to get off his naughty list? I wonder if Trump’s (and Tucker’s) latest Twitter discontent goes with the fact Trump is hemorrhaging followers as Twitter redoubles their efforts to kill off all the bots following him? Also, there’s a trend that’s got the be irking Trump. That his stuff is getting less action – that is fewer retweets.
And, finally, I suppose FaceBook’s big offense is taking down all the fake news sites that support Trump. Though fake news is in the eye of the beholder according to Trump and if you are kissing Trump’s ass you can’t be fake.
Meanwhile back to the real world MSNBC reports Trump’s re-election campaign, contrary to Tucker’s gaslighting, are the masters of FaceBook and its algorithms. They have a far more sophisticated FaceBook operation than any Democrat and they’re far better funded. Here’s a good L.A. Times article discussing the issue:
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-democrats-facebook-campaign-election-20190612-story.html