A short post this morning as I am running behind on some other priorities. Nonetheless, I can’t recommend strongly enough that you take some time to listen to Tucker’s conversation with Col. Douglas Macgregor about the situation in the Middle East and its threat to the U.S. He covers how this conflict will likely become not just a regional war but a World War, our economic and military weakness, and how our open southern border has placed us at tremendous risk.
Tag Archives: tuckercarlson
Daily Broadside | America is In a Death Spiral
I used to laugh at the idiocy of European countries allowing themselves to be overrun by foreigners. I’m not laughing anymore.
EAGLE PASS, Texas — Illegal migrants fist bumped and thanked Border Patrol agents for cutting through barbed wire that had been erected by Texas authorities to secure the border, the Daily Caller News Foundation observed Thursday in Eagle Pass, Texas.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently instructed Texas authorities to place more wire along the Rio Grande River to address the influx of illegal crossings. Border Patrol agents cut through the wire to take into custody a group of migrants that had crossed the Rio Grande and arrived at the U.S. side of the river.
The migrants who crossed illegally Thursday thanked Border Patrol and the U.S. after they were let in.
What is happening?
Our “Border Patrol agents” are acting as doormen doormats for foreigners who have no business being in our country. It’s lawlessness. It’s anarchy. It’s self-destructive.
And it all starts at the top with the Resident and his evil puppet masters.
Did you know that there isn’t any money for border protection in the hastily-passed CR that Kevin McCarthy “””negotiated””” with the Democrats? Now we know why: the border patrol is facilitating the invasion. They don’t need any money for protection because “””protection””” is not what they’re doing. They’re freaking fist-bumping illegals, then taking them “into custody,” which means these foreign invaders soon be on busses to sanctuary cities all over the country.
The Border Patrol, which is the armed law enforcement division of U.S. Customs and Border Protection within the Department of Homeland Security, is only following orders. But those orders come from Alejandro N. Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security.
And Secretary Mayorkas has no interest in defending our borders, even though THAT’S THE JOB.
America is in a death spiral, and we won’t pull out of it until we clear out all the anti-American, Marxist globalists like Alejandro.
That is, if there’s time. I’m beginning to think we don’t have time.
Here’s another example:
One way liberals are working to keep Trump off the ballot is through “a legal barrage against Trump that so far includes a total of 91 felony counts, every one of them politically motivated.”
That barrage includes the civil “fraud” trial in New York that started today. As Tucker explained:
In some, Trump stands accused of inflating the value of collateral used to secure loans, loans that he has already paid back with interest. In other words, there is no injured party in this case. The biggest banks in the world assessed the risk, and they made a profit…not a single person was defrauded. For this non-crime Trump and his children are in the process of losing their homes and their businesses.
I’d encourage you to watch the whole thing, here:
As Tucker and VDH underscore, we’d better wake up to the fact that we are witnessing a revolution and be willing to fight for the survival of our country.
I’m reading “The Sumter Gambit” by Robert Spencer. His thesis is that the Left is trying in every way to provoke the Right into firing the first shots of a new civil war so that the government will have the pretext to impose martial law and crack down on anyone who doesn’t spout the official narrative.
Guess who that will be? MAGA, conservatives, and Christians.
As I’ve cautioned before (following Doug Wilson here and here), don’t take the bait.
But do keep your powder dry and your guns clean.
Daily Broadside | ‘Not My Concern’: Pence Tanks His Campaign With Odd Response
When Trump chose Mike Pence as his VP, I thought that Pence was a good choice (and it made a funny “Trumpence” sound). By all accounts he was a seasoned Christian man, he guarded his marriage by not having a meal alone with another woman and, as governor of Indiana, he seemed to have done an adequate job.
But ever since the events of January 6 and its aftermath, when Pence refused to challenge the results of the 2020 election even though there was plenty of evidence of fraud, he has revealed himself to be more of an establishment figure.
One thing we don’t need right now is an establishment figure.
Fortunately, Pence did us all a favor and deep-sixed whatever minimal chance he might have had as a candidate.
But even though Tucker emerged as one of the stars of the evening, the show was not about him but about that clutch of GOP hopefuls. Who among that gang of six won?
It’s probably easier to start with the loser, chief among whom was Mike Pence, who might just as well have used the occasion to perform an act of self-immolation. The key moment came in an exchange about foreign policy, in particular U.S. policy with respect to the war in Ukraine. Pence said he was distressed that we had yet to send Ukraine the promised Abrams tanks or train Ukrainian pilots to fly F16s.
“You are distressed,” said Tucker, “that the Ukrainians don’t have enough American tanks. Every city in the United States has become much worse in the last three years. . . .and yet your concern is that the Ukrainians . . . don’t have enough tanks? Where’s the concern in the United States in that?”
“Well, that’s not my concern. Tucker, I’ve heard that routine from you before, but that’s not my concern.”
“Not my concern.”
Bang. “Not my concern.”
While Mollie Hemingway was generous in her critique of the comment, that phrase is going to haunt Pence for the remainder of his campaign. It was not at all clear what was “not” Pence’s concern, but it sure sounded like it was America and its problems, rather than a proxy war in which we have almost no vested interest.
My take on it is that whether he was referring to our support of the war in Ukraine or he was referring to the sad state of American cities, saying that either is “not my concern” is a rather stunning backhand to the question.
And Carlson is no slouch — he was direct with all the candidates who sat with him in the forum.
Carlson is free to ask difficult questions since he is not working for the establishment media. He lost his evening TV show because his populist questions prompted Fox’s establishment board to shut him down, despite the resulting huge loss of viewers.
By the way, Fox News aired their “new and improved” lineup last night of Ingram, Watters, Hannity and Gutfeld. Do they really think that rearranging the deck chairs is going to save this sinking ship? More to the point, do they even care?
In fact, Carlson has a pocketbook and a ratings incentive to keep the pressure on politicians. Millions of ordinary Americans have given up on the establishment’s media coverage of the establishment’s political priorities. That popularity was made clear the next day when Carlson spoke at the TPUSA Conference in Florida:
[…]
Several of the politicians stared daggers at Carlson — and the leading candidate refused to sit in the hot seat.
That’s what I find refreshing about Carlson — he seems to be fearless and isn’t interested in soft focus interviews. That’s also what I found refreshing about Trump: he didn’t play the game — he disrupted it. That’s what Tucker is doing — disrupting the “normal” routine we’re used to seeing with political figures.
If the participants thought this was going to be another tongue bath, they were certainly surprised. He asked hard questions, and some of their answers exposed their muddled thinking. At least two of them – Asa Hutchinson and Mike Pence — were clear losers and can now be safely considered out of the running.
For what it’s worth, of all the candidates not named Trump, I currently like Ramaswamy and DeSantis.
Daily Broadside | Speak Up and Call Evil What It Is
Yesterday I wrote that there seems to be a gathering consensus that now is the time to speak up about the cultural revolution that we’re experiencing in the U.S., and that by “speaking up,” I mean getting educated and not being shy to educate others or to take a stand contrary to the woke orthodoxy that currently reigns as virtue in our country.
One of the authors and speakers I follow is Doug Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. I’m going to mash together what he wrote yesterday with a sprinkle of thoughts from Tucker Carlson and Naomi Wolf. First, here’s some of what Wilson said in his blog post:
All societies are grounded in the will of their God or gods, no exceptions. And when a society (like ours) pretends to be exempt from this iron law, the thing that results is massive amounts of confusion. In our case, the time of that confusion was lengthened and drawn out because we had an enormous amount of that moral capital. The prodigal son was truly disobedient, but he also had a really big inheritance to squander. It took him a while.
But our confusion about who is the god of the system does not mean that the god of the system is confused about it. We might think that we are all being decent bipedal carbon units in our Judeo/Christian faith tradition, when we are actually in the process of being enslaved to the service of Mammon. But our confusion is not shared by Mammon. Mammon knows all about it. Mammon knows the game.
So with that being the case, why am I being upbeat about our hot mess of a culture? The thing that has happened is this. Our situation has grown dire enough that when I now say it is Christ or chaos, an ordinary Christian can look at that and know exactly what I am talking about. Twenty-five years ago, this stark and very binary choice would have been very hard to explain to rank-and-file Christians—but now many of them are out looking for an explanation, and when someone gives it to them, they grasp it in under a minute.
This is an encouraging observation. He’s saying that people — and, in particular, Christian people — are beginning to notice that something is very wrong. And not only are they noticing that something is wrong, they are noticing that it is so wrong, so dire, that there’s really only two ways to go from here: continue into the chaos, or reverse course by throwing up roadblocks and barriers to any further progress down that road by intentionally standing on, and for, Christ.
In other words, Wilson says, we’re starting to pay attention.
But you know who else is paying attention and wondering what in the world is going on? Opinion leaders and influencers outside of the Christian faith. Neither Tucker Carlson nor Naomi Wolf would necessarily be expected to describe what is happening in distinctly Christian terms, but that is what has happened.
Carlson, by his own admission, is Episcopalian, “the shallowest faith tradition that’s ever been invented.” Yet, listen to what he says during his speech at the Heritage Foundation, the Friday night before his show was cancelled by Fox News.
Well, what’s the point of child sacrifice [abortion]? Well, there’s no policy goal entwined with that. No, that’s a theological phenomenon.
And that’s kind of the point I’m making. None of this makes sense in conventional political terms. When people, or crowds of people, or the largest crowd of people at all, which is the federal government, the largest human organization in human history decide that the goal is to destroy things, destruction for its own sake, “Hey, let’s tear it down,” what you’re watching is not a political movement. It’s evil.
That seems like a courageous act to me. In a culture where “tolerance” and “diversity” and “inclusion” are the highest values, making a moral judgement about someone else’s behavior is tantamount to a declaration of war. It’s deeply offensive to a society that is steeped in moral relativism. Carlson’s observation comes out of a conservative political viewpoint with at least the trappings of a Judeo-Christian worldview.
Naomi Wolf, on the other hand, has been, for most of her political life, a hard-left feminist of Jewish extraction, who considered her faith unimportant and, anyway, deeply personal. But during the Chinese Lung Pox hysteria, she did her research and began to discover that there was something much bigger and darker going on. Here’s what she wrote more than a year ago:
I told the group that I was now willing to speak about God publicly, because I had looked at what had descended on us from every angle, using my normal critical training and faculties; and that it was so elaborate in its construction, so comprehensive, and so cruel, with an almost superhuman, flamboyant, baroque imagination made out of the essence of cruelty itself — that I could not see that it had been accomplished by mere humans working on the bumbling human level in the dumb political space.
I felt around us, in the majestic nature of the awfulness of the evil around us, the presence of “principalities and powers” — almost awe-inspiring levels of darkness and of inhuman, anti-human forces. In the policies unfolding around us I saw again and again anti-human outcomes being generated: policies aimed at killing children’s joy; at literally suffocating children, restricting their breath, speech and laughter; at killing school; at killing ties between families and extended families; at killing churches and synagogues and mosques; and, from the highest levels, from the President’s own bully pulpit, demands for people to collude in excluding, rejecting, dismissing, shunning, hating their neighbors and loved ones and friends.
I have seen bad politics all of my life and this drama unfolding around us goes beyond bad politics, which is silly and manageable and not that scary. This — this is scary, metaphysically scary. In contrast to hapless human mismanagement, this darkness has the tinge of the pure, elemental evil that underlay and gave such hideous beauty to the theatrics of Nazism; it is the same nasty glamour that surrounds Leni Riefenstahl films.
In short, I don’t think humans are smart or powerful enough to have come up with this horror all alone.
So I told the group in the woods, that the very impressiveness of evil all around us in all of its new majesty, was leading me to believe in a newly literal and immediate way in the presence, the possibility, the necessity of a countervailing force — that of a God. It was almost a negative proof: an evil this large must mean that there is a God at which it is aiming its malevolence.
And that is a huge leap for me to take, as a classical Liberal writer in a postwar world, — to say these things out loud.
Grounded postmodern intellectuals are not supposed to talk about or believe in spiritual matters — at least not in public. We are supposed to be shy about referencing God Himself, and are certainly are not supposed to talk about evil or the forces of darkness.
Here are two secular personalities who have both come to the conclusion that our society is so broken, so twisted, so upside-down, that they’re forced to conclude that there is a force at work that transcends what we can see, and they label it “evil,” a theological term associated with, at minimum, the Jewish and Christian faiths. What I find so remarkable is that they’re so awestruck by the sinister nature of what we’re experiencing that they’re forced to use a theological term that many in the Christian faith themselves aren’t willing to utter for fear of being labeled a nutter.
And that brings me back to Wilson’s commentary. It’s great that believers are waking up to the ugly reality of our situation, but we need to be willing to say so. We also need to not only recognize that what we’re seeing is evil; we need to articulate that it is so. Christians, of all people, have the theological language, history and book to back up our claims.
The other thing that both Wolf and Carlson admit to is that the power of evil is so overwhelming that they both suggest that prayer is essential. From the same linked sources:
Carlson: “[M]aybe we should all take just 10 minutes a day to say a prayer about it. I’m serious. Why not? And I’m saying that to you not as some kind of evangelist, I’m literally saying that to you as an Episcopalian, the Samaritans of our time. I’m coming to you from the most humble and lowly theological position you can. I’m literally an Episcopalian. And even I have concluded it might be worth taking just 10 minutes out of your busy schedule to say a prayer for the future, and I hope you will.
Wolf: “I confessed at that gathering in the woods with the health freedom community, that I had started to pray again. This was after many years of thinking that my spiritual life was not that important, and certainly very personal, almost embarrassingly so, and thus it was not something I should mention in public.”
If secular types like Wolf and Carlson are willing to call evil, evil, and to call on God for help in resisting it, shouldn’t we be willing and ready to do the same?
Daily Broadside | Fox News and Anheuser-Busch Deserve To Be Left By Conservatives
Happy Friday and happy Cinco de Mayo. According to Wikipedia, the holiday “generates beer sales on par with the Super Bowl.” That’s unfortunate for Bud Light, which is going to miss out on that annual bonanza!
Bud Light has hemorrhaged sales in recent weeks after executives partnered with Mulvaney, a biological man who claims to be a woman, and chronicled his purported gender transition on social media. Doukeris told analysts that social media users are spreading “misinformation” about the nature of the partnership, according to a report from Fox Business.
“We need to clarify the facts,” the executive for the Belgian conglomerate remarked, adding that the controversy is about “one influencer, one post and not a campaign.”
Sales for draft beer products marketed by Anheuser-Busch InBev nevertheless fell in the immediate aftermath of the partnership and continues to decline weeks after the controversy as beer enthusiasts search for alternatives. Doukeris revealed that Anheuser-Busch is now “providing direct financial support” to delivery drivers, sales representatives, wholesalers, bar owners, and other workers affected by the boycott.
Doukeris is minimizing the partnership with Mulvaney, dismissing it as “one influencer, one post and not a campaign.” Gosh, good thing it was only “one post” — no telling what a full blown campaign would’ve done!
This is the kind of tone deaf response that corporations flirting with wokeness toss out in their defense. Does he actually think that consumers care whether it was “one post” or a national campaign? It was the violation of the brand bond that sunk them.
But it’s even worse than that as they ignored—or are ignorant of—a key feature of the beer drinker, the incredible bond the consumer has with the product.
Not all products have the same level of bond with their consumers as others. But the beer or booze you drink, the vehicle you drive (as an example, Ford, Dodge, or Chevy pickups), and back when it was acceptable, the cigarette you smoked, all said something about you.
Thus, these types of products have a much higher customer bond than say the bathroom cleaning products you use. Few products have a higher bond than beer.
They have thousands and thousands of interactions with the brand every year . . . for years. Parties, birthdays, going to bars, football games, NASCAR, just sitting around at home watching TV, and through good times and bad with a friend who’s always there for you.
This brand bond is a reflection of what consumers perceive themselves to be. And having a role-playing guy who says he’s a woman sitting in a bubble bath and crowing about becoming the brand ambassador of your favorite beer is not what these consumers view themselves to be. It is a jarring affront to their perception of reality. It was an almost universal, WTF moment for all Bud Light drinkers.
Thus, ABI violated this bond and set off a firestorm like none before in the beer world, most likely forever changing the beer competitive landscape.
Most analysis focuses on the guy playing a gal, but that is where they are wrong. It’s not fundamentally about Dylan Mulvaney. It’s about the violation of this bond. And the stronger the bond, the greater the feeling of betrayal.
Worse yet, Doukeris is blaming “social media users” for “spreading ‘misinformation.'” Got that? It’s your fault that this happened. But Anheuser-Busch is confident it can overcome it’s consumer’s mistakes.
“We believe we have the experience, the resources and the partners to manage this. And our four-year growth outlook is unchanged,” Doukeris said.
“We want to reiterate our support for our wholesaler partners and everyone who brings our great beers to the market. I can tell you that we have the agility, resources and people to support the U.S. team and move forward,” he added.
“We will continue to learn, meet the moment in time, all be stronger and we work tirelessly to do what we do best: Bring people together over a beer and creating a future of more cheers.”
That sounds just like another corporation that deliberately torpedoed it’s brand by firing its top broadcast personality. Fox News has lost nearly half its audience in what used to be Tucker Carlson’s 8:00 PM slot.
Ratings for Fox News have dropped considerably in the wake of popular anchor Tucker Carlson departing from the network.
During its 8 p.m. hour, the network has dropped from a three million viewer average to a 1.65 million viewer average since the departure of Tucker Carlson; the hour was previously filled by Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade, which will then be filled by Fox News personality Lawrence Jones. Per the Washington Post:
The disparity was most stark on Wednesday, when Kilmeade’s 8 p.m. hour received an average of 1.3 million total viewers, compared with the 3 million Carlson received a week earlier — a decline of 56 percent. Overall, the network experienced a 45 percent viewership decline last week without Carlson in the host’s chair.
When Fox announced Carlson’s forced departure April 24, the network said that “rotating Fox News personalities” will fill in until a permanent 8 p.m. host is selected. The network did something similar with the 7 p.m. hour, after it was vacated by anchor Martha MacCallum, and ultimately settled on Jesse Watters as the permanent host. “Jesse Watters Primetime” has been a major success for Fox News, and Watters, who also co-hosts “The Five,” is considered a possible candidate for Carlson’s old slot.
Beyond the 8 p.m. slot, the network has also seen a sharp decline in the 25-54 demographic in the 6 p.m., 7 p.m., and 9 p.m. time slots.
Imagine Tucker Carlson as Bud Light and Fox News as the parent company, Anheuser-Busch. Now imagine A-B cutting off production of its top-selling beer without explanation, and you begin to get a sense of what Fox News has done. Just as the abandonment of Bud Light consumers has created a halo effect on other A-B brands, so has Tucker Carlson’s firing affected other shows, notably Hannity and Ingraham, which have both lost about a third of their audiences without Carlson’s lead-in.
“The demo” is that audience bloc of 25-54-year-olds coveted by advertisers. It’s the key metric that analysts watch to gauge how well a show is doing.
Like A-B, Fox News issued a cheery and defiant statement to address concerns over the fallout of its decision.
“For more than 21 years, Fox News Channel has been cable news’ most-watched network in all categories with more Democrats, Independents and Republicans now tuning in than either CNN or MSNBC,” the company said.
“Attracting more than 50 percent of the cable news viewing audience with the top 12 programs in cable news, Fox News’ powerhouse team of journalists, analysts and opinion hosts are trusted more by viewers than any other news source,” it added.
Not if conservatives abandon the network.
So both Fox News and Anheuser-Busch are hemorrhaging consumers. I consider that good news. In fact, I want conservatives and other like-minded adults to not just boycott, but to ABANDON both companies. They need to hear from us.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the life blood of any company is money. Unless they suffer a significant financial loss that sticks, they won’t change their behavior. It’s great that by mid-April A-B had lost some $6.5 billion in value since their ill-advised attempt to break from their “fratty, kind of out-of-touch” consumers. But A-B is a beverage juggernaut with a net worth of $130.73 billion.
Fox Corporation, parent company of Fox News, lost $1 billion, or about 5 percent of its stock valuation following its announcement canceling Tucker Carlson’s show. But they, too, are a corporate behemoth, with a net worth of $16.26 billion.
Neither of these corporations are going out of business, but they need to hear from conservatives. Leftists take off the gloves and throw their weight around, demanding that companies toe their woke lines or that they fire any employee that doesn’t. Corporations fear the woke, but they don’t fear conservatives because we tend to be kind, be reserved, mind our own business, and despise hurting anyone or anything.
If Fox News loses its audience in the 8:00, 9:00 and 10:00 PM slots and they don’t come back, that sends a message. If Bud Light loses its consumers and they don’t come back, that sends a message. The message is that “we’re not going to take it.” But if consumers have a fit of pique then return to the beer or the program, that sends a message, too. The message is, “we’re offended, but also we love our beer and whatever replacement bobble head you give us.”
Other corporations will take note and act accordingly.
If you want to know how to participate in the “culture wars”, ABANDON those companies that cater to the Left. Let them know by your ABSENCE that you won’t give them money to ruin your children and our society by promoting men who pretend to be women or that if they have such contempt for you that they’d rather cut the top-rated cable host in all of television than cater to your interests that you’ll go find your news somewhere else.
It has to be done.
Have a good weekend.
Daily Broadside | The Destiny of Tucker Carlson Is Still Up In The Air
Tucker Carlson’s fate is still a hot topic of conversation and speculation one week after his eponymous show was unceremoniously axed from Fox News. More and more speculation about why his show was terminated is swirling, too.
On December 13, 2018, Tucker Carlson did a segment on the effects of massive, uncontrolled, and often illegal immigration from poor countries. Tucker showed videos of caravans of illegal immigrants coming to our borders, and of the piles of garbage they left behind. Tucker explained how this was hurting America in many ways. He criticized political leaders of both parties and business elites for ignoring the problem.
Tucker agreed that most of the immigrants themselves were “nice people”. However, he concluded:
“But as an economic matter this is insane. It’s indefensible, so no one even tries to defend it. Instead, our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this. We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor, they tell us, even if it makes our country poorer and dirtier and more divided.”
Everything Tucker Carlson said was true, undisputed, and reasonable. It had all been said many times by many political leaders and economic experts. In 2016, candidate Donald Trump won widespread, mainstream support by promising to fix these problems. Trump promised a border wall and strict enforcement of immigration laws. Tucker Carlson was correct to remind his viewers of how the leaders of both parties were ignoring this critical issue.
However, the Left used Tucker’s December 13, 2018 program to begin an orchestrated campaign to eliminate Tucker Carlson’s program, and possibly the entire Fox News network, from cable television. [snip]
Within days, at least 26 mainstream corporate sponsors publicly announced that they would no longer sponsor the Tucker Carlson program.
The argument is that without first-tier corporate sponsorship, a primetime slot couldn’t be indefinitely sustained, and Carlson was doomed. If that’s true, then the Leftists got another scalp, even though it took them a while.
On the other hand, I have a hard time believing that it was just a money issue. You can’t tell me that a behemoth like Fox News Corp couldn’t sustain their top rated program? There were other ways to make up the budget, I’m sure. They could cut loose any number of other personalities like, say, Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham.
Surprisingly, Carlson is still employed by Fox News, according to Carlson himself.
Fox’s firing of the most-watched host on cable news, Tucker Carlson, is still roiling Leftists and patriots alike, but now Carlson himself has said that it didn’t actually happen at all. In a text message to the news analysis site 19FortyFive, Carlson said flatly: “I’m still employed by Fox.” This doesn’t mean, however, that all is forgiven and that his show will be back on the air Monday. On the contrary, it could hinder Carlson’s plans to take his truth-telling elsewhere. [snip]
… Fox could conceivably muzzle Carlson and prevent him from being able to go anywhere else. The network could simply pay him to do nothing.
That would depend, however, on Fox having any funds to pay him with, and if it continues to lose viewers at the rate it’s been losing them since it deep-sixed Carlson’s show, it might find it more profitable to release him from his contract rather than silence him, whether out of spite or out of a desire to please the Leftist establishment.
In spite of that, TMZ is reporting that Newsmax has made overtures to Carlson, and not just with money.
Sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ … the news channel is doing everything it can to sweeten the deal for Tucker to come on board — including floating the idea of letting him program the whole channel, not just his own show.
That would be a pretty enticing deal point … in addition to having his own primetime show, Tucker would have a say over what shows lead into and out of his show, which can be key in achieving bigger TV ratings.
While our sources stress Newsmax hasn’t formally offered Tucker a job — he can’t have formal discussions due to his current Fox News contract — we’re told the network execs have made it clear to people around him, they would basically give him a big say in rebranding their channel.
I don’t know how much credibility to give what is essentially a gossip site, but if they say, “sources with direct knowledge …” it is probably credible. Newsmax’s ratings have risen since Carlson was shown the door over at Fox.
For example, the week before Carlson’s ouster, Eric Bolling’s 8 p.m. show on Newsmax drew 146,000 viewers while going head-to-head with Carlson. Last week, Bolling had 531,000 viewers and upped that on Tuesday to 562,000, putting his show at what the Times said was 80 percent of Anderson Cooper’s CNN audience that night.
With all of this still very much in play, I was impressed by Doug Wilson’s commentary as he listens to Carlson’s speech to the Heritage Foundation. Wilson suggests we all pray for Tucker Carlson. If you have the time, I highly recommend that you listen to the whole thing.
Daily Broadside | Carlson Pops Up With Material He Used at the Heritage Foundation and Crushes His Fox News Numbers
Tucker Carlson showed up on Twitter at 8:00 PM ET (heh heh) with an unannounced monologue last night that already had more views than his show on Fox ever got (averaged 3.2 million viewers) an hour after he posted it.
His topic was the “unbelievably stupid debates” we see on television, which are irrelevant and forgettable. Yet, he says, almost none of them concern really big topics like war, emerging science, demographic changes, civil liberties and corporate power, among them. His accusation: both political parties and their donors collude to shut down any discussion about those big topics because they aren’t in their best interests.
His conclusion: the United States is a one-party system.
His hope: our current moment is too ridiculous to last.
When honest people say what’s true, calmly and without embarrassment, they become powerful. At the same time the liars, who’ve been trying to silence them, shrink, and they become weaker. That’s the iron law of the universe: true things prevail.
This is a theme that he offered at the Heritage Foundation on Friday, the last night of his show (unbeknownst to him at the time).
The second you decide to tell the truth about something, you are filled with this — I don’t want to get supernatural on you — but you are filled with this power from somewhere else. Try it! Tell the truth about something. You feel it every day. The more you tell the truth, the stronger you become. That’s completely real. It’s measurable in the way that you feel.
You can watch his entire speech here.
I understand what he’s describing. I think it’s that sense of relief once you stop pretending that something is true that isn’t. If you hold a lie as the truth, it creates a tension within you. Once you admit the truth, that tension is released. That “power” you feel is the freedom the truth brings.
As Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32). That’s admittedly a bit of misapplication, but the principle, “the truth will set you free,” remains.
Carlson’s speech is interesting for another reason — it may be why he was fired from Fox. Here’s Matt Walsh’s take.
You can find the Vanity Fair article Walsh refers to here.
Of course, Carlson’s 8:00 PM slot at Fox News has already grown cold and thousands of viewers have canceled their Fox Nation subscriptions.
Fox must’ve thought their audience was so loyal to their brand that they could survive firing the most powerful conservative voice in cable news — in all of journalism, really. As I said on Tuesday, I’m guessing it will be a Bud Light moment, and a real head-scratcher at that.
But Carlson will be back and I hope he’ll hammer home the truth even more powerfully.
Daily Broadside | Fox News Is All Tuckered Out
Yesterday brought news of a host of host firings and leavings, the most shocking of which was Tucker Carlson at Fox News.
Tucker Carlson, the provocative, conservative prime-time host who sustained Fox News as a ratings juggernaut, has been forced out of the network.
Fox News announced the stunning departure of its top-rated host Monday with no explanation, but people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to comment publicly said the decision to fire Carlson came straight from Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch with input from board members and other Fox Corp. executives.
According to one person familiar with the discussions, Murdoch’s son Lachlan, executive chairman of Fox Corp., and Suzanne Scott, chief executive of Fox News Media, decided late Friday that Carlson had to go.
Carlson’s last show was Friday.
“Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” the network said in a statement. “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”
This follows the exit of Dan Bongino last week and rumors that Maria Bartiromo will go, too.
Seems like Fox is bleeding off whatever remaining conservatives are still at the network. Sure, Hannity is a conservative, but he’s a largely ineffective conservative. He’s not a movement leader. I haven’t watched him in years because he talks too much about himself and is too predictable. He’s a soft and comfortable conservative.
Greg Gutfeld is a weird dude who isn’t all that funny but has parlayed a humorous schtick into a regular show torching liberals. He also burns Geraldo Rivera during The Five, but that doesn’t mean he’s a movement leader.
Tucker Carlson was the only reason I ever tuned into Fox News anymore. He was smart, bold, and insightful. His monologues were often shared and talked about. Now that he’s gone, I can’t think of a single reason to watch. It’ll be interesting to see what happens — it sort of feels like a Bud Light moment. When you alienate your core audience, I’m not sure what they expect will happen.
Over at CNN, Don Lemon — or, as Tucker called him, Don le Mon — was fired after 17 years with the network. A boorish gay news personality, Lemon had tested the patience of new CEO Chris Licht with his antics during his demoted gig as a morning show anchor with two women.
CNN fired longtime host Don Lemon on Monday following his short and disastrous run as a morning show host, a little over two months after he apologized for on-air comments about Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley being past her prime.
The move quickly turned nasty. While CNN chairman and CEO Chris Licht announced, after Lemon had co-hosted the show Monday, that they had “parted ways,” Lemon characterized it as a firing and said it was surprise to him.
“After 17 years at CNN I would have thought someone in management would have the decency to tell me directly,” Lemon said. CNN said that Lemon was given the opportunity to meet with management but released a statement on Twitter instead.
CNN offered no public explanation for Lemon’s dismissal. During a February discussion on “CNN This Morning” with co-hosts Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins about the ages of politicians, he said that the 51-year-old Haley was not “in her prime.” A woman, he said, was considered in her prime “in her 20s, 30s and maybe her 40s.”
Harlow challenged Lemon, trying to clarify what he was referencing: “I think we need to qualify. Are you talking about prime for childbearing or are you talking about prime for being president?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just saying what the facts are,” Lemon responded.
Licht apparently decided that le Mon was past his prime. I never watched CNN, so my viewing habits won’t be affected by his ouster.
I think Licht is trying to pull CNN rightward after its sojourn into Trump Derangement Syndrome on the far left during Trump’s administration. On the other hand, it looks like Rupert Murdoch is pulling Fox News leftward from a more centrist position. It has a reputation for being a “conservative” network, but guys like Bret Baier, Geraldo Rivera, Jessica Tarlov, and former hosts Shepherd Smith, Juan Williams, and Chris Wallace, to varying degrees, aren’t and weren’t true conservatives. In addition, Fox News also has former House Speaker and RINO Paul Ryan on its board, and Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert’s son, is no conservative.
Carlson will be a hot commodity on the open market. Wherever he lands his audience will follow. Fox News will experience a severe drop in its ratings, and whoever picks up Carlson will experience a spike in theirs.
Daily Broadside | What Happens in Canada Won’t Stay in Canada
Last Friday I wrote that Christians need to be prepared “to be persecuted, to be an ‘object of amusement’ being destroyed ‘not for the public good but to gratify the cruelty of an individual’ — or a political party.” I gave you the examples of Garland’s DOJ spying on the Catholic Church and punishing a pro-life father for an incident at an abortion clinic for which he had already been cleared by local authorities.
Today I’ve got two more examples for you. The first is the case of two LGBTQ++ Washington Elementary School District (AZ) school board members who objected to student teachers provided by Arizona Christian University.
One of the board members took direct offense at the language about a “biblical lens.” Another complained about specific language describing the university’s mission as to “influence, engage, and transform the culture with truth by promoting the biblically informed values that are foundational to Western civilization.” A central complaint targeted the Christian school’s commitment to “traditional sexual morality and lifelong marriage between one man and one woman.”
[…]
Board member Tamillia Valenzuela, who described herself as “a bilingual, disabled, neurodivergent Queer Black Latina,” responded: “At some point we need to get real with ourselves and take a look at who we are making legal contracts with and the message that that is sending to the community because that makes me feel like I could not be safe in this school district.” Further: “That makes queer kids who are already facing attack from our lawmakers feel that they could not be safe in this community.”
Board member Kyle Clayton agreed. “I just don’t believe that belongs in schools,” he said. “I would never want my son to talk about his two dads and be shamed by a teacher who believed a certain way and is at a school that demands that they teach through their biblical lens.”
Even though Washington Elementary School District had received student teachers from ACU for the past 11 years and none of the student teachers violated school policy, the board voted unanimously to reject the contract with the school. Note that their rejection of ACU was based solely on theological grounds — a clear violation of religious liberties.
As R. Albert Mohler Jr. goes on to write, “This blatantly unconstitutional action reveals where many people are determined the society must go. Biblical Christianity must be cut off from civilized society.”
The second example is from our cousins up north across the border, where a pastor was protesting a drag queen story hour for children. Note that it is illegal for any Canadian citizen to object to the sexualization of children in the form of drag shows. Watch what Tucker Carlson says about it.
That is one of the most chilling examples of how the tables have turned on Christians that I’ve seen. First, the pastor was literally — and violently — thrown out of a meeting where he was protesting the corruption of children. The people doing the throwing weren’t cops (that I could tell). Then the pastor was arrested for causing a disturbance, for which he will undoubtedly be prosecuted.
Finally, as Tucker asks, “Where are all the professional Christians” like Tim Keller, David French and Beth Moore? I’m not sure why he cites them, other than that they’re “Christian” celebrities. In Tucker’s mind, apparently, they defend Christianity, although I’d argue that at least one of them — David French — finds common cause with the Left more often than conservative Christianity.
In addition to asking where the celebrities are, I’d ask where the local pastors are in Canada? Are they all staying quiet? What about all the Christians in Canada? Are they all staying quiet? If so, why?
Likewise, what about in our own country? Right now, Arizona Christian University is taking the issue they’re facing to court, which is only right. We can hope for a constitutional outcome, but what if we don’t? What then?
As Carl Truman recently wrote, “The time for evangelical leaders and institutions to speak is now. The moment to use the platforms we have to protect women and children has come. If J.K. Rowling has the courage to stand for the truth and to call for the protection of children and women, then so should we. Silence in the face of this evil is culpable and, make no mistake, will be noted by future generations.”
Daily Broadside | The Armed Insurrection Lie and the Evil Liars Who Sold It
“It almost seems like the narrative was created in advance.” — Julie Kelly
Everyone knows that the Democrats, legacy media and NeverTrumpers (surely, I repeat myself) have crafted a scripted narrative about what happened on January 6, 2021, calling it an “armed insurrection,” a “violent insurrection,” an event worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11, and because we almost lost our precious democracy (*spit*).
No doubt there was violence, but there were less than a handful of protesters charged with carrying a handgun during the breach — hardly what you’d call an armed mob. And three of them weren’t even at the “insurrection” but arrested later. I understand the energy of the crowd, but there is no way it can be characterized as an insurrection, either armed or violent, when it was not a coordinated attack nor when the only people who died on that day were members of the crowd, at least one (and probably two) of whom were murdered by Capitol Hill Police.
I watched Tucker last night for the second part of his report on the January 6 “riot” as he reveals the pertinent video footage from nearly 44,000 hours of video that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave him access to. Carlson is demonstrating once again that Democrats and their lap dogs in the media are lying to us.
[On Monday] Carlson exposed falsehoods that bolster key animating aspects of January 6 including the movements of Jacob Chansley; the activity of still-uncharged agitator Ray Epps; the death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick; alleged “reconnaissance tours” conducted by House Republicans the day before; the “escape” of Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.); and the overall deceptiveness of the January 6 Select Committee. “Taken as a whole, the video record does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection,” Carlson explained. “In fact, it demolishes that claim. And that’s exactly why the Democratic Party and its allies in the media prevented you from seeing it.”
Julie Kelly of American Greatness has been doing a yeoman’s job of actual journalism about the January 6 events and particularly about the persecution of what amounts to political prisoners who still languish in Gestapo Garland’s Archipelago.
American Greatness first reported Chansley’s peaceful interaction with Capitol Police officers in May 2021. Chansely spent more than 300 days in solitary confinement conditions under court-ordered pretrial detention before finally accepting an offer to plead guilty to the nonviolent offense of obstruction of an official proceeding. In announcing his sentence in November 2021, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth described Chansley, a Navy veteran with no criminal record and a history of mental disorders, as the “epitome” of January 6 and insisted his conduct was “horrific.” (Chansley was not charged with a violent crime.) He is currently serving a 41 month prison term.
There was also the lie of CHP officer Brian Sicknick who, it was first claimed, was killed when a fire extinguisher thrown by rioters hit him in the head. We’ve known that wasn’t true, but the video shown by Carlson proves it.
American Greatness has also covered the lies about what happened to Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, first raising doubts about the account of his death as early as February 2021. The media, Justice Department, leading Democrats, and the January 6 select committee claim Sicknick died as a result of scuffles with protesters that afternoon. But Carslon played a never-before-seen video of Sicknick walking around the inside of the building after the alleged attack where he appears to be healthy. A man from New Jersey, Julian Khater, pleaded guilty to spraying Sicknick with pepper spray after spending 18 months in the D.C. Gulag. He was sentenced to six years in prison.
The shoddy nature of these narratives constructed to score political points against Republicans and give the DOJ cause to ruin the lives of people with whom the current administration disagrees was exposed as soon as Officer Brian Sicknick’s death was ruled to be natural causes. This came months after the media smeared the protestors for killing this man. It was the first domino to fall and a major clue that everything that had been reported by liberal outlets about January 6 was wrong. Months later, that suspicion has been confirmed.
If these lies and propaganda efforts were conducted in some communist nation like Russia or Venezuela, we’d shake our heads and think “how terrible.” This kind of cheap political hit job is now being done here in our country, formerly known as the United States of America. I’m not sure what we are now, but we’re approximating a third-world dictatorship where truth is suppressed and political enemies are destroyed with propaganda and kangaroo courts.
The worst of it is that none of these Marxist liars, including Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer and turncoats Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, will ever be punished for their subversion. It’s a Uniparty, with the exception of a few. Even Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Minority Leader, calls January 6 a violent insurrection (linked above).
We’re not about to go over a cliff. The cliff is behind us and we’re dropping into the abyss. Unless something radical happens, I am not optimistic about our near future.