Got irony? America-hating Tucker Carlson suggested Brittney Griner didn’t deserve to be released from a Russian penal colony because she’s not patriotic enough. He also suggested that President Biden chose her release over Marine Paul Whelan because Whelan is white.
Fox had been bitching about Griner’s release all day. But leave it to Carlson to suggest that Griner got special treatment because she’s Black, to the detriment of a white guy.
Carlson’s bigoted Griner conspiracy theory was based on another conspiracy theory he was too lazy and/or too dishonest to actually investigate
Carlson justified his smear with a quote from Andrea Mitchell who wrote or said, based on a “senior administration official” source, that “The Kremlin gave the White House the choice of either Griner or Whelan – or none.”
It’s almost certain that Mitchell made a mistake. The Hill reported what Carlson either hid from viewers or was too lazy to look into:
A senior administration official said Thursday they believe the Russians are holding Whelan’s release to a higher bar than Griner’s because of the espionage charges.
…
“This was not a situation where we had a choice of which American to bring home. It was a choice between bringing home one particular American, Brittney Griner, or bringing home none,” the [senior administration] official said, speaking in a call with reporters shortly after Griner’s release was made public.
Furthermore, Whelan’s brother said the Biden administration made the right decision in securing Griner’s freedom, according to The Hill.
But Carlson – the admitted liar who claims to be the sworn enemy of lying – told viewers that Mitchell's account had been “scrubbed and sanitized.” There was no actual evidence that anything more nefarious than a corrected mistake had occurred. Other than the fact that he likened it to the network’s retracted reporting on the Paul Pelosi attack that Carlson maliciously (and also baselessly) suggested was a covered-up truth.
But mere innuendo was all the over-privileged Carlson needed to play the whites-are-oppressed card and to claim that Biden and NBC are in cahoots in a cover up.
“This kind of thing happens all the time in Washington, usually without the public knowing that it happened,” Carlson said. He should know. He recently did exactly that in his slobbering interview with Kanye West that scrubbed and sanitized West’s antisemitism. Carlson also secretly pressured Donald Trump into pardoning Roger Stone and endorsing JD Vance. And, of course, there was the Fox and Trump collusion about the "stolen 2020 election." Before that became too much of a liability, that is.
Carlson worked himself into a lather of dishonest, bigoted hate mongering that was also chock full of projection:
CARLSON: So, at this point, we can assume the obvious: the Biden administration chose Brittney Griner over Paul Whelan. The basketball player over the Marine facing 16 years. There was only room for one in the lifeboat, and the Marine got left behind.
Well, why'd they make that choice? Well, you should know that Whelan is a Trump voter and he made the mistake of saying so on social media. He's paying the price for that now. Brittney Griner is not. She has very different politics. Brittney Griner despises the United States, she's been very vocal about that. This country is so repellant and immoral that two years ago she said, "I honestly feel we should not play the national anthem during our basketball season."
She hates the country so much she doesn't want to hear its anthem. That's the kind of position that gets you rewarded by Joe Biden. Hate America? Perfect! We'll free the guy who sold weapons to drug cartels to get you out early. So, there's that.
And then there's the matter of identity, which is central to equity. Brittney Griner is not white and she's a lesbian. Now, those facts might seem irrelevant to you -- we hope they do seem irrelevant, because they are -- but they're not irrelevant to the White House press secretary. In the view of the White House press secretary, those are essential qualifications for a prisoner swap.
FACT CHECK: Brittney Griner does not hate the United States, Tucker Carlson does
Carlson left out the rest of Griner’s quote about playing the national anthem: "I don't mean that in any disrespect to our country. My dad was in Vietnam and a law officer for 30 years. I wanted to be a cop before basketball. I do have pride for my country."
But while Carlson thinks not wanting the national anthem played is proof of hating America, he has claimed that an actual insurrection to overturn the 2020 election is no biggie. Furthermore, his show is dedicated to smearing, harming and even killing Americans. This is a man who has deliberately endangered journalists; deliberately endangered America’s top infectious disease specialist; lionized a vigilante killer; smeared our military, including a Purple Heart recipient; deliberately endangered transgender Americans and those who offer them medical care; stoked white supremacist violence; called for parents to be arrested for masking their children against COVID; urged an unvaccinated woman to breathe on First Lady Jill Biden; and smeared the mayor and city of Jackson, Mississippi in the middle of their water crisis.
On top of all that, Carlson has openly sided with Russia over the U.S., so much so that the Kremlin considers him essential to their propaganda; painted Hungary as a better country than the U.S.; and, while in Brazil, he sh**ted all over the U.S. as he swooned over that country’s authoritarian president.
You can watch the guy who hates America so much he’ll conjure up a phony conspiracy theory to attack the release of an American from a Russian penal colony below, from the December 8, 2022 Tucker Carlson Tonight, via Media Matters.
And don’t forget: Lachlan Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch bankroll this poison.