THE TUCKER CARLSON STORY MAY NOW BE OVER - 4.28.23

EPISODE 189: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: No, I also don't have any idea WHAT Mike Pence told Jack Smith's Grand Jury yesterday but boy do I hope he incriminated everybody. On the other hand, I have a pretty good idea that barring the unforeseen, the terms of Tucker Carlson's contract with Fox will be such that the vague, poorly-lit, dog-whistle-filled twitter video from Wednesday night may be the last we see of him for awhile, and it may mark the beginning of his firing slipping out of our (often thankfully) breakneck news cycle. As a warning: the remainder of this episode is the reprise of five separate Carlson commentaries from the last five months, tracing his ascent to madness and his fall from employment. If you don't want to hear stuff you've already heard, you can cut out at about the nine minute mark and I won't take it personally :-) (9:20) November 22: When Tucker Carlson tried to get Trans people and drag performers and allies shot (20:51) February 21: The McCarthy-January 6th video deal is made and it is time to de-platform Tucker Carlson - and de-platform Fox "News."

B-Block (39:42) March 13: The Carlson gaslighting of the January 6th Capitol video was so clearly an attempt to foment obstruction of justice and rebellion that Carlson could've been indicted and arrested (58:12) But on March 14 it became clear - as Carlson re-ran several clips for the third time and obviously had nothing of interest to show anybody - that he not only wouldn't be arrested, but with THAT video, as they say, he COULDN'T get arrested.

C-Block (1:13:10) April 24: SCHADENFREUDE. The firing of Carlson as it happened, including me singing "Ode To Joy" with the original German lyrics.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. No.
I have no idea what Pence told the grand jury either.

(00:25):
I hope he incriminated everybody, including mother. He did testify
for five hours. He had to have said something. Meanwhile,
I come not to praise Tucker Carlson but to bury him.
To start, let me point out that Rupert Murdoch is
currently paying this guy at least forty million dollars to
not be on his television network, and unless Murdoch and

(00:48):
Fox agree to some kind of buyout, Carlson cannot do
any form of political commentary from which he derives income, and,
depending on the exact wording of the language of his contract,
he also cannot make any appearances in any medium considered
competition to Fox with out Fox's consent, which obviously they
will not give. This explains a the Twitter video Wednesday

(01:12):
night and b the lack of a Twitter video Thursday Night,
Good Evening.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
It's Tucker Carlson. One of the first things you realize
when you step outside the noise.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, is how many Jim and people I'm unemployed On Wednesday,
lots of vague, veiled references to telling the truth and
repeated sour grapes about television and his own show, and
a couple of dog whistles to the Q and on
and four chan eight chan crab like demographic change, and
nothing else. Every platitude imaginable cram into two minutes and

(01:45):
fifteen seconds except employees must wash hands. The barking seals
who have long constitute Tucker Carlson's audience ate it up.
Life is either extremely simple for them or impossibly complicated.
The simple part. If his Twitter video got twenty million views,
but his TV show only got four million viewers, the

(02:07):
Twitter video was five times more popular, and it proves
freedom miss and independent that and never mind that the
video is two minutes long, so an actual Apple to
Apple's comparison would be thirty Twitter views equals one TV show,
So Carlson's Twitter audience is actually about one sixth as

(02:29):
large as his TV audience was. Still, that Twitter video
was something of a shot across Murdoch's bow, and I
suspect Murdoch shot back. I think some legal type at
Fox had already been in touch with Carlson's representatives and
mentioned those three magic words forty and million and don't

(02:51):
and it will be interesting to see if there are
any more Twitter VIDs filled only with buzzwords. I mean,
Carlson had long since moved on from MAGA to QAnon.
And the great thing about servicing the cues is you
don't have to say anything. They'll find something like which
direction the grain in the wood paneling behind his head
was going in. That was his secret message to them,

(03:15):
like life is a decoder ring. The question is what
kind of shelf life as a story does the firing
of Tucker Carlson actually have? Politics and culture wars and
the rest of that has always brought with them an
incredible turnover in American media in American society. Let me
ask you a question. Who was Boke Carter? Boch Carter

(03:38):
began as a rugby announcer on radio in Philadelphia in
nineteen thirty. By nineteen thirty six, he was the top
rated national political commentator in this country. Same in nineteen
thirty seven and nineteen thirty eight, and in nineteen thirty
nine CBS Radio fired him. He was dead by nineteen
forty four. I mean, when I was at MSNBC in

(04:00):
nineteen ninety eight, during the Clinton Lewinsky story, I had
the top rate cable news show that was not on CNN.
I beat everything on Fox. I was invited to the
White House Correspondence dinner as the honored guest of the
Washington Post. I sat at Table two, next to Bill
Clinton's private secretary. I left MSNBC at year's end because

(04:23):
I couldn't stand doing that stupid story anymore, and I
did not return to political coverage until two thousand and three,
by which time I had to explain to most people
in politics, in television and at MSNBC that that was
my second stint at MSNBC, which had literally ended barely
more than four years previously. The turnover is unbelievable. Without

(04:46):
constant reinforcement, and with the usual twenty four hour news
cycles and the rages of Trump and the like, and
things like the Pence story. I think the Carlson story
could easily drop from front of mind by next week.
If there's a smart Mattic Fox trial, it could all resurface.
Then if they settle, Tucker Carlson may slide quickly into

(05:08):
that category of every other irreplaceable person. Fox replaced Bill
O'Reilly was that network. Tucker Carlson replaced him, and Bill
O'Reilly cannot even get a full time job now on
News Nation, Meghan Kelly. Have you seen the Megan Kelly
videos on Twitter? Lou Dobbs, he went back into his well,

(05:34):
his bedroom with the sanctified ground underneath the lid. Chris Wallace,
Katherine Cryer. It's another question who was Katherine Cryer. Catherine
Cryer was a very nice lady and a good reporter,
was the original Fox host at eight PM, before Carlson,
before O'Reilly. So, on the chance that Tucker Carlson is

(05:55):
gone by next week, and I mean gone culturally, I
would like to emphasize the real story that's been kind
of buried behind all the explosions, c words and Twitter videos,
which is that Tucker Carlson is a scumbag. But first,
ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to preface my remarks by
letting Pastor Shane Vaughan of the First Church of the

(06:18):
Gouy Death explain to you what's really been happening here.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Tucker Carlson is gone because of spiritual warfare. I want
you to listen closely to me. There is something much
bigger than the elites. There's something much bigger than Charles Schwab,

(06:43):
George Sorows or Rupert Murdoch, and we know how to
fight against it because we know that Tucker Carlson was
a victim of demonic power.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
I can't place that accent is Pastor Vaughan from Boston.
Now let me confess something to you. My last vacation
day was Martin Luther King Day. Three times since then,
I've done two podcasts in the same day. So as
we review the Tucker Carlson story here, I'm going to
bring you commentaries I have previously done. It's not quite

(07:19):
a day off, but it's close enough. And if I
don't take it off, I'm going to fall over. If
you don't want to hear these things again, I get it.
No harm, no foul, turn it off right here, back
with all new stuff Monday. But now, anybody remember when
Tucker Carlson tried to get all the trans people killed
and anybody doing drag shows killed, anybody going to drag

(07:40):
shows killed, And then somebody went into a nightclub and
tried to actually do it for him. November twenty second
of last year. Having spent weeks and months falsely defining

(08:07):
countless LGBTQ issues, as sex crimes against children. Tucker Carlson
began his Fox News program last night with a pious,
almost serious, borderline concerned mention of the mass shooting at
Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Saturday night on Sunday morning,
and he said, quote, violence and cruelty should always horrify us.

(08:32):
That is what Tucker Carlson said last night. On the
night of September nineteenth, however, Tucker Carlson told his viewers
to fight back against the LGBTQ community. He invoked together
drag shows and transgendering and the castration of children, and
he said, quote, no parents should put up with this

(08:53):
for one second, no matter what the law says. Your duty,
your moral duty, is to defend your children, unquote, no
matter what the law says. This was only the starkest
of his attempts to instigate violence against gays and transgenders,
and doctors and schools and teachers, the ones he claims

(09:13):
are perpetrators of sex crimes, only the starkest of hundreds
of such slanderous commentaries, because he is trying to attract
an audience of conspiracy theorists whose bleak, distorted world leads
them to believe Fox News and to believe in cabals,
of cannibals and pedophiles, because if they watch his show,

(09:38):
he makes more money. And Tucker Carlson has never spent
a moment of his life being concerned about actual victims
of child abuse, or of any other kind of abuse,
or of any victims or indeed of anything or anyone
except him and how much money he can make. Last night,
Tucker Carlson identified the real victims of Colorado Springs, himself
and his viewers. He said they were all under attacked

(10:01):
by those quote who have a deeply unhealthy fixation on
the sexuality of children, which might better describe somebody like
Tucker Carlson who goes on national television and fixates at
least once every week about the sexuality of children. Carlson
dismissed the assertion that he contributed in any way, stochastically

(10:22):
or otherwise to the shootings in Colorado Springs and the
other assaults on the LGBTQ community, and he said it
was an excuse to defend that quote unhealthy fixation on
the sexuality of children, which every time Carlson says it,
and he says it a lot sounds more and more
like a disturbing admission and suggests the authority should be
investigating Tucker Carlson. The premise, of course, is that a

(10:47):
television program like Carlson's, which Carlson and his employers, a
company called News Corp. As dangerous to this country's survival
as any terrorist organization. Have defended in court by saying,
nobody should really believe that what Carlson is saying on
that show as at actually true. The premise of all

(11:08):
of the Tucker Carlsons throughout history is that they can't
be guilty of indoctrinating people to believe that every LGBTQ
person or ally, or doctor or teacher is a quote groomer.
They can't be influencing people in that way, as if
by remote control to shoot up gay bars in Colorado,
because television can't have that kind of influence on people.

(11:30):
This is why they are telling you that drag queens
and teachers and transgendered people, they they are the ones
who are able to indoctrinate people remotely. Television can't. Tucker
Carlson can't. A man dressed as Britney Spears can indoctrinate
children into altering gender. But Tucker Carlson telling the people

(11:52):
who watch his show, perhaps a total of half a
billion times a year, that dressing up as Britney Spears
is a sex crime, he can't indoctrinate anybody. Television can't
make people do things, and that's why Tucker Carlson's ravings
are interrupted by commercials from Golden Corral and Bass Pro

(12:14):
shops and the telecaster of the Soccer World Cup. Because
television can't make people do things. Maybe Tucker Carlson believes that,
maybe that is why he doubled down on his self,
martyring victimhood and his attack on the LGBTQ community while
they are still cleaning up the carnage at Club Q.

(12:35):
And somebody, somebody out there is planning to respond to
this intentional hysteria in this nation by attacking the next
gay or transvestite or transgendered person he sees. And where's
that next person easiest to find if not at a
public club or parade or other event. I worked with
Tucker Carlson. To my knowledge, he believes in nothing. He

(12:58):
has no principles, no scruples, no beliefs, no redline, no morals.
Accept his desire for money and revenge. He was the
mainstream Republican willing to share the stage with liberals on
Crossfire on CNN, and got fired. So then he became

(13:19):
the reasonable face of deliberate conservatism on MSNBC and got fired.
So then he was the intellectual far right contributor on
Fox News and got nowhere. So then he turned into
a polished version of a q Andon chat room, selling
Trump and replacement theory and transphobia, insisting to his audience

(13:39):
that no parent should put up with this for one second,
no matter what the law says. And he got his
own nightly show at eight pm every night and the
top ratings in cable news. No parent should put up
with this for one second, no matter what the law says.
That is not his creed, that is his brand. He
is worse than the creature who shot up the club

(14:00):
in Colorado. Because Tucker Carlson may or may not believe
a single word he says. He only believes in those
words ability to make him money. He is a whore,
Goddamn him to hell, and would that it were just
Tucker Carlson, but it's not. Whenever there is a mass

(14:23):
shooting and one of us says, but guns. The far
right always responds, oh, it's too soon, or how dare
you politicize death and grief? So thoughts and prayers. But
if you will notice, after a shooting with a clearly
defined hate basis, like in Colorado Springs, those on the
right don't even slow down or say it's too soon

(14:44):
to come back and spew more stochastic terrorism into the
Swiss Cheese minds of their viewers and supporters. Sometimes though,
they change it up a little bit. In the aftermath
of the shooting, an interview appeared at the news site
Semaphore with Mike Pompeo, former Defense secretary, former Secretary of State,
under hard to Believe, but it really happened. They asked

(15:09):
Pompeo to identify the central issues that any Republican presidential
candidate should run on in twenty twenty four. He's trying
to be that candidate, and he answered, quote, making sure
we don't teach our kids crap in schools, which we
are at the center of doing. Pompeo did not specify

(15:30):
the crap on the right. Generally, the crap includes anything
positive about minorities, especially LGBTQ, or anything negative about white Americans.
Quoting Pompeo again, I get asked, who's the most dangerous
person in the world. Is it Chairman Kim Jong Un?
Is it Shijin Pang? The most dangerous person in the

(15:52):
world is Randy Winngarten. It's not a close call. If
you ask who's the most likely to take this republic down,
it would be the teachers' unions and the filth they're
teaching our kids. End quote. Firstly, that is as dumb

(16:14):
a thing as any human being over the age of
six could say to almost anybody. It is literally by
itself disqualifying for public office. And yet this baboon Pompeo
is also the clown who once yelled at a reporter
do you think Americans care about Ukraine? He also insisted

(16:35):
there would be a smooth transition in November twenty twenty
to a second Trump term and he's running for president.
But more importantly, it's just the same thing Tucker Carlson said,
is saying, we'll say with the gun sight. The stochastic
gun sight moved over slightly to one direction, back to

(16:58):
invoking words like kids and filth and danger and teaching,
putting a target now on the head of the American
Federation of Teachers Chief, and of every teacher in this country,
men and women who have for generations in this country,
for centuries in this country, been underpaid. Even the ones

(17:18):
in the religious indoctrination schools are underpaid. Teachers who for
the last two years have had to try to do
their jobs for no money, in the middle of a pandemic,
with the lives of kids literally in their hands because
of school shooters and disease, or the futures of kids,
still their responsibilities, though they are miles away and interconnected

(17:39):
only by computer screens. The filth they're teaching our kids.
Mike Pompeo, you are a braver man than I am.
If I had said that about teachers, I would have
disappeared from this country before morning, because they teachers now

(18:01):
are the next targets. That means, when something happens, Mike
Pompeo can dismiss the idea that his words could possibly
have contributed to it. Of course not. I couldn't indoctrinate
the stupid people of this country. And he will say
that while somebody is working on his next Mike Pompeo

(18:24):
campaign ad to run on television, even though Tucker Carlson
has reassured us that words on television cannot possibly actually
influence anybody to do something they wouldn't otherwise do, as
Tucker Carlson throws to a commercial for Tommy Copper November

(18:53):
twenty second. Within two months, Carlson had switched conspiracy theories
and pulled his light out from under a bushel his
gas light. By February twenty first, he was in cahoots
with Kevin McCarthy, and I was in cahoots with those
who didn't want Carlson fired. They wanted Fox News deplatformed.

(19:27):
It is time for us as a country to address
the danger Fox News represents, to act swiftly and decisively
against Fox News, to deplatform it, and to in fact
destroy it. Yesterday, after several hints and even more leaks
over a couple of days, Fox News confirmed that the

(19:48):
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, has given
Tucker Carlson forty one thousand hours of January sixth Capital
surveillance and security video, and McCarthy has given it to
Carlson exclusively, and McCarthy has done so without consultan with
House colleagues or without hearings, without any authority other than

(20:09):
his own belief that since the January sixth Committee was
run by the House of Representatives, all footage that that
committee obtained and did not release is his to do
with as he pleases and how he pleases. Is to
turn this video, which will give the plotters of the
next attempted coup and the next attempt to hang a
vice president, and the next attempt to overthrow the government

(20:31):
of the United States, an exact roadmap to the location
of every security camera, and every emergency facility, and every
emergency door and room in the entirety of the US
capital complex. And Kevin McCarthy might as well have handed
it to the Russian ambassador to the United States. Tucker

(20:53):
Carlson is probably not an actual Russian asset. He is
probably doing their work as a hobby, but he might
as well be one. Is not loyal to this country
nor to any aspect of how it is governed. He
does not approve of how its leaders are elected. He
has no interest in making sure that money and power

(21:14):
cannot crush the week at every turn. There is to
Tucker Carlson no concept of truth nor of law, nor
of decency. There is one touchstone, only how much can
Tucker Carlson get away with. Tucker Carlson is loyal to
only one thing. Tucker Carlson, he is dedicated to only

(21:36):
one thing, the vendetta he has had against liberals in particular,
but honestly against America in general, since he was fired
first by CNN, then by PBS, then by MSNBC, and
then when he was first marginalized by Fox News before
it finally gave him the power he demanded from it
in twenty sixteen. Handing him video footage of the coup

(22:01):
attempt so he can give away all the security secrets
of the Capitol and so he can use his immense
propaganda platform to try to rewrite the history of the
insurrection he and the other vermin of Fox News successfully
helped to foment is like handing him a series of
pipe bombs. It will never occur to Tucker Carlson, not

(22:24):
for a second, to try to dispose of them safely
and properly. He will only think about who he can
metaphorically kill with them metaphorically for him, less metaphorically for others,
others who will see the video which a federal court
ruled two years ago should largely be held back, or
at least distributed only after a careful review to make

(22:45):
sure that each frame of it does not jeopardize still
more law enforcement officers or congressmen or senators or staffers
or you know, vice presidents. Instead, it will be in
the hands of Tucker Carlson to decide what does and
does not become public, because Tucker Carlson believes, in a

(23:09):
very real sense that he is supposed to be running
this country, maybe not running it in the way you
or I understand the term, maybe not even in the
way that Trump understands it. After an election which you
have to win or falsely loudly claim you did win.
Tucker Carlson does not believe in such obstructions to and

(23:32):
formalities about what really matters in this country, which is
what Tucker Carlson wants. Last week's revelations from the dominion
defamation lawsuit were numerous enough to have a new Netflix
series based on them. Hell twelve new series, Hell one
hundred new series. Hell never mind new Netflix series. There

(23:53):
were enough to create a new Netflix with nothing but
dramas based on the texts and the emails Carlson and
Laura Ingram and Sean Hannity and Rupert Murdoch and the
others sent each other. But the most relevant of all
of that correspondence remains Carlson's reaction after a Fox reporter
tweeted that there was no evidence of voting machines altering

(24:16):
or deleting Republican votes. Quote, please get her fired, Carlson
texted to Sean Hannity, Seriously, what the blank. I'm actually shocked.
It needs to stop immediately. It's measurably hurting the company.
The stock price is down. That's it, in just twenty

(24:43):
six words. That's all Tucker Carlson knows, understands were values
in this world. And the Speaker of the House of
Representatives has handed this creature forty one thousand hours of
January sixth surveillance video to do with as he pleases,
and guess what. The Department of Justice should take Fox

(25:04):
and Carlson and the Speaker of the House to court
and attempt to get a temporary restraining order to prevent
the revelation of one frame of that video, and then
a permanent restraining order. The Attorney General should launch an
inquiry into which laws Speaker McCarthy has broken in his
unilateral action about the video release, and the Democrats and

(25:24):
the Liberals and the media pressure groups and the boycotters,
and more importantly you and I we should all make
every noise we can to get Direct TV to stop
carrying Fox News, and to get Verizon to stop carrying
Fox News, and Comcast and Dish and cos and every

(25:45):
satellite provider and every cable provider and every Internet provider.
I believe the word is d platform. I mean, right now,
the forces of fascism in this country and the propaganda
outlets they control, have already succeeded in creating a completely
fictitious narrative in which the Newsmax channel, which is like
Fox News US but for those addicts who do not

(26:06):
mind their cocaine mixed with rat poison. In this narrative,
Newsmax has been deplatformed and canceled and silenced by Direct TV,
when in fact this is entirely a question of Newsmax
raising its price for Direct TV's use from zero dollars
per year to thirteen million dollars per year and Direct

(26:28):
TV saying what the f the Democrats and the liberals
and the media pressure groups and the boycotters, and most
importantly you and I, we have already been convicted of
this crime. Let's get a little something for our money.
Let's move to silence an outrageous on American fifth column
eating away at this nation's freedoms and its very viability,

(26:52):
to say nothing of what it has done to poor
stupid Marjorie Taylor Green and millions like her who literally
do not know where they are at this moment. What
is the right way going to do? In response, say, oh,
you didn't really try to deplatform Newsmax, but now now

(27:12):
you're really trying to deeplatform Fox. The right is as
ever crying. Let us give them something to cry about.
Since nineteen ninety eight, literally months after I went from
just sports into covering we're also covering news and politics.
I have been noting and commenting and shouting and yelling

(27:37):
and screaming that Fox News was not only not news
and should not be called news, but that it represented
an ever growing threat to the continuation of representative government
in this country. In two thousand and seven, I said
in an interview that al Qaeda really hurt us, but
not as much as Rupert Murdoch has heard us. Fox

(27:59):
News is worse than al Qaeda, worse for our society.
It's as dangerous as as the Ku Klux Klan. Ever
was serious journalists, the kind that talk loudly in restaurants
dismissed my criticisms of nineteen ninety eight and two thousand
and seven and twenty sixteen and today as just ploys

(28:21):
for ratings. I was just punching up at Bill O'Reilly,
thus my hyperbole. Actually, no, I wasn't. It was obvious
then to me, and I thought to everybody else that
Fox News was being used by the right wing in
this country, the way the Nazis used radio in Germany
in the early nineteen thirties to change reality, to change

(28:42):
it from stuff that really happened out there to a
narrative that left the population in a constant state of
fear of outsiders and in a constant state of rage
and umbrage against democracy, against liberals, and against minorities. It
was worse than al Qaeda. It is worse than al Qaeda.
Osama bin Laden killed thousands of US. Rupert Murdoch has

(29:07):
in essence killed the minds of millions of US in
two thousand and nine, O'Reilly and Murdoch and Fox decided
that I had to be silenced, deplatformed, if you will,
so they attacked not me, but my boss and my
boss's boss, and ultimately the chairman of the multinational that

(29:28):
owned all of us, the head of GE, Jeffrey Immelt.
I have told this story before, and I will tell
it again in all its grizzly detail at the end
of this podcast. In short, though, O'Reilly accused GE of
building parts for roadside bombs used to kill American servicemen
in Iraq. He then had a camera crew run by

(29:52):
Jesse Waters chase Immelt around. He mentioned Immelt by name
on his show. Immelt's mother was an O'Reilly viewer, and
she called her son and yelled at him. Jeff Immelt
naturally kept a calm head, befitting the man responsible for
the fifth, sixth, their seventh largest corporation in the world

(30:12):
or whatever it was ranked then, and he immediately threatened
the president of NBC that if his name was mentioned
again on Fox News, he would immediately take MSNBC off
the air and fire everybody connected with it. Because these
are businessmen and businesses first, last, and everything in between
unless Mommy calls. The next thing I knew, Roger Ayles

(30:39):
was inside thirty Rock negotiating with Jeff Zooker over how
MSNBC should cover Fox and how Fox should cover MSNBC
and mmelt and ge. And even when an NBC executive
boasted about this to The New York Times, most of
the American media did not notice the two out of
the three cable news outlets were colluding over how and

(31:04):
how not to cover the news. Most that did notice
it simply wrote it off to me trying to get
ratings and dismissed what I did as the liberal version
of O'Reilly. I would hope that after this Kevin McCarthy
Tucker Carlson pact about the January sixth video, and why

(31:24):
am I reminded of the Hitler Stalin pact when I
say the McCarthy Carlson pact, coming so fresh on the
heels of the Fox texts in the dominion case, that somebody,
somebody with a large platform, somebody at CBS or ABC
or NBC or the New York Times or the Washington Post,

(31:44):
somebody would recognize what Fox News is right now and
start a I don't know four hundred and fifty three
part series on what they are right now. Even if
they would like to pretend that Fox News just became
that last Tuesday, so be it. Because whether it was

(32:06):
or it was not in twenty thirteen or two thousand
and three or at its launch, Fox News is now
a clear and present danger to the safety and security
of the United States of America. It is, whether because
of money or blackmail, or most likely just sheer fascistic
empathy and sheer spite, it is a propaganda arm both

(32:28):
of the anti democratic conspiracies alive in this country and
of the government of Russia. And the clarity of how
it at its faces, like Carlson and Hannity and Ingram,
acted in mercenary, financially driven defense of election denial and
thus the violence and the coup attempts that followed and
will follow again. The clarity of what Fox was behind

(32:50):
the scenes between November twenty twenty and January twenty twenty one,
and what it is today, with Tucker Carlson ready to
issue a video gas lighting on behalf of Trump and sedition,
and also to issue and illustrate guide on how to
get past all those annoying Capitol Hills security cameras. Next time,
fox News has rendered our response as a nation to

(33:14):
the peril of Fox News essential and urgent. We have
no choice. We must destroy Fox News, and if there
is some means to do so, prosecute it. It is
essential and urgent. It is one thing to be the
salesmen of madness and conspiracy and rage and paranoia. It

(33:39):
is quite another, and somehow I think it's far worse,
far more damaging, far more insidious, to be the salesman
of madness and conspiracy and rage and paranoia without believing
any of it. The real invested, insane, inconsolable election deniers
and hate mongers are somehow slightly less despicable and certainly

(34:03):
less threatening because they are zelots, and thus Zelots have
left half of their plans for world domination undone, because
they believe not only that God will do that part
for them, but that God loves only them and nothing
bad could happen to them. Fox News is far more
dangerous because, in becoming completely devoid of true belief in

(34:26):
anything but its ability to sell moronity to morons at
great profit, Fox News has absolved itself of any responsibility
for it. These people do not question their own ethics.
They haven't seen ethics in themselves, their colleagues, their guests,
their employers. In twenty five years, there isn't even moral

(34:48):
relativism because morality, even a mistaken belief that they have
morality and the rest of us don't. Morality is no
longer part of the equation. At Fox News. In the past,
they used to sell this country out because they believed
in fascism. Now Carlson and Ingram and Hannity and all
the others are selling this country out because they believe

(35:10):
in money. And we have handed them all the video
from January sixth and a license to lie about everything
without consequences, about this in particular, without consequences. And we
might as well have given them guns and nukes and
the security code to every home in this country. Hell,

(35:32):
Kevin McCarthy just gave them the security code to every
panic room in the Capitol. And our inaction, our disbelief
that there could be anything so cynical as this is
how this country has been previously blighted by big tobacco
and by big pharma. And with a historical nod to

(35:52):
Marjorie Taylor Green by big slavery. We know it can
kill you. It's not our fault that you believe us,
it's yours. We had big tobacco and big pharma. Fox
Fox is just big bullshit. Turned out the January sixth

(36:25):
video was less than met the eye, but it was
still a breach of congressional and senatorial security, and it
might have been could easily have been prosecuted as might
still easily be prosecuted as conspiracy to commit rebellion or insurrection.
As I said on March thirteenth, Arrest Tucker Carlson. That's next.

(36:45):
This is countdown. Free the Q Shaman. Jacob Chansley, No

(37:08):
arrest Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson is lying about the January
sixth video, and a new government document, sworn under oath
and under penalty of perjury and submitted yesterday to a
district court in Washington, confirms that Tucker Carlson could be
prosecuted as part of a conspiracy to obstruct justice, or

(37:29):
even prosecuted on much more serious and ominous charges under
eighteen USC. Two three eighty three rebellion or insurrection. All
that footage that Carlson said had been quote withheld from
the Q Shaman Chansley. All that footage that Carlson said
showed Chansley being escorted by Capitol police. All that footage

(37:50):
that Carlson said proved a government conspiracy to frame Chansley.
All that footage that Carlson said proved January sixth was
just sightseers framed by Pelosi and Cheney and Biden and
the media. All that footage that Kevin McCarthy sold his
soul over All that footage that Elon Musk was dumb

(38:12):
enough to fall for and promulgates. All that footage that
every Trump apologist and every pro seditionist congressman is pushing
like his life depended on it. Because maybe it is
all that footage at the center of the international Communist
liberal democratic woke crt LGBTQ George Sorows conspiracy that Tucker

(38:37):
Carlson and Tucker Carlson alone valiantly outed and will avenge
all that footage. Jacob Chanceley's lawyer was given all but
ten seconds of that footage on or before September twenty fourth,
two THOY twenty one, five hundred and thirty five days ago,

(38:59):
and Chansley's lawyer was given the remaining missing ten seconds
forty nine days ago. Tucker Carlson is lying. Kevin McCarthy
is lying. Jacob Chansley's first lawyer is lying. Jacob Chansley's
second lawyer is lying. Fox Quote News unquote is lying.

(39:25):
One of the members of the terrorist group the Proud Boys,
himself on trial for January sixth. Dominic Pizzola moved to
dismiss his case or have a mistrial called quote due
to recent revelations on the Tucker Carlson Show. On quote,
there are no revelations, there is no new footage. There

(39:46):
was no truth to a single word out of Tucker
Carlson's fascist, racist, anti democracy horror mouth. Yesterday afternoon, the
government responded to the Pizzola motion to dismiss by issuing
Memorandum number six eight nine and giving it to the

(40:06):
Court Memorandum six ' eight nine in the United States
of America versus Ethan Nordian at al. And while the
memorandum is ostensibly about that case and this gang member Pizzola,
it is in fact directed at the lies of the
lawyers of the Q Shaman and more importantly and absolutely

(40:27):
lowers the boom on Tucker, Carlson and Fox quote news unquote,
and this entire, enraging, embarrassing, illegal scam that Carlson and
Kevin McCarthy are running. And it is thus now utterly
essential to the future of this nation for Senate Majority
Leader Chuck Schumer to convene a Senate investigation of Carlson

(40:49):
and Fox and whatever is behind Rupert Murdoch's effort to
destabilize the elected government of the United States and imperil
our country. Let me read from document six eighty nine
Case one twenty one CR zero zero one seven five
t JK quote. The CCTV footage is core evidence in

(41:15):
nearly every January sixth case, and it was produced en Moss,
labeled by camera number and by time to all Defense Council.
In all cases, with the exception of one CCTV camera
where said footage totaled approximately ten seconds and implicated an
evacuation route, all of the footage played on television was

(41:39):
disclosed to defend it Pizzola and defended Chansley. By September
twenty fourth, twenty twenty one, the final ten seconds of
footage was produced in Global Discovery to All Defense Council
on January twenty three, twenty twenty three, end quote knowing

(42:01):
already what he did and what he did not do.
On January sixth, Jacob Chansley and his attorney at the time,
Albert Watkins, agreed to a plea deal on September third,
twenty twenty one, one charge a felony obstruction of a
proceeding of Congress, and Chansley signed a seven page document

(42:21):
giving a minute by minute timeline of his crime, and
not once in it did he claim he had been escorted,
but in the document he confessed to repeatedly refusing to
do what those officers shown on that video told him
to do, which was leave. His attorney Watkins got any
video from the insurrection he had not already been given

(42:42):
except the ten seconds that showed a secret escape route
by September twenty fourth, twenty twenty one. Chansley was sentenced
on November seventeenth, twenty twenty one, meaning his attorney had
at least fifty four days to review the video that
the liar Tucker Carlson showed last week and claimed was

(43:04):
knew if any of it actually did anything like the
liar Tucker Carlson claimed the attorney would have showed it
to the judge it's sentencing and he and Chanceley could
have backed out of the plea deal, or the judge
would have thrown out the plea deal. But it didn't
show anything. Because Tucker Carlson is lying, he is obstructing justice.

(43:28):
And when the attorney Watkins told the liar Tucker Carlson
that he had never seen the video before, if Watkins
himself was not lying, it means Watkins was too lazy
or too incompetent, or both to review the video he
had had access to five hundred and thirty five days ago.

(43:50):
The Q Shaman Chansley officially changed attorneys on November twenty ninth,
twenty twenty one, meaning his new lawyer, John Pierce, has
had four hundred and seventy days to look at that
video that the liar, Tucker Carlson lied had been withheld
from the lawyers and from the nation. And when the
attorney Pierce told the liar Tucker Carlson that he'd never

(44:12):
seen that video before, if Pierce wasn't lying, it meant
Pierce was too lazy or too incompetent or both to
review the video he had access to four hundred and
seventy days ago and every day since. But wait, what
about that last ten seconds that the government didn't turn

(44:33):
over until just under two months ago? What about that?
Well from the same memo in this Pizzola case filed yesterday,
quote the final ten seconds of footage. Similarly, as with
other CCTV depicts defendant Chancelly outside of the Senate Chamber
with law enforcement after his initial breach of the chamber unquote.

(45:00):
And remember, anything the government puts into the record in
its prosecution of anybody must be utterly verifiable to the letter.
If there is not a signed receipt from every attorney,
including Chansley's apparently useless mouthpiece Albert Watkins, the one who
said Chansley and the others were from quote the short bus.

(45:21):
If there isn't an impeccable sworn under oath record of
everything the government asserts in something like this memorandum six't
eighty nine, not only does the prosecution go out the window,
but the prosecutors can go to jail. This isn't the
Tucker Carlson Liar show. You can't just lie and get
away with it like you're Tucker Carlson. If Fox Quote

(45:43):
News were held to the same standard, to one tenth
of the same standard as federal prosecutors, Tucker Carlson would
not only be in jail right now, he would have
already lost his appeal to get out on bail. But wait,
there's more later in Government Memorandum six point eighty nine quote.

(46:04):
The televised footage shows Chansley's movements only from approximately two
fifty six pm to three PM. Prior to that time,
Chansley had, amongst other acts, breached a police line at
two nine pm with the mob entered the Capitol less
than one minute behind Dominic Pizzola during the initial breach

(46:25):
of the building, and faced off with members of the
US Capitol Police for more than thirty minutes in front
of the Senate Chamber doors, while elected officials, including the
Vice President of the United States, were fleeing from the chamber.
Chansley then entered the Senate gallery, where he proceeded to
scream obscenities while other rioters rifled through the desks of

(46:47):
US senators on the floor below. All these actions were
captured by Senate floor and or CCTV cameras. In some
Chansley was not some passive, chaperoned observer of events. For
the roughly hour that he was unlawfully inside the Capitol.
He was part of the initial breach of the building.
He confronted law enforcement for roughly thirty minutes just outside

(47:11):
the Senate chamber he gained access to and later left
the Senate floor only after law enforcement was able to
arrive on Moss to remove him. It is at this
point that the authors of Memorandum six point eighty nine
nail the lar Tucker Carlson to the metaphorical wall quote.

(47:32):
It is true that a sole officer who was trying
to de escalate the situation was with Chansley as he
made his way to the Senate floor after initially breaching
the chamber, as the televised footage reflects, But the televised
footage fails to show that Chansley subsequently refused to be

(47:54):
escorted out by this loan officer and instead left the
capital only after additional officers arrived and forcibly scared him out.
Free Jacob Chansley arrest Tucker Carlson. What the liar Tucker

(48:15):
Carlson and the liar Maria Bartiromo as recently as yesterday,
still pushing Fox's January sixth video Lie, still trying to
spit out the words watching them walk and being escutted
by police. What they are doing is obstructing justice, and
for that matter, so is what Speaker of the House

(48:35):
Kevin McCarthy is doing. He, without any consultation, arbitrarily released
all this video to the liar Tucker Carlson for the
express purpose of producing the kind of gaslighting, obstructionist, false
narrative that Carlson and his producers and his employers and
Rupert Murdoch promptly and efficiently did produce. McCarthy handed Carlson

(48:58):
access to materials with which to lie. Carlson then lied
night after night, and yesterday, interviewed by the liar Bartiromo,
Kevin McCarthy completed the self fulfilling prophecy. Quote, what have
we learned from these tapes that have been on Tucker
Carlson tonight? Said Bartiromo, who is the liar who has

(49:21):
promised support for a Senate run by Steve Bannon. In
answering her, McCarthy as evil but not nearly as interesting
as his nineteen fifties namesake, answered quote, The first thing
I found is that the January sixth Committee was not
honest with us. He then strung together his standard cliches
about transparency and how many hours of tape there was

(49:43):
and burning cities and everybody can make their own judgment
and equal justice, equal justice, equal equal justice. Arrest Kevin
McCarthy for obstruction of justice. What, after all has this
all been about. This has been to try to whitewash
and to gaslight, not just in the arena of public opinion,

(50:04):
not just to fool the Marx who watch Fox, but
in the courts. This is to try to whitewash and
gaslight an insurrection, a coup, a bloody attack on the
Capitol during the official transfer of power. It is a
conspiracy to turn the guilty perpetrators into victims and the

(50:27):
victims into defendants. And that is called obstruction of justice.
And you go to jail for that, And Kevin McCarthy
and Tucker Carlson should go to jail for that. On Saturday,
the former White House Communications director under Trump, Stephanie Grisham,

(50:48):
underscored what we've all known all along that Fox quote
news unquote served as the main propaganda outlet for Trump
with specific hands on direction by Trump. In an interview
with CNN, Rusham emphasized that people like Sean Hannity and
Janine Piro and Laura Ingram and Fox Quote News unquote

(51:12):
CEO Suzanne Scott all called her office constantly, and if
she did not get back to them fast enough, they
would call Trump and whine about that, quoting her, We
did work hand in hand with them, and that came
at the President's direction. If he didn't like something, we
were to immediately, you know, call Fox and have them

(51:32):
fix it or try to make a new story out
of it, et cetera un quote. So the question must
now be raised, is this exact construction happening again? We
heard Kevin McCarthy humiliate himself the night he was finally
elected speaker, fulsomely thanking Trump. Is this whole conspiracy to

(51:55):
obstruct justice originating with Trump? Did he tell McCarthy to
give the January sixth video acts to Tucker Carlson. We
need not only the full resources of the Department of
Justice directed towards these evil men and the people who
enabled them, like Rupert Murdoch, We need a Senate Select

(52:18):
committee and hearings into what is more than just Fox's
typical lying to and manipulation of its moronic audience, but
which is a conspiracy to obstruct justice in the prosecution
of the January sixth insurrection. Free the Q Shaman, Arrest
Tucker Carlson, arrest Kevin McCarthy, and arrest the ringleader of

(52:45):
this conspiracy to obstruct Donald Trump March thirteen. And yeah,

(53:05):
I know I get a little loose with my arrest
fill in the blank, because by the next day it
was pretty clear that video couldn't get Tucker Carlson arrested
from countdown the next day, March fourteenth. Today in January sixth,

(53:35):
conspiracy Land, it's quiet, It's too quiet. No, the DOJ
has not arrested Tucker Carlson for obstruction of justice, nor
is it likely to. But it is clear somebody in
there is out to contradict him, humiliate him, and get
him fired by Fox. And whatever the plan is, it

(53:58):
may be working. Something certainly has worked. Tucker Carlson has
completely punted on the January sixth story, did not mention
it once last night. No Q Shaman, no conspiracy, no withheld,
no fire, Liz Cheney, no, we demand immediate action like
it never happened. Tucker Carlson offered no explanation as he

(54:22):
ran away as to why he ran away. The Department
of Justice it offered lots of explanations. Sunday it was
the release of Memorandum six Po't eighty nine confirming that
Carlson was lying on television that the Q Shaman had
access to all the video Carlson showed and all the
video Carlson did not show because it would have destroyed

(54:44):
his lie while he was lying it. Yesterday the release
came of some of that video. Carlson is hiding again.
This release was in answer to Dominic Pizzola's motion to
dismiss the January sixth charges against him quote due to
recent revelations on the Tucker Carlson Show. This is the

(55:05):
audio track from the body cam of one of dozens
of officers summoned to the Senate Chamber when Jacob Chansley
was told to leave and he refused and he and
the other insurrectionists had to be boxed out by Capitol police.
And the voice you will hear is that of Tucker
Carlson's mild mannered railroaded sightseer Chansley screaming as police adroitly

(55:27):
force him and the other terrorists out of the Capitol
without somehow shooting any of them. Let's go, Let's go,

(55:50):
let's go. Let's go.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
Let's let's go.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Another video, one of three the Department of Justice released yesterday,
is less audibly gaudy, to use that word, but it
is far more harrowing. This is from the exact moment
Jacob Chansley, aka the real victim here Shaman and the
rest of the mob came within perhaps thirty feet of
a senator being evacuated. We think it's Chuck Grassley, nobody

(56:22):
can be certain, and in the video there is only
one officer standing in an open vestibule blocking them from
attacking that senator. The Department of Justice is going to
prove that Jacob Chansley, the Q Shaman, was as guilty

(56:44):
as he said he was in the plea bargain he
signed and the sentence he accepted fifty five days after
his lawyer received the last of all of the January
sixth video. And while it is not doing as good
a job as say, dominion voting systems is at destroying
Fox quote news unquote and destroying Ert Murdoch, destroying Sean Hannity,

(57:06):
and destroying Laura Ingram, and destroying Suzanne Scott, and destroying
Tucker Carlson. The DOJ certainly is doing the best that
it can, considering it's a government bureaucracy. So far, it
has proved Tucker Carlson lied about Chanceley, lied about Chansley's
access to exculpatory video that wasn't the least bit exculpatory,

(57:27):
lied about January sixth in Toto, and committed with Speaker
McCarthy obstruction of justice, if not legally, then certainly ethically.
And now with the release of these videos, the DOJ
is clearly bolstering that latest question, why is Tucker Carlson
hiding the January sixth video that implicates Jacob Chansley and
by extension, implicates Tucker Carlson and Speaker McCarthy. Carlson's silence

(57:56):
on this subject last night underscores the bizarre reality that
Fox is getting hammered on its January sixth video coverage
i the right wing. It was calculated that the Newsmax
channel has covered Fox's coverage at seven times the frequency
Fox has. Newsmax has accused Fox of a cover up.

(58:19):
Twitter was full last night with confused Tucker Carlson viewers
who do not understand they are Tucker's suckers in the
manipulation game that is Fox quote news unquote. They wrote
with almost pitiable confusion to him, asking where the rest
of the video is. These are the people, after all,
whom a former Tucker Carlson producer named Alex Sfeiffer compared

(58:42):
dealing with to quote like negotiating with terrorists, but especially
dumb ones, cousin effing types unquote absent a reliable source
inside an organization that always fires reliable sources. To say
what has happened inside Fox is speculative at best. You

(59:03):
and I probably look at the new videos released by
the Department of Justice and flinch and maybe hope, oh,
never mentioning any of it ever again might make the
DOJ also stop mentioning how dishonest we were ever again.
Tucker Carlson could be showing self restraint, I suppose, but
that would be a first. This is a guy who,

(59:26):
as late as twenty ten, opened a website using my
name and personally took my name as his email address
at that website, and when a not too bright columnist
from the Philadelphia Daily News sent an email full of
questions to me to that address, Carlson posed as me,
answered the questions in a way designed to get my

(59:46):
boss to fire me and insult my boss, whom he
did not like, and the Philadelphia guy printed the answers
as if they had been for me. Tucker Carlson congratulated
himself on the identity theft, never one stopping to think
that to do so, he had to admit that he
went to the trouble well of setting up an entire
website so he could pretend for just a few fleeting

(01:00:09):
minutes but he was not merely Tucker Carlson, but that
he was me. I mean, I wouldn't even do that anyway.
Other factors could have caused Carlson to turn tail and
run about January sixth, as clearly he has. The non
Fox reaction to his video gaslighting is the last thing

(01:00:29):
Rupert Murdoch needs. With the dominion lawsuits still in full flower,
we do not know if there is a fourth tranch
of Fox texts and emails and other self owns being
sorted right now by the best damned defamation attorneys in
the world. But even if there isn't, there is an
ongoing legal fight over the Fox redactions from the first

(01:00:52):
three tranches. If Dominion gets a judge to order all
of those transcripts released again without those black boxes, it'll
be like having three Christmases in two weeks and then surprise,
you give back all the gifts and SATA hands you
upgrades on every single one of them. The answer may

(01:01:13):
actually be legal action, but not directed against Carlson for
obstruction of justice dammit, nor Murdoch for defaming Dominion. But
late last week, to little fanfare, the New York State
Supreme Court refused to throw out the second defamation suit
against Fox by a voting machine company, and believe it
or not, the one by Dominion was considered the lesser

(01:01:36):
of the two. It merely asked for a billion six
in damages. Smartmatic Sgo Group is suing for two point seven,
and it is suing Fox and Maria Bartiromo by name,
and lou Dobbs by name and Rudy Giuliani by name,
because not only did they accuse Smartmatic of altering votes

(01:01:57):
in twenty twenty, but Fox regularly said smart Mattic was
a Venezuelan company in Cootes with various foreign governments, when
in fact Smart Mattic was created in that far off
exotic land Boca Raton, Florida. As with any sudden dead
stop like this, Carlson and Hannity and Ingram and who knows,

(01:02:18):
maybe the Department of Justice may have seen it coming
and buckled up, but lots of other people didn't, and
there is windshield trinkle all over the country. There are
still some people fully invested in the Carlson McCarthy video scam,
and the next question needs to be what, if anything,
can be done about those outside of Fox who were

(01:02:39):
or are still promulgating and spreading Tucker Carlson's attempt to
interfere with the prosecution of insurrectionists and terrorists, Those who
informally or otherwise joined Tucker Carlson's obstruction of justice brigade.
After four days of non stop bleeding about this, virtually
every Republican Congressman who had picked up the Carlson videos

(01:03:02):
and ran with them punted on it faster than he did.
Kevin McCarthy said on Fox Sunday morning that the January
sixth committee was not truthful. That was it. He has
said nothing since. You may have seen that. After a
series of Elon Musk tweets reading free Jacob Chansley and
insisting January sixth was just a guided tour, I retweeted

(01:03:24):
him and asked readers to report one of those tweets
as the denial of a violent act. Musk escalated by
replying to me, have you considered a career in comedy?
I escalated again by answering, have you ever considered a
career in business? Saturday night came Musk's reply on Twitter,

(01:03:45):
I do hope to succeed in business, where the fingers
crossed emoji, which was not only not about Jacob Chansley
or January sixth in the slightest, but was definitely a
de escalation, was almost endearing and was kind of funny.
And Musk hasn't tweeted a thing about January sixth since

(01:04:09):
only doctor Paul Gozar, the Arizona congressman, vibrating with who
knows what neurological disease delirium tremens too much? Meth who knows?
Only doctor Paul Gozar is still carrying this banner. He
got up in front of some kid's microphone and said
he expects the House will make criminal referrals for the

(01:04:29):
prosecution of Liz Cheney, other members of the January sixth Committee,
some members of the military about the investigation. Doctor Gozar's
gelatinous stance reminded me again of my friend George Carlin's
greatest simple joke that mathematically, somebody on this planet is
the world's worst. Doctor George would pause and then add,

(01:04:51):
and somebody has an appointment to see him tomorrow morning.
Doctor Gozar will see you soon. It could very well
be that tonight at eight o'clock, Tucker Carlson goes back
to the January sixth tapes and has all three of
Jacob Chansley's lawyers on, along with Jacob Zuma, Jacob de Gram,

(01:05:11):
and the ghost of Jacob Marley. But barring that, I
had two more flashbacks. Yeah, I have a lot of flashbacks.
I've told you, add nauseum here about the day the
chairman of General Electric threatened to shut down MSNBC if
we mentioned Fox again, and Fox mentioned him again, So
we simply didn't mention Fox again four weeks in hopes

(01:05:37):
that nobody would notice, and largely nobody noticed until I
wrote the truth Sorry, and even more relevantly this popped
into my head. I happened to be at the nineteen
eighty Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, at the height of
the Cold War with the Soviet Union, at perhaps the
hour where it seemed the most like we were not

(01:05:59):
winning the Cold War, the world's media had been housed
rather well thought in Lake Placid High School. My employer's
United Press International took over the chemistry lab, which was
great because if you opened the window of our little
sub office for the radio network, you were literally leaning
over the Olympic skating oval, on which Eric Heiden won

(01:06:20):
his five gold medals in nine days. The Soviet news
agency TASS had perhaps a better location in the media center. Still,
TASS was next to the school lunch room. The cafeteria
turned into the media dining room, with some of the
best food I have had in my life. If you

(01:06:43):
were hungry, and we were all hungry because the food
was that good, you necessarily had to walk right past
the Task Bureau, a beehive of dozens of journalists. I guess.
Then the United States Olympic hockey team beat the Russians
on Friday February twenty second. When we all got back

(01:07:03):
to the media center for the great dining room breakfast
of Saturday February twenty third, there was a crowd outside
the now locked door of the now unlit Task newsroom.
Everybody was reading this sign, handmade and taped on the
door by the handle. It read, closed are We. Witnesses

(01:07:28):
reported that the Task Team, every last one of them,
and every Soviet athlete not competing in the last two
days of the Olympics, had been trundled away in the
middle of the night, back to Russia, Russia where today
they happened to love Tucker Carlson, and where today it
may be the case that as far as anymore January

(01:07:48):
sixth gas lighting, or January sixth dire threats, or just
January sixth box coverage, that may all be summed up
by those same three words, closed are We. We could
go on like this forever, and in fact we might have.

(01:08:10):
But then came dominion and the texts of Carlson insulting
Trump and insulting all the Fox reporters and all the executives,
And what we didn't know, what was behind the black
lines of redaction was far far worse and led to
where we are today. The day Tucker Carlson stopped spouting
conspiracy theories and became the victim of an actual conspiracy

(01:08:35):
VT day victory over Tucker on April twenty fourth, I
was so happy I sang about it the Tuckering and next,

(01:09:01):
make no mistake, Tucker Carlson was just fired personally by
Rupert Murdoch. The phrase breaking news has been overused beyond
all recognition, but this defines it breaking news and news broken.
Tucker Carlson has been fired by Fox and Rupert Murdoch
and the news site semaphores as his executive producer. Justin

(01:09:22):
Wells has also been fired by Fox, and Don Lemon
has been fired by CNN. And as to Carlson, Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Free at last. And Carlson was fired for two reasons,
one larger than the other because of what the Abbey
Grosberg misogyny and abuse lawsuit would reveal, and because of

(01:09:43):
what the dominion lawsuit proved. Tucker Carlson had already said
about Fox management, including Rupert Murdoch, who just personally fired
Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson was fired because he somehow found
the line at an endemically sexist, abusive place like News
Corp and still managed somehow to cross that line. There

(01:10:06):
are tipping points for crap like this, even at Fox.
Ask Bill O'Reilly, ask Roger Ales, and I think ask
Tucker Carlson. And he trashed his bosses in black and white.
He may have trash Murdoch. He certainly trash Murdoch's most
devoted aids. And you do not cross Rupert Murdoch within
News Corp and long survive, and you can be certain

(01:10:30):
he was fired because the Murdoch statement does not say
he was fired. It reads only Fox News Media and
Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him
for his service. He agreed to part ways in exactly
the manner CEO Jeff Schell agreed to depart and BC
yesterday they said you're leaving, and the other guy said, okay.

(01:10:56):
I mean when Fox fired me from its sports department
in two thousand and one, it gave me a more
fulsome farewell statement than Carlson just got. Included quotes from
me thanking my staff, and they gave me all the
money they owed me. And there are clear indications Rupert
does not intend to pay Tucker Carlson. The part about

(01:11:17):
firing his executive producer also gives more juice to the
explanation that this is mostly about that Abby Grosberg suit.
And while on Twitter this morning, I joked about Carlson's
firing and said that I did not see this coming.
Kind of did when the opening of the Dominion trial
was postponed by a day last week. I guessed here

(01:11:38):
that Dominion had even more eye popping evidenced against Fox,
and that could very well have been about Carlson, and
it could very well have been the result of the
more recent Grosberg suit. And now we are over the target.
To quote what I said on this podcast, somewhere there
was something else in the pile of items produced in Discovery,
something Dominion new it had, or something Dominion did not

(01:11:59):
know it had, that Fox suddenly knew Dominion had something
worse than Carlson saying he hated Trump, something worse than
all the executives threatening all the reporters who tried to
tell the truth, something that might have destroyed, if not
Fox itself, then a significant chunk of its franchise in
one fell swoop anyway, I still think there is still

(01:12:19):
some fatal there there. I'm actually not fond of quoting myself,
but a week ago tomorrow I kind of predicted which
part of the Fox franchise a dominion trial might have jeopardized.
Quote Hannity is hateful, garbage, and Ingram hasn't been all
there since nine to eleven. But I can't imagine there's

(01:12:40):
anything by them or about them that could sink Fox,
Quote News, or Murdoch or just their own shows. But
Tucker Carlson every night that eight o'clock comes around and
we do not hear a voiceover announcer say, Tucker Carlson
tonight won't be seen ever again because of the you
know we now welcome back Bill oh Riley. I'm surprised

(01:13:05):
any of us who ever worked with Tucker Carlson believed
he did not have skeletons in his closet. He had
a whole house made of nothing but closets. End Quote
Tucker Carlson Tonight won't be seen ever again because of
the you know lost in the understandable focus on the

(01:13:25):
parts of ex Carlson producer Grosberg's lawsuit that implicated Fox
in the dominion scandal was the second part of her
complaint that got Tucker Carlson fired Today that as a
woman at Fox, she was subjected to quote vile sexist stereotypes,
especially after she was moved from the Maria Bartiromo Show

(01:13:45):
to the Tucker Carlson Show. In her suit, she says
that the day she started on Carlson's show, her office
was plastered with images of Nancy Pelosi quote in a
plunging bathing suit revealing her cleavage. Grosberg also claimed that
before Michigan's Republican candidate for governor, Tudor Dixon, appeared on
their show in October last year, Carlson participated in a

(01:14:09):
mock debate in his office with his staff over whether
Dixon or the incumbent governor Greton Gretchen Whitmer was quote
hotter and more effable. This debate was moderated by Carlson's
editorial producer, Andrew Carmichael, who made several sexist remarks about
the two women's appearance and even polled the office on

(01:14:30):
their views. The same offensive discussion resurfaced when Ms Dixon
joined the show again weeks later. End quote in these discussions.
No woman, whether she was a Republican politician or a
female staffer at Fox News, was safe from suddenly becoming
the target of sexist, demeaning comments, such as being called

(01:14:52):
a C word. Fox has had to pay and pay
and pay for what O'Reilly did, what Ales did to
Gretchen Carlson, to Andrea Macris, to dozens of other women.
And you will recall Carlson's comments on a shock jock
radio show from two thousand and six through twenty eleven,

(01:15:14):
full of misogyny and underaged sex jokes and tinged with
racism and the not so funny frat boy humor that
has defined his fifty three years on this earth as
the kind of immature predator you often read about in
the newspapers under the heading will he be tried as
a child or as an adult? And let me quote

(01:15:35):
also from something buried deep in a New York Times
report after the settlement about how Dominion's attorney had planned
to begin his opening statement a week ago tomorrow. Quote,
a presentation of roughly sixty slides had been loaded into
the courtroom's audio visual system, some containing new damning revelations
from the private communications inside Fox New damning inside, more sexism,

(01:16:04):
more misogyny, an assault. Who knows. Maybe that's why Rupert
paid it off. Maybe that's why Rupert fired Tucker, and
ultimately Tucker Carlson's firing is actually about the dominion suit,
but not in the way one might first assume. The

(01:16:25):
texts and emails in the dominion suit discovery that we
saw also revealed a world in which Flatley Tucker Carlson
believed he ran Fox News and everybody else, including management,
including Murdoch, was there to do his bidding. There is
a very powerful News Corp. Executive vice president named Arena Braganti.
She has been there forever she used to do pr

(01:16:46):
for Fox News. She is as foul a human being
as I have ever encountered in this business. And Dominion
revealed an exchange between Carlson and Laura Ingram about the
debunking of the Trump lies about the twenty twenty election,
the debunkings they were so offended by. She is coordinating this.

(01:17:07):
Ingram texted Carlson about Briganti. Carlson replied, quote without question,
Irena hates Prime Time. Trust me, that's not speculation. End quote.
That tension between the executives and the quote unquote real
newspeople on the one hand and the primetime opinion hosts
on the other is constant and wearying and eternal in

(01:17:31):
cable news, no matter the decade, no matter the venue,
and it always ends the same way, with the opinion
host losing because they may make more money for management,
but they also produce more headaches, and they produce all
the lawsuits and all the in person complaints. Presumably there
was more evidence of Carlson slamming his bosses, maybe even

(01:17:52):
Murdoch himself in print or just in conversation, to say
nothing of the misogyny and the Grosberg issues. And remember
this management in television will always protect management.

Speaker 3 (01:18:09):
Then.

Speaker 1 (01:18:09):
I've often told the story of when I worked at
Fox and developed a sourced story that Rupert Murdoch was
going to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, and
nobody knew this. I did not know if I could
report it. It was Fox's candy store. It was their
right to tell me I could not report it on
their network. So I called Murdoch's personal PR unit and

(01:18:30):
those guys said, yes, you can report it. We don't
interfere if you think it's the real story as long
as you run our denial and as long as you
make it clear the story is not coming from inside
the company or the corporation. And I did all that,
and the denial and the disclaimer was twice as long
as the story, and two weeks later I was fired.
And ten years later Rupert Murdoch confirmed he had fired

(01:18:54):
me personally because he was so angry that I had
revealed his secrets, even though I had followed his rules
and asked before every step I took. And Tucker Carlson
has not followed Rupert Murdoch's rules. I am not defending Murdoch.
I am just here to explain him. In addition to that,

(01:19:18):
a month ago yesterday, the attorney for Ray Epps, the
man the right wing has universally speared as some kind
of FBI plant slash provocateur, on January sixth, wrote to
Carlson demanding a retraction. The lawyer asked for a retraction
for his quote false and defamatory statements, insisted on a
quote formal on air apology for the lies spread about

(01:19:40):
mister Epps by others and Carlson on Fox quote the
fanciful notions that mister Carlson advances on his show regarding
mister EPP's involvement in the January sixth insurrection are demonstrably
and already proven to be false, and yet mister Carlson
persists with his assault on the truth and if there
are any other minor components to this necessary. It's noteworthy

(01:20:03):
too that Carlson's January six video blockbuster charade with Kevin
McCarthy blew up, but it blew up mostly in his
own face. In addition to producing so little actual video
of any interest to anybody whatsoever that he had to
reuse most of it on two or three different shows.
Carlson used some of it to smear this EPs. As

(01:20:25):
late as last week, Carlson also made reference on air
to how many people did not believe that the twenty
twenty election was legitimate, exactly the kind of playing with
fire that got Fox sued by Dominion Smartmatic, probably by
Ray Epps, and definitely by Abbi Grosberg. Last part, No,
Tucker Carlson was not fired as part of the Dominion settlement.

(01:20:48):
Dominion didn't even get a retraction, let alone an apology
or firings. What occurred in discovery for the dominion lawsuit
is a big part of this, But do not fall
for that logical fallacy B followed A, therefore a cause B.
Whatever the ultimate nuances proved to be. Tucker Carlson has

(01:21:10):
now completed an epic hat trick. Fired by CNN after
John Stewart humiliated him during a two thousand and four
episode of Crossfire, fired by MSNBC in two thousand and
eight after his audience shrank to a number smaller than
his staff, and fired by Fox in twenty twenty three
by Rupert Murdoch. Personally, I'll put my early money on

(01:21:35):
the Grosberg suit and women and misogyny and the insults
to Murdoch and his favorites. And then also that Fox
eternal question, why are we paying this guy thirty million
a year when we can get Pete Hegseth or Jesse
Waters or Deucey Junior to be just as stupid and
just as racist for a tenth of that. But lastly,

(01:21:58):
the big picture of today's shocking developments, Tucker Carlson is
off our televisions now at least. Fox may find somebody
worse they always have, but for now, at least for today,
for this week, for this month, Fox has toppled one
of the heroes of the fascist, racist right wing as
surely as they pulled down the statue of Sadam Hussein

(01:22:22):
in Iraq. It is useful to try to understand why
this happened, and I hope I've helped to explain it.
Rupert Murdoch fired him any other questions, because really this
is a time to celebrate, to dance, to sing, to
exult in our Shotenfreud, so Oh, Nancy.

Speaker 3 (01:22:54):
Rightime for Talk on Our Start, turn Fier, Jumcons, Dino Dinozoa,

(01:23:14):
bendun Feed, Bast Mood, Chick, got Man and Fell, dyn Froyde,
Sunt Free, Duncan and Faust.

Speaker 1 (01:23:36):
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