Fox News: Tucker Carlson responds to the Mar-a-Lago Search By Defending a White Nationalist
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News for the week ending 8/21/22
Most Fox viewers last week would think that every major city is being overrun by violent crime while the corrupt FBI and Department of Justice obsess about Donald J. Trump. A Tucker Carlson viewer might lament the plight of a beleaguered internet prankster never knowing he is actually a white nationalist with Neo Nazi supporters.
A Fox News viewer would have no idea that major climate disasters continue to wreck havoc all over the world. They also might not know that Rudy Giuliani is facing a Grand Jury for his involvement with the scheme to alter the 2020 presidential election. A Fox devotee might not realize that the former CFO for Trump Corp, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded guilty to tax fraud charges and has agreed to testify against the company.
The most popular cable news channel blatantly ignored stories that might make the great MAGA king look bad.
Tucker Defends a White Nationalist…AGAIN
I expected Carlson to walk in with a complex web of explanations and theories that blamed George Soros, Hillary Clinton and UFO’s for the FBI search on Mar-a-Lago.
Tying UFO’s into his theories is not that unlikely considering Carlson has been heavily promoting a Fox Nation special about unexplained cattle mutilations.
Carlson spent most of his time on the search on Monday when he spent 27 minutes in a rambling rant that included disappearing ink, documents in bikinis and white nationalists.
“These are ultra classified documents, the most classified kind, just sitting there helpless in boxes like maidens in bikinis waiting to be photographed by terrorists,” said Carlson
Carlson’s main argument was that none of the documents retrieved by the FBI were sensitive or of any importance. To make his case Carlson went on about classified documents unsealed in 2011 that involved a recipe for disappearing ink from the First World War.
Things got weird early when Carlson implied MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough was a murderer without providing any evidence of his alleged crime. I’m not sure what that had to do about classified documents but Carlson found a way to wedge it in.
Carlson’s next pivot was to bring up a white nationalist, Douglass Mackey. Online Mackey used the name and image of Ricky Vaughn, a fictional character played by Charlie Sheen in the film “Major League.”
His Ricky Vaughn account had such a large following that it made the M.I.T. Media Lab’s list of the top 150 influencers in the 2016 election. His account was known for virulent antisemitic, misogynist and racist content.
Mackey created a meme that encouraged voters to vote for Hillary Clinton via text message. This might be seen as a prank but over 4900 unique phone numbers sent texts to his fake account. His memes seemed to target Black and Latino voters specifically.
Carlson mislead his viewers about the charges Mackey is facing and reduced his alleged crime to a simple prank on the internet.
To quote the federal criminal complaint at the Department of Justice,
The tweet included the typed hashtags “#Go [Candidate]” and another slogan frequently used by the Candidate. On or about and before Election Day 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “[Candidate’s first name]” or some derivative to the 59925 text number, which was used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by the defendant and his co-conspirators.
Tucker Carlson spent five and a half minutes dedicated to the plight of Douglass Mackey the same man who received donations for his legal defense from Daily Stormer editor Andrew Anglin, the Neo Nazi group National Alliance, as well as Mark Dice, a right-wing YouTuber. Mackey also got a vow of support from Matt Forney, a male supremacist author who has claimed raping and beating women is justified.
Carlson found a link between Mackey and Trump.
“So as befitting a criminal of this magnitude Mackey was handcuffed and hauled before a federal judge in Florida called Bruce Reinhart. As it turns out the same magistrate who authorized last week's raid on Mar a Lago weird, then Mackey was hauled off to jail,” said Carlson.
Since Carlson was on vacation on the day of the search at Mar-a-Lago he had an entire week to respond. He chose to champion the cause of a white nationalist while simultaneously target a judge who has already been deluged with antisemitic attacks.
The Fox News host ended his segment about Mackey with a sanctimonious defense of the first amendment.
Even if every person on the planet finds your opinions horrifying and beyond the pale, you still have the right to express them because you were born with that right,” said Carlson.
The problem with Carlson’s argument of course is Mackey was not arrested because of his political beliefs or his speech. He was criminally charged because 4900 people sent text messages to a phony number he promoted as a means to vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
Carlson is showing one of the more innocuous memes Mackey posted on his various social media accounts.
This is no way of knowing why Tucker Carlson would dedicate so much time and focus to a right wing extremist.
I doubt the majority of the Fox News audience would know much about the Ricky Vaughn Twitter account or his scheme to defraud voters.
A certain extremist element of Tucker Carlson’s audience would hear him loud and clear.
Was this a means to further intimidate and terrorize the magistrate involved with the search warrant on Mar-a-Lago? Was it another attempt by Carlson to bring more attention to Mackey’s case?
It’s hard to know what was going on here but it’s this isn’t the first time Carlson has spent time and focus defending white nationalists or right wing extremists.
For the rest of the week Trump was barely mentioned on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Although Trump’s name came up 40 times on Monday, he was only mentioned 22 times in the next four days, including no mention of him whatsoever on Thursday.
*This is no media clip for this part of the newsletter this week because Carlon’s unraveling of the story was hard to clip into consumable sound bites. There was just too much backstory to explain about Mackey that wouldn’t fit into a short video.
Tucker Rewrites History with COVID-19
Tucker Carlson claimed that at no time during the COVID-19 pandemic did any cemetery or funeral director complain that they couldn’t find space for new bodies. The exact opposite is true of course. I found examples from Texas, Florida, Alabama and New York City that would refute Carlson’s ridiculously false statement.
Liz Cheney Primary Loss
This past week Fox News and PBS NewsHour handled Liz Cheney’s attempt to retain her seat in congress in completely opposite ways.
Fox News spent 10% of their airtime discussing the midterms and primaries while only dedicating 3% specially to Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY). PBS in contrast dedicated 9% of their coverage to Cheney exclusively while only giving the primaries and midterms 4% of its focus.
In a previous week while a guest on PBS NewsHour Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post compared Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) to the fictional Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi of the Star Wars Franchine,
“And Obi Wan says to Darth Vader, if you strike me down, I will come back more powerful than you can imagine. And to me, Liz Cheney is is is Obi Wan Kenobi if she loses which she very well might lose her primary on August 16, ” said Capehart.
This past week PBS featured Sarah Longwell, Republican strategist publisher of the neoconservative news and opinion website The Bulwark. Longwell gave her opinion on a possible Cheney Presidential run.
“When you run as a Republican candidate, and listen, I think it's very there's a very narrow path for her to win. I do not think that is likely. And I also think they will go to great lengths to keep her from a debate stage, potentially even to keep her off a ballot,” said Longwell.
Sarah Longwell also made a bold allusion toward the future of Cheney’s political career when she compared her possible presidential run to a suicidal Japanese pilot.
"She is ready to do a Kamikaze mission for democracy."
Tucker Carlson can’t figure out why some senatorial candidates are so terrible.
Trump endorsed a number of extremist and celebrity candidates for various senate races across the country. His followers dutifully voted for them. Now when facing the general electorate several of Trump’s picks are failing miserably in the polls. Dr. Oz is one of those candidates.
Fox thinks the FBI really needs to crack down on Local Crimes.
Since I’ve started this project in mid-Feb. I’ve noticed the almost gleeful way Fox News anchors cover stories about urban crime.
In previous weeks I’ve pointed out how what would normally be a two minute segment on a local news broadcast turns into several segments over multiple programs on Fox News.
Fox also has a malleable attitude towards crime depending on who is in the White House. The riots that broke out in the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd are blamed on blue state mayors and governors. Trump was a victim to state and local gpvernments woke policies on crime.
Now that there’s a Democrat in the White House urban crime is a federal problem. Last week several Fox anchors chided the FBI for not doing enough about urban crime. The FBI does investigate organized crime and some drug cartels but most local crime is handled by local police forces.
Greg Gutfeld shared his thoughts on the FBI on “The Five.”
“We have to be we have to start thinking about people instead of boxes of paper . . . I wish Merrick Garland was agonizing for weeks over riots, or over smash and grab or over the 10% rise in the rape in the new in New York City,” said Gutfeld.
The crimes Gutfeld mentioned would be covered by local law enforcement not the FBI. Where are the riots Gutfeld is so concerned about?
Although Fox News predicted a “Summer of rage” filled with riots after Roe v Wade was overturned none have materialized.
This clip is a condensed edit for a longer segment where Tucker Carlson calls a mob of people committing petty crimes “greedy and piggish” while implying they were raised by immoral parents. I kind of doubt Carlson would refer to a white collar criminal in the same way.
Clutch Your Pearls
When you’ve got nothing else to say, attack a man for his sunglasses.
Johnny Joey Jones gets a bit deep when discussing Pres. Joe Biden's aviator sunglasses,
"He's putting a wall up between him and the viewer, it's almost like maybe that's part of why he can't tell what's happening in America," said Jones.
1 year Anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan
On this topic both networks had a lot of overlap but their coverage of the the U.S. military pullout from Afghanistan was quite different.
PBS News Hour spent 8% of its coverage while Fox News dedicated only 3% of its airtime to the disastrous withdrawal from a war that spawned two decades.
Both networks were critical of the Biden administration.
PBS broke the story down into several segments that focused on different aspects of the crisis – the plight of women and girls, the fate of Afghanis who worked with the U.S. government, and the rise of the Taliban.
Fox didn’t go into much detail about the conflict or withdrawal. They basically showed the tragic footage of Afghanis chasing a military plane down a runway on a loop.
It was an odd choice by Fox News to not spend more time and focus on this as it’s an easy liability for the Biden administration.
Comedy Relief
Tucker Carlson likes to use the word spank a lot.
I’ll just leave this here.
Stories Fox thought Were Newsworthy that were NOT Newsworthy
Alec Baldwin - The accidental shooting on the set of the movie “Rust.” Fox News continues to push this story because they made a cheaply thrown together documentary about Alec Baldwin on Fox Nation. They also seem to love to attack Baldwin due to his left of center political views.
Stories Fox News Ignored
Rudy Giuliani faces a grand jury in Georgia for a case involving the 2020 election.
Allen Weisselberg pleads guilty to tax fraud charges – Former CFO of Trump Orgaization also agrees to testify against the company.
Former Vice President Mike Pence defended the FBI and asked for an end to threats to the agency.
Brittney Griner appeals sentence in Russia - Fox News ignored this story for months only to report on it after they realized they could use it against Pres. Biden. Now that Griner has appealed her sentence and there’s hope that she might be released in a prisoner swap Fox did not report on it.
China experiencing the worst heatwave in 60 years - In some areas of the country the government has shut down factories to save power. Record breaking temperatures have reached 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
Drought in Germany - In some areas the water levels in rivers is so low ships cannot sail which has caused bottlenecks in the supply chain.
Heatwave in Northwestern U.S. - The heat is expected to spread across 48 states this week.
New developments in the presidential election in Kenya - The outsider candidate William Ruto was declared president-elect of Kenya. His competitor who is associated with a political dynasty, Raila Odinga, rejected the results and vowed to go to court to invalidate the election. There is no evidence of voter fraud or misconduct. So far other than protests things have remained calm in the country.
Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, made a comment about the Holocaust that enraged German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. During a visit to Berlin last week Abbas accused Israel of committing "50 Holocausts." After the outrage Abbas issued a statement in which he called the Holocaust, “The most heinous crime in modern human history."
China has resumed military drills around Taiwan are back on - Five U.S. lawmakers led by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) arrived in Taiwan for an unannounced two-day visit. China responded by resuming military drills around Taiwan.
El Shafee Elsheikh, British ISIS member, sentenced for deadly kidnapping plot. he was extradited to the United States and will now serve eight life sentences for his role in the murder of four U.S. citizens.
NFL suspended player Deshaun Watson for 11 games following sexual misconduct accusations by several women.
Pharmacies in Ohio must pay $650 million after a federal jury concluded chains helped create a public nuisance by over-supplying addictive pain pills.
U.S. government is setting aside 50,000 doses of the Monkeypox vaccine for upcoming pride events.
Some forms of hearing aids are now available without a prescription.
A 16-year-old girl in Florida was told by a court that she was too immature to have an abortion, which implies the court thinks she’s mature enough to give birth to a child and either raise the child herself or go through the process of adoption.
By the Numbers
PBS featured a more artist profiles than they normally do which is why they topped the list for last week. There were also quite a bit of recycled segments from past weeks probably due to a late summer news lull.
Coming up…
This week my focus will be on “Hannity” along with the first hour of “Fox & Friends” and “The Five.” I’m about half way finished with my special report on a revisit to the Hillary Clinton email scandal so that should drop sometime this week.
Nerd. Graphs. Nerd. 🤓
‘Wreak havoc.’