Tucker Carlson reportedly just bought a house in Whitefish, Montana, in one of the whitest counties in the country, and where he will soon be homies with some of the most prominent white supremacists in the U.S. UPDATED - I was accused of defaming someone mentioned in this post.
The Daily Beast’s Source Material newsletter this week reported the news of Carlson’s new abode, under the heading “WE HEAR WHISPERS.”
As TDB noted, Montana is the state where Carlson got a dose of his own medicine at a sporting goods store when he was confronted by a man who told him, “You are the worst human being known to mankind.” However, that was in Livingston, Montana, which is 345 miles away from Whitefish.
I decided to do a little research on Carlson’s new digs. And what I found is that while Whitefish is a liberal town, Tuckums will find plenty of like-minded company there. For one thing, famous white nationalist Richard Spencer is a summer resident. However, since a Neo-Nazi hate campaign against a Whitefish realtor, which was originated by Spencer, crashed and burned there, he has become a bit of a pariah. This New York Times article about the town’s successful efforts to fight back will probably dismay Carlson but it could serve as inspiration for the rest of us.
The upshot, though is that Spencer, who is not just an outcast in Whitefish now, will probably be happy to see like-minded Carlson arrive. The organization Spencer once ran from Whitefish has dissolved and his wife has divorced him, The Times notes, and he and his white nationalist cohorts recently lost a civil case that left them liable for $26 million in damages for their role in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
In nearby Kalispell, Carlson can hobnob with Chuck Baldwin. Here’s just some of what the Southern Poverty Law Center reports about him:
Chuck Baldwin, a 35-year Florida “guns and God” pastor and a leader in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement, moved his apocalyptic mission to Montana in 2010, forming a new church in a burgeoning center for antigovernment and white supremacist extremists. Baldwin’s arrival in the Flathead Valley, where his Liberty Fellowship is drawing an array of radical-right congregants, followed years of activity on the far right. He was the presidential candidate of the Constitution Party in 2008 and its vice-presidential candidate in 2004. In recent rants, he’s raged against any form of gun control and warned darkly of an imminent and violent confrontation with government forces. The U.S. as we know it is going down, Baldwin insists, and patriotic citizens must lead the charge to save it.
…
Baldwin quickly established a new church, Liberty Fellowship, after moving to the Kalispell area. He claims that services draw as many as 200 people each week. Among those who have attended are the white supremacist Randy Weaver, who was involved in a murderous standoff with federal agents at Ruby Ridge in 1992, and neo-Nazi activist April Gaede. Gaede is a particularly enthusiastic congregant of Baldwin’s, according to Media Matters for America, a liberal monitoring organization. On Stormfront, the largest white nationalist website in the world, Gaede has written that Baldwin’s sermons move her to tears, and that Liberty Fellowship services are attended by Christians affiliated with Pioneer Little Europe, a Gaede-affiliated group that is trying to create an all-white community.
The town is also at the center of an alleged scheme for the Trump administration to privatize intelligence operations via Amyntor Group, a company headquartered in Whitefish. From a 2018 BuzzFeed News article:
Over the summer and fall, the White House and CIA considered a package of proposals to privatize intelligence operations, including a plan to snatch terrorists overseas in a rendition action, as BuzzFeed News first disclosed. At the center of the plan was a security and intelligence company called Amyntor Group, headquartered in Whitefish, Montana, associated with figures from the Iran-Contra operation of the 1980s.
According to The Intercept, Oliver North and Erik Prince were also involved.
And there’s Whitefish Energy, the tiny company that had no office and just two employees when it somehow won a $300 million no-bid contract to restore Puerto Rico’s power in the wake of Hurricane Maria, when a larger, far more experienced company’s offer was ignored. The company did, however, have a connection to Trump administration official Ryan Zinke, who will also be a Carlson neighbor. The contract was subsequently canceled by Puerto Rico.
In a 2017 report on the Whitefish Energy contract, BuzzFeed News wrote:
[Whitefish] is home to dozens of major political and business players, including Dave Lesar, who stepped down as CEO of Halliburton just last year, billionaire business magnate Bill Foley (whose business has donated $179,123 to Zinke’s campaign, and who lobbied for Zinke’s appointment as secretary of the interior), venture capitalist Michael Goguen (whose Whitefish home is the 11th largest in the country, and who exited his firm, Sequoia Capital, over a $40 million sexual assault case) and former Montana governor, RNC chairman, and lobbyist Marc Racicot.
In 2020, Media Matters’ Madeline Peltz summed up Carlson’s attack on Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) by saying, “Carlson is playing an extremely simple game to his own benefit, cultivating legitimacy and authority closer to centers of power in order to turn around and push his far-right nationalist agenda.”
Now, he’ll have a very conveniently-located home for doing more of that.
I wrote in my previous post that we need Americans to emulate the Russian state TV employee Marina Ovsyannikova, a woman who risked her life by appearing on live TV with a sign saying, "“NO WAR. Stop the war. Don’t believe the propaganda, they are lying to you here.” Maybe one of Montana's plucky democracy lovers, like the man in Livingston or a member of the group that successfully fought off the Neo-Nazis will step up to the plate.
(Carlson image via screen grab)
4/5/22 UPDATE:
This post was originally published on March 31, 2022. On April 4, 2022, at the end of the day, I received an email and a letter from Bruce Van Dalsem, attorney for Michael Goguen, who was mentioned briefly in the second BuzzFeed News excerpt, above. Although there is no retraction in the BuzzFeed article, which is from 2017 and none in the 2016 Vanity Fair article, titled "Inside the $40 Million Sexual-Assault Case Rocking Silicon Valley," (though Vanity Fair does quote Mr. Goguen's lawyer's view of the lawsuit), Mr. Van Dalsem claims I defamed his client and accuses me of being misleading and unfair.
While I am unabashedly opinionated, I always strive to be fair. So, in the name of fairness, I happily provide the information Mr. Van Dalsem thinks should have been included in this post and I have re-dated this post so that Mr. Van Dalsem's full comments will get the attention they deserve:
The Newshounds article quotes the 2017 report from Buzzfeed as present fact and misleadingly omits critical context and developments from the intervening five years, including that the complainant in the “$40 million” case was found to be engaged in making false statements against Mr. Goguen and that the case resolved without any finding of wrongdoing or malfeasance by Mr. Goguen. All of this information is publicly available, including in other media reports, and was available to Newshounds prior to its publication of the article.
Indeed, public records establish that there was no “$40 million sexual assault case.” Rather, the lawsuit seeking $40 million in damages was for breach of contract, and the article materially omits the fact that, after a full trial on the merits, the Court in that case found that the plaintiff’s gratuitous allegations that Mr. Goguen engaged in any form of abuse of her or any other women were “false and defamatory[.]” Indeed, the Court issued a restraining order that restrains the plaintiff “from repeating” these (and other) “false and defamatory statements.”
Accordingly, it is not a fair and accurate report of judicial proceedings to reference a “40 million sexual assault case” where the claim was based in contract, not tort. Likewise, it is not fair and true report to omit that there is a final, non-appealable judgment finding her gratuitous allegations of abuse to be false and defamatory, as well as enjoining their republication. A copy of the Court’s Final Statement of Decision and restraining order are attached as Exhibits A and B.
Moreover, per the Final Statement of Decision (Exhibit A), Mr. Goguen voluntarily resigned from Sequoia as a result of the false and defamatory allegations made in the lawsuit. As drafted, the statement contained in the Newshounds article that Mr. Goguen “exited his firm, Sequoia Capital, over a $40 million sexual assault misleadingly and falsely suggest that his exit resulted from malfeasance on his part.
Accordingly, Mr. Goguen demands that Newshounds immediately correct the article and apologize to Mr. Goguen through the same channels.
You can read the Final Statement of Decision if you click here.
I hope that clears up any misunderstanding and I certainly apologize for upsetting Mr. Goguen.