An admission is a beginning

 

He actually did say, "I'm sorry."

It's Sunday

 

Tucker Carlson would like to try to redeem himself

 

UPDATE 04:59 pm:  He failed to redeem himself...

It's Sunday

When you've lost Tucker Carlson...

 

It's Sunday

 

Ted Cruz, another ignorant Christian.

Tucker has been kicking Ted's ass in this interview.  I don't know what he personally has against Ted, and I'm too lazy to find out.  I dislike them both greatly.

Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) continues to post maniacally about Tucker Carlson since he was destroyed in his debate with him about the situation in Iran and Israel: “Tucker Carlson is obsessed with defending Russia and the KGB thug that runs it.”

Good thing Trump doesn’t do that.

  Meidas Touch

Breaking news:

 

Did people think we weren't already involved?

UPDATE 11:32 am:

You will, though.

A new battle between Trump and Tucker Carlson over Israel’s war with Iran is severely undermining that understanding of MAGA. Carlson and MAGA podcaster Steve Bannon, among others, have been urging Trump not to deploy the U.S. military in tandem with Israel. Trump appears close to doing so, and people like Carlson and Bannon are loudly proclaiming that this would betray the MAGA movement—which in turn is angering Trump.

“Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!” Trump raged on Truth Social late Monday. Trump also vented about this to reporters, declaring: “I don’t know what Tucker Carlson is saying.”

What’s triggering Trump is Carlson’s surprisingly direct criticism of him over Israel’s hostilities with Iran. Carlson claimed Trump is “complicit” in this war, apparently due to Trump’s expressions of support for Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and top military leadership. Trump is now weighing whether to deploy American B-2 bombers to help destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo, which would entangle the United States in exactly the sort of Mideast conflict he vowed to avoid.

[...]

Carlson has denounced top Fox News figures like Sean Hannity for actively encouraging Trump to pursue “direct U.S. military involvement” abroad, slamming them as “warmongers.” In an online discussion, Carlson and Bannon argued that this threatens to drive away supporters who want to “stop the forever wars,” describing them as crucial to the MAGA coalition. And MAGA stalwarts like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene have sounded rattled as they urge Trump not to sell out MAGA here.

  New Republic

What will put the most money in Trump's pocket? That's what he will eventually do.

Republican Representative Thomas Massie on Tuesday introduced a House resolution barring Trump from entering into war with Iran without Congress’s explicit authorization. Co-sponsored by Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, this “privileged” measure will get a vote if House Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t procedurally thwart it.

Which he will.

“It’s a test of whether the MAGA movement is really antiwar,” Khanna told me.

They are not.

Trump helped pave the way to this moment by withdrawing from America’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran; our intelligence services have not assessed that Iran has decided to produce nuclear weapons; and rushing into war now would be illegal and further destabilize the Mideast.

Then, my guess is that's what he'll do. Maybe he'll play coy for a while to see how much he can manipulate the stock market.

Trump grasps that “America First,” or MAGA, is simply whatever he says it is at any given time. And here it may mean enthusiastically backing war with Iran. Will MAGA robotically go along? We’ll soon find out.

Oh, they will. They will.

 

MAGA Empire

 

Answer: Yes.

Interesting choice

I wonder why the most evil of governors - Texas' Gregg Abbott - hasn't been tapped for something.  The only thing I can think of is that he's wheelchair bound, and Trump doesn't like that look.

And I don't think he'll put a woman at the head of Defense.  That's not a "straight out of casting" look either.

And Tucker Carlson really would like a position.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 12/05/2024:  More reason it won't be Joni:

The punisher

This could be the root of the MAGA problem.  Also explains religion. 

Grow up, FFS, and be a responsible adult.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Tucker in more trouble

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Poster girl for being careful what you wish for

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has changed her position on the public release of the tapes documenting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, warning Friday that their release could “put the security of the Capitol at risk.”

  The Hill

I guess she actually watched.

“And this is our real concern with the video tapes. If we released these video tapes just widely for the public — number one, we put the security of the Capitol at risk, because there’s over 1,700 video cameras,” she said.

“Number two, we also endanger many Americans that were simply standing on the Capitol grounds, maybe never even walked through the Capitol or committed any crimes, but they could have just walked further than where the barrier was simply because the barrier was torn down by the time they got there,” Greene continued.

Number three, it's worse than you thought.

She said she is concerned about left-wing groups that would use facial-recognition technology to identify those seen in the videos to “hand them over” to the FBI and Justice Department.

The Justice Department doesn't have access to facial-recognition technology?

“Sedition Hunters would spend every second of every day analyzing the videos in order to hunt innocent people that just stood on Capitol grounds on J6,” Greene later tweeted.

“Sedition Hunters" - is that an organization?

Greene has previously called for the public release of the tapes so “everyone knows what did or didn’t happen.”

And now that she's seen the footage, she doesn't want "everyone" to know.

McCarthy released 44,000 hours of footage to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson earlier this year, yielding criticism from Democrats who argued that it could put Capitol security procedures at risk and allow Carlson, who has downplayed the violence from the attack, to distort what happened.

[...]

She announced Wednesday that that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) planned to release the tapes to three outlets that would receive “unfettered access.” She said two of the recipients of the tapes would be Just the News founder John Solomon, who interviewed Greene on Friday, and American Greatness senior writer Julie Kelly.

Still not releasing the tapes to real media.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

And here's a match made in hell

Tucker Carlson and Twitter.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Teasing out Tucker's firing

A text message sent by Tucker Carlson that set off a panic at the highest levels of Fox on the eve of its billion-dollar defamation trial showed its most popular host sharing his private, inflammatory views about violence and race.

The discovery of the message contributed to a chain of events that ultimately led to Mr. Carlson’s firing.

[...]

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?

[...]

The text alarmed the Fox board, which saw the message a day before Fox was set to defend itself against Dominion Voting Systems before a jury.

[...]

The day after the discovery, the board told Fox executives it was bringing in an outside law firm to conduct an investigation into Mr. Carlson’s conduct.

  NYT

"How white men fight" - honorably, evidently, in Tucker's mind. 

Anyway, I don't buy that this particular message weighed more than others in his firing. After all, at least in this one, Tucker seems to be coming to a reasoned conclusion about his unbidden feelings of hatred.  And, it's not like they didn't know what he said openly on his show.

A recurring theme of his show during the six years that it ran in prime time on Fox News was the displacement of white Americans by people of color. Mr. Carlson often framed topics in the news as part of a larger struggle between “us” and “them,” with immigrants and other marginalized groups steadily and surely taking from whites what had long been theirs: political and cultural power in the United States.

He attacked Black social justice activists and portrayed immigrants from Central America as a blight on the nation. He said in 2018 that immigrants make the country “dirtier.”

In the aftermath of a mass shooting in El Paso at the hands of a gunman who cited white supremacist beliefs in his manifesto, Mr. Carlson declared on his show that white supremacy was “not a real problem,” likening it to a conspiracy theory.

[...]

In other messages he had referred to women — including a senior Fox executive — in crude and misogynistic terms. The message about the fight also played a role in the company’s decision to settle with Dominion for $787.5 million, the highest known payout in a defamation case.

No doubt. It added to the pile of shit that was about to come out in trial. And Tucker would have had to go on the stand. And lie, I suspect.

The text message added to a growing number of internal issues involving Mr. Carlson that led the company’s leadership to conclude he was more of a problem than an asset and had to go, according to several people with knowledge of the decision.

I suspect they had been weighing the balance for a while.

The contents of the text were disclosed in interviews with several people close to the defamation lawsuit against Fox. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a message that is protected by a court order. In public filings, it remains hidden behind a block of black text.

[...]

Many of the messages shared in the case, including those among Fox executives and hosts, were released publicly. But others, like the one between Mr. Carlson and one of his producers in the hours after Jan. 6, 2021, remain redacted.

The worst will eventually leak, I expect.

The text message came to the attention of Fox’s board of directors and even some senior executives only last month, on the Sunday before the trial was set to begin.

[...]

The next day, the board told Fox’s leadership about its plan to have the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz investigate Mr. Carlson.

And I expect that is what caused Fox executives to settle the case abruptly.

Fox’s lawyers had produced the text as part of the discovery process and were involved in the redactions. Mr. Carlson had even been asked about it during a deposition, according to several people who have read the unredacted transcripts of his deposition.

It was not guaranteed that the text would have been revealed in open court. Dominion’s lawyers had still not decided whether they would introduce the text in front of the jury. [...] The two sides disagreed on whether the Dominion lawyers could have presented such a redacted message at trial if they had decided to do so, a decision that would have ultimately fallen to the judge.

As I was saying, it wasn't the straw the broke the camel's back. They knew about it for some time.

How Fox’s executives and board handled the case in the months before the trial was scheduled to begin is expected to be at issue in shareholder lawsuits filed against the company in Delaware.

I guess Fox will want to settle that one for sure. 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Free from Tucker

I’ve been called out by Sean Hannity and quoted out of context in the pages of Brietbart; I’ve been mocked by the Federalist Society and watched Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz disparage my book during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. But in terms of pure disruption to my life, nothing compared to having my image shown on Carlson’s nightly white supremacist hoedown.

[...]

Being on Tucker’s radar was completely different from getting criticized by hosts of other shows or by other newsmakers. I’ve been in extended flame wars with Glenn Greenwald and Megyn Kelly, and my punishment has been having to read a few Greenwald or Kelly tweets. On a bad day, any of these Fox and Fools can make you update your passwords; Carlson’s show made you update your home security system.

And I’m not the only one who noticed this difference between Carlson and his competition. Rachel Vindman (writer, podcaster, and wife of Trump impeachment witness Alexander Vindman) tweeted: “The hate and death threats that come from being on Tucker’s show are worse than when the former president mentions you.” She would know. If you haven’t been caught in a Tucker tornado, you’ll have to trust us that it is… unpleasant.

[...]

Tucker himself is an intellectual lightweight, “a dumb person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like,” according to political scientist, Dr. Jason Johnson.

[...]

Bill O’Reilly was smarter (in a racist uncle’s armchair-version-of-history sort of way). Rush Limbaugh was more entertaining (for people who thought Archie Bunker was funny but didn’t get that he was the joke). But Carlson’s show somehow managed to make the most aggrieved white people in society feel seen, and empowered. [...] His only true skill is in the construction of plausible deniability.

[...]

For now, though, my life is better. My life is safer. The next host will surely try to keep Tucker’s deplorable audience engaged and enraged. But while many hosts can ride the wave of white grievance that keeps Fox afloat, few can amplify and justify those grievances the way Carlson could. Carlson is replaceable, but I hope that his show cannot be easily recreated.

  Elie Mystal @ The Nation

I hope not, too.  A lot of people's lives are safer without Tucker on Fox.

Tucker's dilemma

FOX NEWS EXECUTIVES have in their possession a dossier of alleged dirt on Tucker Carlson should he attack the network in the wake of his departure.

[...]

Fox News and its communications department — long led by the notoriously aggressive Irena Briganti — has assembled damaging information about Carlson. One source with knowledge calls it an “oppo file.”

[...]

The file includes internal complaints regarding workplace conduct, disparaging comments about management and colleagues, and allegations that the now-former prime-time host created a toxic work environment, three of the sources say.

  Rolling Stone

Fine, but I don't think anybody would care. Who doesn't know already that Carlson is an SOB? And we're learning more and more about him from Abby Grossberg's lawsuit against him.

A network spokesperson denied the existence of the file on Carlson. “This is patently absurd and categorically false,” the spokesperson said in a statement to Rolling Stone. “We thank Tucker for his service to the network as a host, and prior to that, as a contributor.”

I don't know if I buy that, either. But I don't think there's any real danger to Tucker from Fox at this point.

Over the years, Briganti and Fox PR’s tactics have been turned against its own most prominent talent. For instance, The Daily Beast reported in 2018 that “emails reviewed and verified” by the outlet “show that Fox’s communications brass have planted negative stories about some of their own top stars, including hosts like Bill O’Reilly and Stuart Varney — the latter of whom is still a Fox employee.”

Those methods for keeping personnel in line are an open secret among current and former Fox News staff. Four former Fox News personalities confirmed Briganti likes to keep “dirt files” on Fox News talent, including one on Carlson.

“[Briganti] keeps files on everybody to screw with them,” a departed Fox News host adds. “It’s classic Fox.”

[...]

On Monday, it was revealed that Carlson had hired Bryan Freedman, a high-powered entertainment lawyer, to represent him following his Fox exit.

[...]

“Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience?” Carlson wrote shortly after Fox News projected Joe Biden had beaten Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Regarding Fox News executives, Carlson also privately sniped: “A combination of incompetent liberals and top leadership with too much pride to back down is what’s happening.”

Harshly trashing leadership is considered to be a major transgression at Fox News and Fox Business, where those who step out of line may find themselves on the receiving end of an unfavorable story.

There may indeed be worse things, but those remarks are really rather mild.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Oh my

Well, I know he has tons of money and doesn't need a job, but Tucker may wish he still had an income when Abby Grossberg and Dominion get through with him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Non-renewal

On Monday morning, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott called Carlson and informed him he was being taken off the air, and his Fox News email account was shut off.

  Vanity Fair

And people thought it was Suzanne Scott who would be thrown under the bus.

Carlson was in the midst of negotiating the renewal of his Fox News contract through 2029. [...] As of last week, Carlson had told people he expected the contract to be renewed.

Carlson has told people he doesn’t know why he was terminated. According to the source, Scott refused to tell him how the decision was made; she only said that it was made “from above.” Carlson has told people he believes his controversial show is being taken off the air because the Murdoch children intend to sell Fox News at some point.

And they couldn't sell it with him still lying?

Details are emerging about Carlson’s exit. The Los Angeles Times reported that “Carlson’s exit is related to the discrimination lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg,” a producer fired last month, and that the decision to fire Carlson came from Fox Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch. And The Washington Post reported that Carlson’s comments about management, revealed in the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems—which Fox settled last week for $787.5 million—“played a role in his departure.”

As we’re already seeing, Carlson’s virtual defenestration has kicked off a massive backlash on the right. That is no surprise. What that tells you is that this isn’t the kind of decision Fox would make in some kind of weighing the pros and cons performance review. There would need to be some big, fat near-existential reason behind it. Perhaps there was something super damning in pre-trial discovery or some sliver bullet revelation to come in Grossberg’s suit. But at least in their current ‘contributing’ form, none of these explanations come close.

Again, this is simply not going to be a decision that has a lot of contributing factors. There is going to be one thing that made it necessary and inevitable. We just haven’t heard it yet.

  Talking Points Memo

Whatever the reason, it must have been serious, because they must have known the stock would drop.

Maybe not that much, though!

UPDATE 07:30 pm:

UPDATE 04/25/2023 11:08 am:  Until they replace him with somebody worse (if such a thing is possible), this is a very big deal...

Good news for the country!

One down.

He thought he was too big to fire.  And they didn't even give him another show to say farewell.  You're out.  We'll send your things to you.  Maybe something like that.

I'll be awaiting the announcement of a bid for the presidency.

And, hopefullly, whoever is left after the dust settles will clean up their act to avoid Tucker's fate.  Dan Bongino recently failed to get his contract renewed.

My guess is Fox is setting up a better position to settle the Smartmatic lawsuit.

UPDATE 12:18 pm:

I'm sure they can sell their schtick to somebody.  Or produce their own show.

UPDATE 12:33 pm:

UPDATE 04:25 pm:

Ouch!  Whatever reason Murdoch had for firing Carlson must have been very serious.

Jesus Tapdancing Christ, Marj

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Thursday took to Twitter to defend Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, who was arrested Thursday over his alleged role in leaking Pentagon files.

“Jake Teixeira is white, male, christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime,” Greene said on Twitter.

“Ask yourself who is the real enemy? A young low level national guardsmen? Or the administration that is waging war in Ukraine, a non-NATO nation, against nuclear Russia without war powers?” the congresswoman added.

  The Hill

You know, without a doubt, if the leaker had an Arab name, or had been black, she would be screaming for his head.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE :

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) slammed Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) over her comments defending Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira.

[...]

“I’m sorry, Marge, being white, male, and Christian is not license to betray your country and put the lives of thousands at risk,” he added. “But this wouldn’t be the first time she sided with traitors.”

  The Hill

UPDATE 12:19 pm: He's a whistleblower! Never mind he only posted on his gaming group site to impress his buddies. I didn't know that's where you're supposed to go to blow the whistle on shady government activity.

And Kyle Rittenhouse was a hero.

UPDATE 04/15/2023:

Members of the Discord group described Teixeira as someone looking to show off rather than being motivated by a desire to inform the public about US military operations or to influence US policy.

The Discord member said he did not believe Teixeira leaked documents to undermine the US government or for an ideological reason.

“If I had to give a gauge on it, it would be more or less just some nerds wanting to glance over some stuff and compare and contrast and kind of have a little joke about it,” he said.

“At the end of the day, I mean we’re just trying to have a fun time.”

  alJazeera

He'll be having lots of fun now. I hear military jail is especially fun.

UPDATE 04/30/2023:  We're learning some interesting things about this guy.  Not to mention the lax background investigations for security clearances.

Bonkers

Right here, for this moment, we are all Tucker Carlson.

The face on Carlson.  Hilarious.  I'm guessing everybody watching had the same face.  Do you suppose he was thinking: I'm looking at the madman right here.

Tucker could have asked wtf is nuclear warming.  But I guess he's currently having to kiss the king's ass after those leaked emails saying just how much he actually hates Trump.