Tucker Carlson’s defense of right-wing troll Doug Mackey deceitfully painted him as a victim of a Democratic assault on free speech and failed to note that Mackey was arrested because he tried to suppress Hillary Clinton supporters from voting.

It’s not news that Tucker Carlson’s so-called guiding principles are whatever level of hate mongering he can get away with in his never-ending weaponization of politics for profit and partisanship. But here he completely blew away his phony-baloney pretense of caring about election integrity.

The New York Times explains why Mackey was arrested:

A man who was known as a far-right Twitter troll was arrested on Wednesday and charged with spreading disinformation online that tricked Democratic voters in 2016 into trying to cast their ballots by phone instead of going to the polls.

Federal prosecutors accused Douglass Mackey, 31, of coordinating with co-conspirators to spread memes on Twitter falsely claiming that Hillary Clinton’s supporters could vote by sending a text message to a specific phone number.

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As a result of the misinformation campaign, prosecutors said, at least 4,900 unique phone numbers texted the number in a futile effort to cast votes for Mrs. Clinton.

Carlson dangerously implies Democrats are a threat to democracy

But Carlson who claims to be the “sworn enemy of lying” and to “ask the questions that you would ask - and demand answers,” said that Mackey’s crime was having “made fun of powerful Democrats on social media.” That’s bad enough, but Carlson’s obvious real game in this commentary was to ratchet up partisan acrimony by painting Democrats (and any media outlet that doesn’t denounce them) as dangerous, anti-American fascists. The unspoken inference was that they deserve to be taken down by any means necessary.

CARLSON: Well, it looks like this is the part of the revolution where they start throwing their political opponents in jail. Wow, that was fast.

It was just a week ago they were telling us about unity. Remember that? What we didn't know at the time is they meant that everyone with power should unite against the rest of the country. Unity meant oligarchy.

Oh, Doug Mackey learned that the hard way this morning. Mackey is a 31- year-old conservative journalist from Florida. At 7:00 a.m. F.B.I. showed up at Mackey's house, they threw him in handcuffs and dragged him to his cell. He now faces 10 years in prison. His crime: he made fun of powerful Democrats on social media.

As the Federal criminal complaint puts it, quote: "Mackey made coordinated use of social media to spread disinformation relevant to the impending 2016 presidential election." This disinformation in the Biden administration solemnly explained, quote: " ... often took the form of memes."

Yes, memes: online mockery. Mockery online is now illegal when it's aimed at the wrong people. Doug Mackey hurt their feelings, so they put him in jail.

According to Joe Biden's Justice Department, Doug Mackey violated 18 U.S. Code Section 241. He did this by tricking people like the dastardly trickster that he is into not voting in the presidential election.

What's interesting is that prosecutors showed no evidence whatsoever that Doug Mackey actually tricked anyone into anything voting or not, not a single person. But that doesn't matter shrieked CNN, Doug Mackey is a bad person with bad views. And by the way, we have no idea what Doug Mackey's views are. We don't care.

What CNN is telling us is that those views are a crime. He is a criminal. Lock him up. Give him a longer sentence than we give to rapists -- which they're trying to do.

As of tonight, that is the official position of the lynch mob channel. But hold on a minute, as a legal matter, have you ever read 18 U.S. Code Section 241? Probably not. But you should. Look it up.

When you read it, you will learn that Joe Biden's Justice Department is lying in a very obvious way and that should make you very nervous. It turns out that Federal law does not ban memes or for that matter, misinformation, whatever that is. The law that Biden's prosecutors are citing instead prohibits, quote: "Conspiring to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate anyone from exercising the right to vote." According to the law that would include kidnapping voters, invading their homes, sexually abusing them.

Doug Mackey didn't do any of that -- not even close to any of that. Doug Mackey made memes, therefore, he's a domestic terrorist. Speech is violence, dissent is a felony.

What you may be wondering does a case like this mean for the First Amendment? Well, it means that it's effectively suspended. You can now be arrested for saying the wrong things and at 7:00 a.m. this morning, one journalist actually was arrested for that.

Almost no one tonight seems to be defending him. He had bad thoughts. He deserves it. They think it's okay, and that shouldn't surprise you because we're clearly living under some form of Martial Law at the moment.

How do we know that? Well, here's one indication. There are nearly 10,000 Federal troops in our capital city tonight. Oh, that's a hint. Why are they there? How long will they be staying? Nobody is being very specific about any of that, so you're left to draw your own conclusions, which people naturally are.

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The point of this whole highly militarized exercise is to remind you of what Chairman Mao once famously said: political power grows from the barrel of a gun. Unfortunately, that is true in every country at all times.

While posing as a free-speech advocate, Carlson avoided the real free speech issues in favor of inflammatory, partisan insults

The sad thing is that I see legitimate free speech issues here. The Times noted:

The case will test the novel use of federal civil rights laws as a tool to hold people accountable for misinformation campaigns intended to interfere with elections, a problem that has recently become an urgent priority for social media platforms and law enforcement officials to stop.

But in typical Fox fashion, rather than explore the issue like a grownup, the 51-year-old Carlson went straight to name calling, lies and accusations in a blatant effort to inflame partisan hostility.

At the very least, this proves that Carlson’s "I care about democracy" act is just another one of his lies.

You can watch yet another reason that Carlson is a menace to society below – and no, it’s not because of his political beliefs but because of how he deliberately, dishonestly and gratuitously weaponizes them. The video is from the January 27, 2021 Tucker Carlson Tonight.