Tucker Carlson Told the New York Times Trump Has Literal Magic Powers. Then He Denied Calling Trump the Antichrist, on Camera, Right Before They Played Him the Tape.
The big picture: Tucker Carlson sat down with the New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro this week and offered, on the record, two explanations for why the U.S. is at war with Iran: that Netanyahu is effectively blackmailing the president, and that Trump has actual supernatural spellcasting powers that make his staff “compliant and confused.” In the same interview, he denied calling Trump the antichrist on his show, then watched Garcia-Navarro roll the tape of him doing exactly that. None of this has resulted in a federal indictment. James Comey is currently under his second one for a photo of seashells.
Why it matters: Both halves of this story are about who is allowed to say what in this country, and the rules are getting harder to defend with a straight face. One of the largest media figures on the American right just told a major outlet the sitting president might be the biblical antichrist using literal sorcery. Meanwhile the DOJ is on its second attempt to indict a former FBI director over a beach photo.
The spell
Asked why people around Trump tend to fall in line, Tucker offered an explanation I would describe as not the standard analysis. He said Trump has a quality that’s “spellbinding,” that he thinks it “probably literally is a spell,” that the effect is to “weaken people around him and make them more compliant and more confused,” and that being around Trump for a day is “like smoking hash.” He then floated a “supernatural component.”
This is real. This was on the record. Tucker has a massive audience and has been a defining voice in conservative media for almost a decade. And his stated explanation, in a major outlet, for why we’re at war is that the president is using actual sorcery on his staff.
The antichrist take-back
Tucker has been speculating on his own show about whether Trump is the antichrist. Garcia-Navarro asked about it. Tucker denied it. She read his words back. He still denied it, claiming “those words never left my lips.” Then she played the tape of him saying, on his own show, “could this be the antichrist? Well, who knows!”
That’s the whole sequence. He said the words never left his lips while a recording of them leaving his lips played in the background. Tucker has spent a decade telling his audience the mainstream press uses selective edits to misrepresent people. He sat down with one of those outlets and got contradicted by his own footage in real time.
The Netanyahu frame
A chunk of Trump’s base voted for him on the explicit promise of no new foreign wars. The Iran war broke that promise, and parts of the right have been spinning to explain it. Tucker planted his flag in the Netanyahu-is-blackmailing-the-president camp, describing a pre-war conversation in which Trump told him “it’s gonna be alright” because “it always is.” He said most of the pressure for war came from outside the White House and that everyone inside was too “cowardly” to resist.
Tucker vs. the seashells
Now stack the antichrist comments against what’s happening to Jim Comey, who is currently under his SECOND indictment for an Instagram photo of seashells arranged to read “8647.”
Jake Tapper played the Tucker antichrist clip for U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and asked the obvious question. Pirro’s answer: Tucker isn’t relevant to her, she’s a prosecutor, her job is “not to talk about talking heads.” NBC asked Acting AG Todd Blanche a similar question, noting “8647” appears on dozens of items currently for sale on Amazon, and only one person is under indictment over it. Blanche’s answer was that “facts” and “circumstances” and “investigations” shape which statements get prosecuted. BUT the critics’ read is the obvious one. Comey is Trump’s political enemy. Tucker, whatever his views on Trump’s command of the dark arts, is basically on the team.
The bipartisan moment
In fairness, Tucker did say one thing in this interview I think has full bipartisan support. Asked about Senator Ted Cruz, Tucker said there’s something so repulsive about him that if you walked into a men’s room and Cruz was already in there, you’d simply hold it and leave. I am not in a position to dispute that.
By the numbers
2 - federal indictments of James Comey over a seashell photo
0 - federal indictments of Tucker Carlson for suggesting the president might be the antichrist
Dozens - of “8647” items currently for sale on Amazon
1 - person currently indicted over the phrase
The bottom line
A major media figure just told the New York Times the U.S. went to war because the president uses supernatural powers on his staff, and got caught on camera lying about his own on-air statements. Nothing happens to him. A former FBI director posted seashells, apologized, took it down, and is on his second indictment. The rules of speech in this country are not being applied evenly, and the people running the DOJ are not even pretending very hard that they are.
Thanks for reading! Comment your thoughts & reactions | Share to spread the word | Follow to stay in the loop