What’s an America-hater like Tucker Carlson to do when it’s no longer expedient for him to openly side with Vladimir Putin? Why, attack President Joe Biden as unfit for office.
There’s nothing wrong with Carlson criticizing Biden or questioning his competence, even during war time, but Lazy Tucker has never cared about facts or policy. No his jam is performative viciousness (perhaps he thinks it compensates for his shocking cowardice).
First, the vaccinated anti-vaxxer played doctor in order to “diagnose” Biden as senile. Then the guy who deliberately endangers those he dislikes pretended to have “deep sympathy” for Biden.
CARLSON: So you know exactly what that is. You've seen it in people around you, people you love. It has nothing to do with politics. What you just saw is a man who is losing the ability to regulate his emotions. Uncontrollable flashes of anger are common among people who are aging, particularly among men, and they often accompany senility. Losing it is a very frustrating experience and your heart goes out to anyone who is.
We have deep sympathy for anyone in that position, including Joe Biden, but Biden is the president of the United States, and this is the single most volatile moment in the recent history of our country. Biden is leading the U.S. toward war and so it's fair to assess the effect on the rest of us of his mental and emotional conditions, not simply about age, Biden is 79.
Biden is clearly unable to speak with precision and when you're president of the United States and the world hangs on your every word, when your words constitute American policy, when you can change American policy, particularly America's foreign policy, simply by saying so, it is essential that you speak the words you intend to speak, that you not get carried away because you're mad and say something you don't mean that might threaten the long-term interests of this country, threaten the families and the children of the rest of us and our future, but he is. That's exactly what he's doing.
That's not a partisan attack. It's true.
Carlson based his “diagnosis” on a clip of Biden responding to a question about whether NATO would respond to Russia using chemical weapons against Ukraine. Biden said, “It would trigger a response in kind - whether or not you're asking whether NATO would cross, we'd make that decision at the time.”
Clearly, Biden meant it would trigger a similarly strong response, not that the U.S. is planning to use chemical weapons. But #TraitorTucker Carlson insisted otherwise. Not because #TraitorTucker is concerned about the Russians he sides with, but in order to weaponize his assumption:
CARLSON: So, [Biden is] closing his eyes trying to remember what the cue card says. What's our policy? And what he comes out with is, if Russia uses chemical weapons, the U.S. will respond in kind. If Russia uses new chemical weapons, the United States will use chemical weapons.
So, no American president has said anything like that in your lifetime. You grew up assuming the United States would never use chemical weapons because the United States is not a rogue state. In fact, our role globally is to suppress rogue states. They tell us that's what we're doing right now and yet in a flash of pique, because he couldn't remember the correct words, Joe Biden, the president of the United States, reversed a hundred years of American security policy in the middle of a war.
Carlson continued on, citing Biden’s statement to U.S. troops in Poland when, praising the Ukrainians’ valor, he said, “You’re going to see when you’re there, you're going to see, you're going to see women, young people stand in the middle in front of a dammed tank saying, ‘I'm not leaving. I'm holding my ground.’"
Ever the dissembler, Carlson now pretended that Trump was “sometimes” justifiably criticized “for not using words precisely.”
But if you can remember a time whenever Carlson ranted like this for Trump for “not using words precisely” – such as continuing to claim that he won the 2020 election, which #TraitorTucker Carlson knows is a Big Lie, let me know because I missed it.
CARLSON: So the previous president was often criticized, sometimes with justification, for not using words precisely. You're the president, you can't just tweet out anything. That's the case you heard for four years and again, it was often rooted in truth, but the last president never said anything that even approaches the crazed recklessness of what you just heard.
Really? Tuckums? Pushing a Big Lie to overturn an election is nothing compared to Biden’s gaffe? That's not counting all the times Trump explicitly endorsed, encouraged and condoned violence.
In a made-for-Kremlin-TV moment, #TraitorTucker Carlson insisted Biden had not made a gaffe.
CARLSON: No, a gaffe is when you mispronounce somebody's name. Telling troops they're going to be sent to Ukraine, pledging the United States is going to use chemical weapons -- these are not gaffes. These are something else. They're dangerous, that's for sure.
Except that Biden never said either of those things. He improperly implied them, yes, but as even Carlson acknowledged, the administration made it clear they are not policy.
Then, of course, Carlson seized on Biden’s statement, “For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power,” the controversial end of his speech in Poland over the weekend. Now, Carlson acted as if he had never sided with Putin, presumably to make his attack on Biden look less anti-American.
CARLSON: Doing his Churchill routine, fine. When things aren't going well at home, all presidents seek solace abroad, where they're taken much more seriously than they are by their own voters, but he couldn't stop himself. "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," Joe Biden said of Vladimir Putin.
Now, set aside how you feel about Putin. You probably don't like him and for good reason.
Carlson next went on a long jag about regime change in Russia, as if this were a serious possibility. I’ll spare you the details, you can watch it in the video. But it was a lot more virulent than Carlson’s very timid, kinda sorta criticism of Donald Trump’s remarks and behavior in Helsinki. In case you’ve forgotten, Trump held a private meeting there with Putin, without the usual record being made, then openly sided with Putin against the U.S. in a press conference, later coming up with a ridiculous claim of having misspoken.
But all of Carlson’s invective was just a lead-up to his pièce de résistance of hate mongering, again feigning decency:
CARLSON: Look, it feels almost like we're being mean to the guy by quoting him, and no one wants that. No one is making fun of his age or his diminished condition, only trying to defend the country.
…
Joke's over, too much is at stake. If there was ever a time, if there was, in U.S. history, ever a time, to invoke the 25th Amendment, it is now.
As Joe Biden himself put it, "For God's sakes, this man cannot remain in power," for all of our sakes.
Then he brought on a fellow Putinista, Tulsi Gabbard, for more.
You can see another example of why Murdoch-bankrolled Carlson is deemed “essential” for Kremlin propaganda below, from the March 28, 2022 Tucker Carlson Tonight.
In evaluating their public statements, sophisticated listeners take into account Trump’s and Putin’s diseased characters, and they also take into account Biden’s unfortunate but much less dangerous aging persona. It should be obvious to everyone that Biden didn’t suddenly reverse his long standing opposition to chemical warfare, nor is Biden, having, at great political cost, just gotten us out of our longest war in history, intentionally “leading the U.S. toward war”.
Carlson is the one who is out of control and not aware of what he is saying and how people will take it.
One day this blatant pushing of Russian propaganda will require a reckoning. I hope Carlson lives to see and experience it, even if he does so from Moscow.