ELITES: When Carlson made ugly, bogus remarks...

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2022

...our blue elites responded: As far as we know, Tucker Carlson isn't cognitively challenged in any major way.

In the case of Donald J. Trump, we aren't entirely sure. With Tucker, we see few signs.

That's why we started yesterday's report with that first thing Tucker said. He was discussing the release of Brittney Griner—and he proceeded to make a claim he surely knew to be bogus:

CARLSON (12/8/22): "But no," says Joe Biden. "We had no choice to take but to take Brittney Griner over Paul Whelan. Putin demanded that."

BIDEN (videotape): We never forgot about Brittney. We've not forgotten about Paul Whelan, who has been unjustly detained in Russia for years. This was not a choice of which America to bring home.

CARLSON: "This was not a choice of which American to bring home?" Really? 

Oh, but it clearly was a choice. And we know it was a choice because the first accounts of the prisoner swap with Russia said it was a choice. 

For the Carlson transcript, click here.

Tucker said that Biden had a choice—he could have brought Paul Whelan home from his Russian prison. And he said we know that Biden had a choice because of what NBC said:

CARLSON (continuing directly): Earlier today, Andrea Mitchell of NBC—this is someone who's been in Washington covering news for more than 50 years, someone who is deeply supportive of the Joe Biden administration—contributed to a story that contained this line: "The Kremlin gave the White House the choice of either Griner or Whelan—or none." 

So Mitchell's piece attributed this fact to a "senior U.S. official." It was not a guess. It was sourced. 

One part of that statement was accurate! Earlier in the day, NBC News really had reported that the Kremlin had given "the White House the choice of either Griner or Whelan—or none." 

Six hours later, NBC News had appended a formal correction to that initial report. And by the way, the initial, later corrected report wasn't "Mitchell's piece." Andrea Mitchell had been listed as a contributor, not as one of the authors of the report.

Why did NBC News file that first report? We have no idea. 

That said, Carlson noted another accurate point during his monologue. This was the second time, in a matter of weeks, that NBC News had been forced to correct an initial report about a widely discussed event. 

Below, you see Carlson's slightly extended statement, in which he refers to that first corrected report:

CARLSON (continuing from above): So Mitchell's piece attributed this fact to a "senior U.S. official." It was not a guess. It was sourced. 

And then, as with the early reporting on Paul Pelosi last month, that account was scrubbed and sanitized, and the new version of the NBC story assures us that: "The Kremlin ultimately gave the White House the choice of either Griner or no one."

In other words, Joe Biden's version of events is now perfectly in sync with the official NBC News version of events. Of course. ,..So at this point, we can assume the obvious. The Biden administration chose Brittney Griner over Paul Whelan, the basketball player over the Marine facing 16 years. There was only room for one in the lifeboat and the Marine got left behind.

In that passage, Carlson linked this corrected report to NBC's earlier corrected report about the attack on Paul Pelosi. In fact, there had been such a corrected report. This wasn't NBC's first such report in recent weeks.

We don't know why NBC News keeps making these glaring errors. But in that passage, Carlson was telling his viewers something he surely knew to be bogus. 

He was saying we know that Biden chose Griner over Wallace because of that one, later corrected, NBC report. Indeed, he was saying this was "obvious," based on that one report!

As far as we know, Carlson isn't cognitively challenged. Assuming that impression is correct, Carlson knew he was saying something which was utterly bogus.

Carlson said we knew what Biden had done—that the truth was obvious. He had "chose[n] Brittney Griner over Paul Whelan...There was only room for one in the lifeboat and the Marine got left behind."

Presumably, Carlson knew that we knew no such thing, that no such thing was "obvious." He made the statement anyway, then went in an ugly direction:

CARLSON (continuing directly): Well, why did they make that choice? Well, you should know that Whelan is a Trump voter, and he made the mistake of saying so on social media. He's paying the price for that now. 

Brittney Griner is not. She's got very different politics. Brittney Griner despises the United States. She's been very vocal about that. This country is so repellent and immoral that two years ago she said: "I honestly feel we should not play the national anthem during our basketball season." She hates the country so much she doesn't want to hear its anthem. So there's that. 

That's the kind of position that gets you rewarded by Joe Biden. "Hate America? Perfect! We'll free the guy who sold weapons to drug cartels to get you out early."

That presentation was ugly; it was also remarkably stupid. Then, things got dumber and uglier still:

CARLSON (continuing directly): And then there's the matter of identity, which is central to equity. 

Brittney Griner is not White, and she's a lesbian. Now, those facts might seem irrelevant to you. We hope they do seem irrelevant because they are, but they're not irrelevant to the White House press secretary. In the view of the White House press secretary, those are essential qualifications for a prisoner swap.

At this point, Carlson played tape of something Karine Jean-Pierre had said in the course of announcing Griner's release. 

We'll have to postpone that part of this battle until tomorrow. The warfare gets extremely complex when the elites of our major tribes clash.

For today, we do need to offer this:

We know of exactly zero evidence in support of Carlson's ugly claims about Brittney Griner's political views. More specifically, we know of exactly zero evidence indicating that Brittney Griner "despises the United States," that she finds this country "repellent and immoral."

On the other hand, there's the possibly unwise statement Karine Jean-Pierre had made. And there's the somewhat selective account in the New York Times concerning what Carlson had said.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But our varied elites are at war with each other at the present time. 

In our view, Carlson made an array of statements last Thursday night which were ugly and baldly bogus. 

His work that night came from deep within a deeply disordered elite. Then too, there's the way our own tribe's elites responded—and then too, there's the year's best books!

Tomorrow: We try to wrap this up