Tucker Carlson loves nothing more than to fuel conspiracy theories in the minds of Fox News viewers, and he lit one up for himself this week while claiming that the NSA is spying on him (apparently at the behest of Joe Biden) because they want to take him off the air. Never mind that Tucker puts all his crazy out there on the air, so what would the point (of spying on him) be? Regardless, his claims arrive on the tail of (and may have something to do with) Ben Smith’s New York Times report about Tucker allegedly leaking Donald Trump dirt to liberal media sources. Well, Trump must not be too sore about that because he’s buying Tucker’s NSA claim.
One interesting thing to note here (and this has been, of course, noticed by CNN) is that Tucker’s Fox News colleagues have not stepped up to defend him (either on social media or on-air) on the monitoring claim. Nonetheless, Tucker believes what he’s selling while insisting (without providing any proof whatsoever) that a “whistleblower” within the agency told him that the spying (on his entire team) has been ongoing.
NEW: Fox News host Tucker Carlson says a government whistleblower told his team that the NSA is spying on his team's electronic communications and is "planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air." pic.twitter.com/DqOf6jndFC
— Daniel Chaitin (@danielchaitin7) June 29, 2021
It’s unclear whether Fox News will officially a statement on the subject. One would think that they’d want to get to the bottom of any of their employees allegedly being hacked by the U.S. government, right? Well, at least Tucker has one believer on his side: Trump. Via Mediaite, Trump is on Tucker’s side: “I think it’s true. It’s totally believable.”
The former president made the statement while speaking on The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, but Trump’s sentiment was a fleeting one that was sandwiched in between his own (unequivocally false) claims of the 2020 election being stolen from him. It’s worth nothing that The Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger has tweeted a screenshot of text messages with Tucker, who apparently claimed (eight full months ago) that he was being hacked by the NSA. Again, no proof appears here, only Tucker’s claims.
https://twitter.com/SollenbergerRC/status/1409738474236923905
(Via Mediaite)