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Tucker Carlson States His Boundaries, Gets Dragged By MAGAts

Does this mean all the DLers who fantasize about him can stop feeling guilty?

[italic] For more than a week, a plain-spoken former federal prosecutor named Sidney Powell made the rounds on right-wing talk radio and cable news, facing little pushback as she laid out a conspiracy theory that Venezuela, Cuba and other “communist” interests had used a secret algorithm to hack into voting machines and steal millions of votes from President Trump.

She spoke mostly uninterrupted for nearly 20 minutes on Monday on the “Rush Limbaugh Show,” the No. 1 program on talk radio. Hosts like Mark Levin, who has the fourth-largest talk radio audience, and Lou Dobbs of Fox Business praised her patriotism and courage.

So it came as most unwelcome news to the president’s defenders when Tucker Carlson, host of an 8 p.m. Fox News show and a confidant of Mr. Trump, dissected Ms. Powell’s claims as unreliable and unproven.

“What Powell was describing would amount to the single greatest crime in American history,” Mr. Carlson said on Thursday night, his voice ringing with incredulity in a 10-minute monologue at the top of his show. “Millions of votes stolen in a day. Democracy destroyed. The end of our centuries-old system of government.” But, he said, when he invited Ms. Powell on his show to share her evidence, she became “angry and told us to stop contacting her.” The response was immediate, and hostile. The president’s allies in conservative media and their legions of devoted Trump fans quickly closed ranks behind Ms. Powell and her case on behalf of the president, accusing the Fox host of betrayal.

“How quickly we turn on our own,” said Bo Snerdley, Mr. Limbaugh’s producer, in a Twitter post that was indicative of the backlash against Mr. Carlson. “Where is the ‘evidence’ the election was fair?”

The backlash against Mr. Carlson and Fox for daring to exert even a moment of independence underscores how little willingness exists among Republicans to challenge the president and his false narrative about the election he insists was stolen. Among conservative media voices and outlets, there’s generally not just a lack of willingness — they have proved this month to be Mr. Trump’s most reflexive defenders.

For months before the election, as Mr. Trump spread disinformation about the reliability of mail-in ballots, Republicans largely avoided contradicting him and insisted that his concerns about fraud were not entirely unreasonable. And in the weeks since election night, when Mr. Trump falsely declared himself the winner and then refused to accept President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, the acknowledgments that the race is settled have come mostly from former officials like President George W. Bush, or from a few current office holders, like Senator Mitt Romney, who have not been afraid to air their differences with Mr. Trump.

The same fear that grips elected Republicans — getting on the wrong side of voters who adore Mr. Trump but have little affection for the Republican Party — has kept conservative media largely in line. And that has created a right-wing media bubble that has grown increasingly disconnected from the most basic facts about American government in recent weeks, including who will be inaugurated as president on Jan. 20, 2021. In the hours after Mr. Carlson’s monologue, word of which spread quickly across social media, Mr. Trump’s supporters not only went after Mr. Carlson but also Fox News. The network has become a source of particular frustration with many on the right after taking a more skeptical view of Mr. Trump’s claims about voter fraud and refusing to reconsider its call on election night that Mr. Biden would win Arizona.

[cont'd at R1]

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 17November 21, 2020 5:31 AM

[italic] That decision, which proved correct, deeply angered the president and led him to start promoting some of Fox’s smaller competitors on cable like Newsmax and One America News Network as more suitable alternatives for his large and loyal following.

Roosh Valizadeh, a writer and podcast host who supports the president, summed up the anger aimed at Fox by many on the right, saying, “As long as Tucker Carlson works for Fox News, he can’t be fully trusted.”

All week on networks like Newsmax and OANN and talk radio programs, the president’s supporters have been given a steady diet of interviews with Trump allies, campaign officials and news stories that promote allegations of fraud with little or no context.

One lawyer who is assisting the Trump campaign in its efforts, Lin Wood, went unquestioned this week on Mr. Levin’s show when he made the fantastical claim that Mr. Trump had won the election with 70 percent of the vote. A story that OANN broadcast on Friday afternoon falsely declared, “The state of Michigan is back in play,” giving credence to Mr. Trump’s extraordinary but almost certainly unsuccessful efforts to delay certification of the vote in Detroit.

Republican officials have remained mostly measured and muted in their response, even after the conspiratorial and unsubstantiated claims floated by Ms. Powell, Rudolph W. Giuliani and other members of Mr. Trump’s legal team at a news conference on Thursday. Republicans like Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who said that Ms. Powell’s accusations were “absolutely outrageous,” were the exception.

by Anonymousreply 1November 21, 2020 2:29 AM

[italic] Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review and sometimes critic of the president who called his refusal to concede “absurd and sophomoric,” said that whether it was a Republican politician or a talk-show host, breaking the will that many Trump supporters have to believe he is the rightful winner was extremely difficult. “They want it to be true,” Mr. Lowry said. “On top of that, there’s an enormous credibility gap and radical distrust of other sources of information. And that’s compounded by the fact that the president has no standards and is surrounded by these clownish people who will say anything. It’s a toxic stew.”

Mr. Lowry added that he thought Mr. Carlson’s words were “admirable” and had told the Fox host so himself. “It’s one thing for people who’ve been opposed to Trump all along, or mixed, to say something like that,” Mr. Lowry said. “It’s another thing for a leader of the populist wing of the conservative movement to call it out.”

A question for conservative media that are more independent of Mr. Trump is how much of the market the unabashedly pro-Trump media dominates in the future. Some scholars said they expected that audience to be substantial.

“Drudge and Fox can try to pull back from the abyss,” said Yochai Benkler, a professor at Harvard Law School who studies conservative media. “But the audience is going to get what it wants and reward those who give it to them.”

Mr. Carlson is no ordinary Trump critic. He has been one of the president’s most aggressive defenders in prime time, especially when it came to standing up for Mr. Trump as he attacked African-American politicians, athletes and the racial justice activists in the Black Lives Matter movement. He has also generally bought into the disproved notion that voter fraud is a widespread problem — a popular position with Mr. Trump and on Mr. Carlson’s network.

He has not been shy in criticizing aspects of the president’s policies he disagrees with, whether the bombing raid in Iraq that killed Iran’s top general, Qassim Suleimani, or Mr. Trump’s failure to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously when it started spreading last winter. But he has never gone out on a limb like this, with the president and his followers so besieged.

Mr. Carlson, no doubt aware that many in his audience, including possibly the president himself, would not like what they were hearing, walked a fine line on Thursday night. He insisted that he and his producers “took Sidney Powell seriously,” and that he had invited her on the show to present her evidence. He also tried to reassure his audience that he was on their side after all, explaining how he always kept an open mind about alleged cover-ups like the one Ms. Powell has promoted. “We don’t dismiss anything,” he said. “We literally do U.F.O. segments.”

by Anonymousreply 2November 21, 2020 2:29 AM

It's so funny that they have a problem with voting machines.

Democrats were against them, but george w bush and the repugs said, too bad. The dems said the machines could get hacked. The repugs said, too bad

Most of these machines were the idea of republicans and they were mostly bought by republicans. Georgia's only had republican governors since 2001 or around that time

by Anonymousreply 3November 21, 2020 2:35 AM

Sidney Powell is clearly out of her fucking mind as is anyone who takes her seriously.

The bar for Republicans is set so low it's underground.

by Anonymousreply 4November 21, 2020 2:35 AM

Seriously R4

I mean when even Tucker Carlson is like "this some batshit crazy talk lady" you know you've crossed a line.

It's at the level of those people who believe that Hollywood Jews, the British Royal Family, the Vatican and the Kremlin are all somehow secretly running the world with the help of Freemasons. And that Hillary isn't human, she's a lizard person alien.

by Anonymousreply 5November 21, 2020 2:39 AM

It’s something to see when Fox is not crazy enough for Trump’s even crazier cult members.

by Anonymousreply 6November 21, 2020 2:46 AM

[quote] How quickly we turn on our own,” said Bo Snerdley, Mr. Limbaugh’s producer

Snerdley and Limbaugh both sound like names of terrible diseases or syndromes.

by Anonymousreply 7November 21, 2020 2:47 AM

We don’t have to prove Biden won - “we” already have. The burden of proof is on those who cry fraud. Ugh! Idiots.

by Anonymousreply 8November 21, 2020 2:48 AM

Tucker is a Murdoch darling. He’s not about to go against that family. They sign his $25 million a year check. He’ll ditch Trump in a second for Rupert and Lachlan

by Anonymousreply 9November 21, 2020 2:50 AM

I want to get spanked and fucked by Tucker.

by Anonymousreply 10November 21, 2020 2:50 AM

[quote] It's at the level of those people who believe that Hollywood Jews, the British Royal Family, the Vatican and the Kremlin are all somehow secretly running the world with the help of Freemasons. And that Hillary isn't human, she's a lizard person alien.

No, not the Kremlin. They live the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin is christian & makes a big show over religion. He built a cathedral. Deplorables don’t kniw anything about Russian orthodoxy, they just hear “Christian” and they’re fine with it. Putin hates homosexuality, allows physical as well as psychological gay bashing. Racist soccer hooligans are allowed to taunt players of color from the stands. There is a very tight lid on immigration. Deplorables love that shit.

by Anonymousreply 11November 21, 2020 2:52 AM

Bo Snerdley? Allow me to be childish. 🤣

by Anonymousreply 12November 21, 2020 3:01 AM

So much for all the predictions that Tucker would get the ‘24 nomination.

by Anonymousreply 13November 21, 2020 3:07 AM

[quote]The bar for Republicans is set so low it's underground.

It's set so low that underground itself is actually higher than that bar.

by Anonymousreply 14November 21, 2020 3:18 AM

I always thought Tucker was cute!

by Anonymousreply 15November 21, 2020 5:16 AM

It shows what a sell-out whore Tucker really is. His boss told him to be anti-Trump now and he puts on make-up and spreads wide for Murdoch.

by Anonymousreply 16November 21, 2020 5:25 AM

[quote]Bo Snerdley

Wasn’t that one of my dad’s puppet concubines?

by Anonymousreply 17November 21, 2020 5:31 AM
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