In the last few days, Vladimir Putin and his propaganda machine have unofficially joined forces with QAnon conspiracy theorists and trying to push out the now-many-times-debunked idea that the Russian leader’s reason for invading Ukraine was to destroy the secret bioweapons labs that America is running there. Now, as The Wrap reports, we can officially add another tiny, insecure tyrant to the list of people pushing that malarkey: Tucker Carlson.
Surprised? Of course not. The Fox News host’s whole brand is based on being an ultra-smug contrarian a**hole, a fact he highlighted on Thursday night’s show when he took the media to task for saying that these totally untrue rumors are totally untrue. Here’s how he spun it:
“You know that the Pentagon talking points you saw reported as fact on television today—and last night—were an utter lie. Did the reporters who repeated those talking points verbatim know that they were a lie? Maybe they did. On the other hand, how would they know? They didn’t bother to do any reporting what. So. Ever,”
“They got a text from some Biden administration flack and they just read it on the air like it was true. You shouldn’t be surprised because that’s what they do. And it’s possible that they’re afraid not to do that. They know if they stray from the script the White House has written for them, they’ll be denounced from the briefing room as tools of Putin.”
Sounds like Tucker is responding to Jennifer Griffin without naming her pic.twitter.com/c2YOYF0yDO
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 11, 2022
As The Wrap’s Ross A. Lincoln points out, Carlson also seemed to take a thinly veiled shot at his Fox News colleague, national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin, who has been one of the news network’s loudest proponents of actual reporting, writing: “In one telling aside, [Carlson] appears unmistakably to include Griffin in those accusations and insinuations.”
Tucker: It’s so shameful that anybody employed as a reporter would do something like that without doing any actual reporting whatsoever, even bothering to learn about the subject and then to scold anyone for asking legitimate questions pic.twitter.com/QjkHZiN7UI
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 11, 2022
Looking forward to seeing more clips of Tucker aired on Russian state television.
(Via The Wrap)