Congressman from Tennessee ‘called for a military coup against the presidency’
Tucker Carlson: The Cold War Is Over. The World Has Changed. Time To Rethink America’s Alliances.
By Ian Schwartz
RealClearPolitics.com
On Tuesday’s broadcast of his FOX News show, Tucker Carlson delivered a monologue on Trump’s critics hate the idea of rethinking or correcting any of the countless blunders they’ve made over the years. On the big questions, Trump is indisputably right: The Cold War is over. The world has changed. It is time to rethink America’s alliances, and act in our own interests for once, Carlson said.
“The people yelling the loudest about how the Russians are our greatest enemy and Trump is their puppet happen to be the very same people who have been mismanaging our foreign policy for the past two decades, the people who invaded Iraq and wouldn’t admit it was a mistake, the people who killed Muammar Gaddafi for no obvious reason and prolonged the horrible Syrian civil war and then threw open the borders of Europe, the ones still defending the pointless Afghan conflict and even now planning brand-new disasters around the world in Lebanon, Iran and, yes, in Russia,” Carlson explained.
“These are people who’ve made America weaker and poor and sadder, the group whose failures got Trump elected in the first place,” he said. “You’d think by this late date they would be discredited completely and unemployable, wearing uniforms and picking up trash by the side of the turnpike somewhere, but, no, they’re not.”
His full commentary:
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: With remarkable speed and intensity, the media, the foreign policy establishment, both political parties have come together as one to attack the president for his meeting yesterday with the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Anderson Cooper, John McCain, Mitt Romney, they all described the president’s remarks about Russia as disgraceful. Former CIA Director John Brennan called those remarks treasonous and grounds for impeachment.
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer announced that Trump was being blackmailed by a foreign power. Others accused him of being a sleeper agent, a spy.
One member of Congress from Tennessee called for a military coup against the presidency.
Well, as the rage storm swirled, the president bowed to the inevitable, genuflecting before US intelligence agencies whose judgment must never be questioned and recited the now-obligatory oath of loyalty to the spy bureaucrats now in charge of our country.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: In a key sentence in my remarks, I said the word “would” instead of “wouldn’t”. The sentence should have been I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t or why it wouldn’t be Russia.
So, just to repeat it, I said the word “would” instead of “wouldn’t” and the sentence should have been – and I thought I would be maybe a little bit unclear on the transcript or unclear on the actual video, the sentence should have been I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia. Sort of a double negative.
So, you can put that in. And I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So, that’s the hostage tape. The president buckled to criticism.
No matter what they’re saying, that’s exactly what happened. He buckled.
And that happens. This is politics after all.
What is amazing and unusual and ominous is who made him buckle. The people yelling the loudest about how the Russians are our greatest enemy and Trump is their puppet happen to be the very same people who have been mismanaging our foreign policy for the past two decades, the people who invaded Iraq and wouldn’t admit it was a mistake, the people who killed Muammar Gaddafi for no obvious reason and prolonged the horrible Syrian civil war and then threw open the borders of Europe, the ones still defending the pointless Afghan conflict and even now planning brand-new disasters around the world in Lebanon, Iran and, yes, in Russia.
These are people who’ve made America weaker and poor and sadder, the group whose failures got Trump elected in the first place. You’d think by this late date they would be discredited completely and unemployable, wearing uniforms and picking up trash by the side of the turnpike somewhere, but, no, they’re not.
They are hosting cable news shows. They’re holding high positions of influence at the State Department. They run virtually every non-profit public policy institution in Washington. They are still, in some sense, in charge of our national conversation.
And naturally, they hate the idea of rethinking or correcting any of the countless blunders they’ve made over the years. And that’s one of the main reasons they hate Trump because he calls them on those blunders.
Now, being Trump, he can’t always explain precisely what he means to say.
Sometimes he gets the details wrong or he gets sidetracked with some personal vendetta as if anybody cares about that ridiculous Jim Acosta guy.
Nobody does.
But on the big questions, Trump is indisputably right. The Cold War is over. The world has changed. It is time to rethink America’s alliances and to act in our own interest for once.
Russia is not a close friend of the United States. But the question is why should we consider Russia a mortal enemy? Of course, Russia spies on us, so do a lot of countries. Some of them far more effectively than Russia.
The Russian attempt to meddle in our election was comically amateurish.
Badly targeted Facebook ads almost nobody saw. Compare that effort to the deep penetration of American industry and the defense sector by the communist government of China.
Or compare to the remarkable sway that the Sunni Gulf states have over our political process. Or the fact that Latin American countries are changing election outcomes here by forcing demographic change on this country at a rate that American voters consistently say they don’t want.
Those are all major challenges from foreign powers to our American democracy. They are real. And yet, somehow, nobody on cable news seems upset about any of it. Why is that?
Well, here is one reason. Many in Washington are getting rich from the Chinese and the Saudis. Latin Americans clean their homes and watch their kids. Those countries can’t be our enemies in their view.
But nobody here is getting rich from Russia. So, therefore, Putin must be a mortal foe. That’s what the neocons are telling us we’re required to believe. Does anyone actually believe it? Well, no sober person who’s read a newspaper this year could recite that talking point without laughing because it’s stupid.
So, the only option if you want to force the population to accept something ridiculous is to make sure they don’t think too much about it, that they are quiet, they do what they’re told.
And if you don’t believe it, watch what’s happening to Trump right now.
Obviously, it’s possible – entirely possible, maybe likely that the Russian government broke into the DNC servers before the last election. It certainly sounds like something they might do.
But before we act like we know for a fact that that’s what happened and go to war with Russia over that, shouldn’t we see some actual evidence that it happened? Why not? Like maybe a server or at least a clear explanation of what happened. We haven’t seen that. And that’s what Trump asked for.
How dare he? That’s a treasonous thought we were told. He’s a quisling.
A traitor to his country. That’s what they’re saying. And not just a few of them. All of them are saying that in unison.
Think for a second about what they are demanding. If you don’t automatically accept the imprecise, non-specific, never-fully-explained findings of shadowy intelligence agencies with long, documented track records of making serious mistakes, you’ve somehow betrayed your country.
The very people who assured you that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the ones who said the Shah would never fall in Iran, et cetera, et cetera, those people must be believed without question. Or else!
On television, this group is called the intelligence community. That’s an Orwellian name if there ever was one. Where exactly is this community we hear so much about? Does it have a zip code? A public library system? A youth football league?
How long before Congress starts demanding unthinking obedience to the lawmaker community. It’s a community after all. You must obey it.
Dissent is unpatriotic. And if you don’t agree, you’re working for Vladimir Putin.
That’s where we are heading, by the way. And fast.
In some ways, this whole story is about Donald Trump and what he said and what he does. But on a deeper level, it has nothing to do with Donald Trump. This is about democracy, whether or not voters rule their country.
It turns out the very people telling you they are saving our democracy are working overtime to destroy it and scolding you as they do.