When does Tucker Carlson love CNN? When he thinks he can use the network’s reporting to claim that an FBI wiretap on Paul Manafort vindicates Donald Trump’s lie that he was wiretapped by President Obama. Even though CNN’s report said nothing of the sort.
Carlson ‘forgets’ how much he hates CNN as he uses a report to help Trump
Carlson suddenly wanted to talk about the Russia investigation last night – not to consider what U.S. investigators may have uncovered about Trump presidential campaign chairman Manafort's ties to Russia. No, Carlson was interested because he thought he could use CNN’s September 18, 2017 report that Manafort was wiretapped to make Trump look like less of a liar and more of a Russia-investigation victim.
In case you’ve forgotten, here are Trump's March 4, 2017 tweets baselessly claiming Obama wiretapped him:
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017
Trump never produced any evidence to back up his claim. His own Department of Justice recently responded to a Freedom of Information Act request with the statement, “Both FBI and NSD [the DOJ’s National Security Division] confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets.”
In typical Fox News style, Carlson didn’t just defend Trump but attacked many of those who had dismissed his claim: Speaker of the House Paul Ryan; Senators Richard Burr and Mark Warner, top senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee; the Department of Justice; former FBI Director James Comey; and, of course, the media. You’ll notice that CNN, a network Carlson regularly vilifies was not on the list of untrustworthy institutions.
Carlson sneered, “Now, in another time, with more trustworthy institutions, that would have been the end of the story. But we live in a country with deeply corrupt institutions and so it turns out all those patronizing assurances that 'nobody’s spying on political campaigns' were false and probably intentionally so.
What’s Carlson’s proof? A CNN report! Carlson announced, “According to a new report from CNN, Paul Manafort who, for a time last year was Trump’s campaign chairman was wiretapped by the federal government both before and after the election.”
So does Carlson no longer think CNN is “no longer a news organization,” as he said in June? He didn’t explain.
Carlson uses CNN to go on a tear smearing U.S. institutions that just might turn up damning evidence against Trump in the Russia investigation
Carlson went on to distort what CNN found in order to smear the intelligence community (which coincidentally undercuts any damning evidence unearthed about Dear Leader Trump and Russia). Media Matters picked up this part of the transcript:
CARLSON: Now Manafort, it ought to be noted, had an apartment inside Trump Tower during that time, so it’s virtually certain that surveillance of him would have included other members of the Trump campaign staff, maybe even Trump himself.
In other words, it looks like Trump’s tweet may have been right.
[...]
Either the intelligence agency has gone rogue, pursuing its own goals without meaningful oversight from elected officials, or our officials are colluding with one another to lie to the public, apparently for political reasons.
Either way, something ominous is happening in Washington. Last year’s election terrified the permanent class here, mostly because it was a genuine, populist uprising that they couldn’t control, despite all efforts.
Since the election, they have done everything in their power to reverse the results, or simply pretend it never happened. In an ironic twist, they become exactly what they claim to oppose.
They collude behind closed doors to push a narrative of secret collusion. They compare the president to Vladimir Putin, and then use secret surveillance and politically motivated leaks to menace their political enemies, and then, for good measure, they lie about it.
In the name of protecting democracy they are doing everything they can to subvert the results of a democratic vote, irony of ironies. No Russian hacking has ever threatened this country more than that.
CNN report did not vindicate Trump
What’s even worse about Carlson’s despicable attack on America in the name of Trump is that he got it wrong. Think Progress explains:
As CNN reporter Marshall Cohen pointed out, the wiretap in question pertained to Paul Manafort the person, not Trump Tower, where Manafort reportedly bought a condo with cash in 2006.
Wiretap CNN reported was on Manafort the person, not Trump Tower the building. Though he obviously had some contact with the tower.
— Marshall Cohen (@Marshall_Cohen) September 19, 2017
CNN reported that it is “unclear whether Trump himself was picked up on the surveillance.” But as Lawfare explains, even if Trump was picked up, “incidental collection” of that sort happens routinely during the course of criminal and counterintelligence investigations.
“Press reports have indicated for months that at least one, and potentially multiple, close associates of Donald Trump were subject to FISA warrants,” Lawfare notes. “It is possible now—as has been noted many times since Trump tweeted his accusation in March—that if the U.S. president was in communication with these individuals, his communications might have been incidentally collected. That isn’t the same as being wiretapped—and being subject to incidental collection as part of lawful collection against a third party really is not the same thing as being wiretapped by President Obama.”
So who’s really trying to subvert democracy?
Watch Carlson present CNN as reputable as he distorts its reporting to promote his own fake news below, from the September 19, 2017 Tucker Carlson Tonight.
The truth is that Donald Trump never won anything by virtue of a “populist uprising” by any stretch of the imagination. The Right Wing would like their base to keep holding onto that idea, but the facts say something very different. In reality, Donald Trump only squeaked through the Electoral College (something he’d been attacking up to the moment that it became his ticket to the White House) because about three million Dem voters didn’t show up at the polls when it counted. And their failure to appear had nothing to do with a “populist uprising”. It was the result of a deliberate Right Wing strategy to make the 2016 campaign so negative, so angry and so dirty that many Dems would feel discouraged from even wanting to vote. And unlike 2012, this strategy worked in 2016. Trump still lost the popular vote by millions but he got the votes where he needed them and was able to eke out a close win – which was enough to put Mike Pence into the driver’s seat and allow the Right Wing to do what they’d wanted for 8 years – namely erase every single thing ever done by “that awful black man in the White House.”
Tucker Carlson’s constant, smug trolling of anyone who had the temerity to vote for Clinton or to stand up for any principles this year frankly speaks for itself. Carlson is trying to emulate Trump in the idea of constantly bullying his enemies and doubling down whenever the slightest hint of doubt crosses his mind. It will be interesting in a few years when the Pence gang is thankfully out of the White House to go back and look at Tucker Carlson’s behavior over these months and years. I don’t think it’s occurred to him that his comments are preserved for all posterity to see him for who he really is.
