Spinozasgalt wrote:

hackenslash wrote:Maybe there's some history I'm unaware of [...]

arugula2 doesn't like me calling out defences of people like Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald, the Assadists at the Grayzone, and that whole "actually, we should work with the fascists because they're the true working class" brigade that call themselves leftists online. Doesn't like me being concise either, because there's less run up for the Gish gallop.

But you know how I like to post. Short but devastating.

Greg the Grouper wrote: He's capable of speaking without sounding entirely like a gibbering baboon,

Spinozasgalt wrote:

hackenslash wrote:Maybe there's some history I'm unaware of [...]

arugula2 doesn't like me calling out defences of people like Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald, the Assadists at the Grayzone, and that whole "actually, we should work with the fascists because they're the true working class" brigade that call themselves leftists online. Doesn't like me being concise either, because there's less run up for the Gish gallop.

But you know how I like to post. Short but devastating.

Tucker Carlson Admits: ‘I Lie if I’m Really Cornered or Something’

Fox News host Tucker Carlson confessed over the weekend that he will “lie” whenever he’s “really cornered or something.”

During a Sunday appearance on right-wing provocateur Dave Rubin’s podcast, Carlson took aim at his rivals on CNN over what he claimed was their habit of telling falsehoods on the air. (The segment was first flagged by Media Matters, a liberal watchdog and Carlson nemesis.)

“How do you think they live with themselves at this point when they just lie again and again and we have the internet to expose the lies?” Rubin asked, adding: “We can expose it now and they still do it.”

The far-right primetime star insisted that unlike other cable news personalities, who “systematically lie,” he claimed, Carlson tries to refrain from lying himself—but will do it if he feels trapped.

Tucker Carlson: "I lie if I'm really cornered or something. I lie." https://t.co/OAZuv4JLfS https://twitter.com/JasonSCampbell/status/1437426318040260612

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) September 13, 2021

“Well, it’s—I guess I would ask myself, like, I mean I lie if I’m really cornered or something,” Carlson said. “I lie. I really try not to. I try never to lie on TV. I just don’t—I don’t like lying. I certainly do it, you know, out of weakness or whatever.”

While Carlson presented his lying as a human “weakness” he works to combat, his network’s own lawyers have successfully argued in court that no “reasonable viewer” should actually believe the words coming out of his mouth on-air.

Just over the past year, of course, Carlson has peddled such obvious falsehoods as claiming the COVID-19 vaccines don’t work, the Green New Deal was responsible for Texas’ winter storm power-grid failure, immigrants are making the Potomac River “dirtier and dirtier,” and that there’s no evidence that white supremacists played a role in the violent Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

During the same Rubin segment, Carlson argued that mainstream media outlets “protect and guard the powerful” while using their influence to put its “boot on the neck of the weakest people.” The Fox host insisted that while he may have done it in the past, he no longer uses his top-rated show to target less powerful figures.

“I have done that, inadvertently over the years because I got carried away. But I really try not to. And everyone who works on our show is very aware of the most basic rule, which is don’t piss down.” he said. “Don’t attack people beneath you. If you’re gonna you know, take a punch, make sure it's upward—someone who is rich or stronger, more powerful, in charge of more things than you are. Punch up, like, that’s just a life rule. And people who punch down are the worst. They should have no power whatsoever, in my opinion.”

Besides repeatedly demonizing asylum-seeking refugees, poor immigrants, and the homeless, Carlson routinely punches down at people with far less power and influence than him or his show: school teachers, Capitol police officers, and lesser-known media figures, among others.

Tucker Carlson wrote:
Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity? Does he eat dogs? These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is 'no'. Vladimir Putin didn't do any of that.