Tucker Carlson swooned after Clay Travis advanced Tucky’s War on America with an anti-mask rant that helped rile up a school board meeting, designed to protect children from the pandemic, into threats against medical professionals.
I wrote yesterday about Fox contributor Travis’ completely unqualified claims about COVID-19 and face masks that he thinks give him the right to endanger school children and those trying to protect children because he thinks he knows better. I predicted that his visit with Tucker Carlson last night would be a victory celebration.
Just as expected, Travis' pro-death, anti-school, anti-public health stunt was just the kind of thing Carlson wants more of in his War on America. Carlson conveniently overlooked the fact that that people were threatened at the Williamson County, Tennessee school board meeting that Travis deliberately undermined.
Carlson conveniently overlooked how Travis was trying to force a school board and medical professionals into handling the pandemic according to his (amateur) dictates and presented him as a public-spirited hero:
CARLSON: When the government tells you who you can speak to and where, when it tells you not to be friendly to your neighbor, you've crossed a line into totalitarianism and that's where we're heading.
Many parents are now realizing this. They may not have thought it through, but they can feel it. Our friend, Clay Travis just said so to his school board in Franklin, Tennessee.
Carlson played a clip of Travis’ remarks (leaving out the part where he shouted that people should “REFUSE! REFUSE!”). But Carlson left in the part where Travis claimed that the “truth” is that kids under 25 have only a one in a million chance of dying from COVID and are more likely to die of the flu or to be struck by lightning.
Carlson and his pal also conveniently left out the fact that most kids have families they can spread the coronavirus to. Neither of these two hate-mongers-for-profit spent their time urging Americans to get vaccinated which is probably the best path to eradicating the need for face masks. The lack of vaccines in red states is now threatening to undermine health care systems in red states. But helping to save lives and our hospital system might endanger their conservative cred. Heck, Carlson doesn't even have the courage to admit he's been vaccinated.
Instead, Travis – who, I repeat, has no medical background – feigned concern, not for anyone in the hospital or for the health care workers but for those “duped” into wearing masks.
TRAVIS: I feel bad for all these people walking around in masks engaging in cosmetic theater thinking that they are making a difference against COVID, they aren't.
Here's the truth. Our kids, under 25-year-olds, one in a million chance that they are going to die of COVID. They are more likely to be struck by lightning. They are more likely to be struck by lightning. They are more likely to die of the seasonal flu.
Have any of you ever mandated mask for the seasonal flu? Well, shame on you because every kid in Williamson County Schools has been under more danger from the seasonal flu every year than they are for COVID.
I would tell every parent here, don't let your kids wear masks.
That was such music to the ears of America-hating Tuckums! Especially the part about the anti-maskers disrupting the meeting!
CARLSON: So, there you have a man reading the numbers publicly available numbers as of today anyway on the risk of children dying from COVID and the people to whom he is speaking sit blank face, they don't want to hear the numbers. They're not interested in the science.
But the interesting part of the clip is what you hear in the rest of the room, the crowd. They explode. That's how frustrated they are. They have had it, and they've had it because the schools to which they've entrusted their children now seem committed to hurting those children.
While he was at it, Carlson even worked in a some race baiting:
CARLSON: And not just on COVID, teachers demanding tribalism, demanding it as a matter of policy, telling students to judge one another based on their skin color and then academic standards. The whole point of school in free fall across the country. We could give you a hundred examples.
After he had spent nearly 12 minutes trying to tear down and tear apart America, Carlson brought on BFF Travis. “I love the clips,” Carlson slobbered. “God bless you for doing it, and it was entirely fact-based.”
I will pause to point out that Carlson doesn’t have any medical background, either.
Travis told Carlson, “We’re in the middle of what I think is a grassroots, mobilizing parent movement to take back this country.” Taking it back from public health measures, that is.
Then Hater-For-Profit Travis claimed to be doing it only because he cares so much. “We make good livings doing our jobs, but the most important job we have is being a parent. Being a mom, being a dad and I think what happened during COVID is many parents became aware of what their kids were being taught,” Travis said.
Travis went on to say he wants his kids to fit into society “and make the world a better place, but it has to be a fact-based reality, and right now it isn't, and I'm excited about how many parents are now rising up.”
Apparently, “good parent” Travis thinks he also has the moral obligation to endanger other kids with his fake medical expertise.
Carlson swooned again. He called Travis’ brand of activism “the only way” since he has been trying for a year “to reason with the people in charge of the schools, from the Biden administration, to the teachers unions, to the school boards, to the teachers and say look, this is poison. You can't create Tutsis and Hutus in America, like you'll wreck the country, and they just won't listen.”
Actually, it is F***y Tucky Carlson's stock in trade - with the Murdochs’ blessings – to create Tutsis and Hutus in America but he seems to think if he consistently blames others for his own dangerous rhetoric, we won’t notice.
Travis encouraged “everybody out there” to follow his example. He said the anti-maskers and the “anti-CRT” (i.e. anti-critical race theory) crowd “may well be the new Tea Party.”
TRAVIS: That is the option. Tucker. I'd encourage everybody out there. I'm saying this is a mom-led revolution because if you look at the crowd, moms have had a lot put up on them for the last 18 months. They had to bear the brunt of child care when we had 15 days to stop the spread, Tucker, and they are just fed up with it.
And they are leading this charge and that's what I'd encourage everybody to do, speak out, go to the grassroots, confront your school board members, demand that they use fact-based analysis, and we will win. I'm telling you, Tucker, we're going to win. I can see it. It's going to grow and spread and become even bigger than it already is.
The anti-mask, the anti-CRT, it may well be the new Tea Party.
CARLSON: Boy, I hope -- that's the first hopeful thing I've heard in a while. Clay Travis, I sure appreciate your coming on tonight and for doing that, thank you.
FACT CHECK: FACE MASKS SAVE LIVES.
You can watch the latest episode in Carlson’s war on America – bankrolled by Lachlan Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch – below, from the August 11, 2021 Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Whether it’s Nuremberg-type trials or a South African-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission, America cannot go forward without a fair and firm accounting.