Tucker Carlson, ex-FoxNews, is moving his program to Twitter. Yesterday was his inaugural episode. In the blogpost below, I listened to the whole thing, sentence by sentence, so that you you don’t have to. I comment on each of his assertions, fact-checking when it’s a question of facts, laughing at him when it’s a question of nonsense.
You can skip this post and jump to the second part where I summarize things. This post is entirely too long for reasonable people to read, so go read the shorter (but still long, sigh) summary post instead.
This post is full of typos. It’s just too long for me to diligently edit.
“It looks like somebody blew up the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine”
Fact-check: true, that’s what it looks like, that somebody blew something up.
But it’s equally possible it was an accident. The dam was damaged and the water levels the highest in 30 years. Last month in May waters crested many times over the dam — an event that usually lead to total dam failure.
When water overflows a dam, it starts eroding at that point, creating a bigger and bigger hole, creating more and more flowing water. This is the reason for the dutch story about a boy plugging a tiny hole in a dike with his finger, thus preventing the hole growing big and flooding the town.
Worse, the falling water undermines the dam, eating away underneath until the walls fail. This was the big problem with the Oroville dam failure. Falling water contains immense energy, which is why we exploit it for electricity. It easily has as much power as tons of explosives.
The point is that while it looks like somebody blew up the dam, that’s far from certain at this point. It may have been an accident.
“The rushing wall of water wiped out entire villages.”
Fact-check: There was no “wall of water”, villages weren’t wiped out. They were merely flooded. The waters rose and kept rising. This flooding is certainly catastrophic and bad, but there’s no current washing things away, just the typical sorts of problems you have with any other flood.
The Kahkovka dam is a “run-of-the-river” dam anyway. It’s only 17 meters high — in other words, the height of the water is going to be 17 meters or less downstream. Only a few places will it actually go above roof height.
It holds back a lot of water, the reservoir is the third biggest lake in Europe outside Russia, with the volume of the Great Salt Lake in the US. The flooding will be catastrophic and long lasting— just no wall of water.
“Puts the largest reactor in Europe in danger of melting down.”
Fact-check: No. The Zaporizhzhia reactors have been shut down for months, and this makes no difference. The reactors are still hot and need cooling, but as this story says, they don’t need very much cooling at all when not active.
If the reactors were operating, they’s probably have to shut down at this point. It’s probably less to do so with the amount of water (the river is still flowing), but more to do so with the fact that river water is warmer than lake water. Many nuclear plants need to shut down when water gets too warm.
In any case, there are so many fail-safes that the reactors aren’t going to melt-down, and if they melt-down, will probably be self-contained with no significant leak into the environment. These sorts of issues are anticipate. I’m a cybersecurity pen-tester, I’ve hacked several nuclear power plants. I’ve read their contingency documents (though sadly, I can’t cite them, so my info may be suspect). If they are situated next to a dammed reservoir, they all have contingencies for when the dam fails. Even simply lowering the height of the water can increase temperatures of the lake forcing a nuclear power plant to shut down wholly or partially.
To be fair, many news organizations make this same mistake. Everyone’s paranoid about nuclear power even when there’s no real danger.
“if this was intentional, it wasn’t a military tactic, it was an act of terrorism”
Fact-check: It might be have been a military tactic.
Russia claims Ukraine started their anticipated counteroffensive on Sunday, 48 hours before the dam failed. This tweet cites Russian soldiers on telegram channels saying that the flooding has trapped Ukraine forces on islands downstream from the dam.
It’s like Moses parting the Red Sea, letting it collapse on the Egyptian soldiers as they attempted to cross.
Of course, we don’t know any of this is true, but it’s clear that if Tucker claims its “not a military tactic”, then it’s up to him to support that assertion. I’m not sure he can, because that would mean proving a negative.
Whether or not one of the military’s had a purpose, it can still be a war crime. It’s caused suffering to hundreds of thousands. Whichever side that did it is definitely evil, we can agree upon that, regardless if we call it a terrorist attack or war crime.
“The Kakhovka dam was effectively Russian. It was built by the Russian government. It currently sits in Russian controlled territory.”
It’s not Russian infrastructure.
It was built by the Soviet Union in 1956, not the Russian government. It straddles Ukraine and Russian-controlled territories. The Russian military took control of it near the start of the war, because all the control mechanisms (like the power plant and sluice gates) are on their side. But the dam itself is shared between them, and both sides have infrastructure attached to the reservoir pulling out water.
When Ukraine takes back the territory (their plan), then obviously it would be all Ukraine infrastructure. Most everyone in the news media considers it Ukraine infrastructure. For example, this Guardian article quotes the US ambassador to the UN:
Why would Ukraine do this to its own territory and people, flood its land, force tens of thousands of people to leave their homes – it doesn’t make sense.
“the dam’s reservoir provides water to Crimea”
It’s not Crimea that’s uniquely impacted. The dam provides irrigation and drinking water to “a huge swath of southern Ukraine”, anything near the dam, on both sides. Ukraine reports hundreds of thousands of their own citizens have been impacted.
As for Crimea, the dam’s reservoir feeds the Northern Crimean Canal, which brings water to much of Crimea, primarily for irrigation. Ukraine shut that down in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, after which Crimea secured other water supplies. Once Russia took control of the dam in March 2022, they re-established the flow of water.
These facts demonstrate a few things. One of which is that Ukraine would indeed want to shut off the water to Ukraine in theory. The other is that doing so now wouldn’t have much impact in practice, after 8 years of Crimeans not having the water.
Both sides are hurt by this. It’s hard to see how either side benefits from hurting civilian population of the other side.
“Crimea, which for 240 years has been home to the Russian Black Sea fleet”
This is just irredentist nonsense. The status of Crimea is complex and is not resolved by simple one-sided statements like this. Guantanamo Bay has hosted the U.S. Caribbean fleet for 120 years, and control Cuba before that, but this isn’t an argument for why we can invade Cuba.
These sorts of statements demonstrate no interest in the truth, just support for a side. Showing support for a side means using even their silliest arguments.
“bad for Ukraine but hurts Russia more”
There’s no evidence which side is hurt more. Both sides of the Dnipro river rely upon the waters, both sides have villages that were flooded, and so on. It’s horrible for both sides — so horrible that even if it hurts one side slightly more, it’s not worth the damage to the opposing side.
After the war, whoever is the victor has to live with the damage.
“in December, the Washington Post quoted a Ukrainian general saying his men had fired American made rockets at the dam’s floodgates”.
He’s referring to this article. The general was looking for a way to stop the Russian advance without flooding villages.
It shows two things, one that the Ukrainians wanted to not flood downstream villages, and two, that there could be a military objective in stopping the opposition’s advance. Note above, Tucker says there was no military objective here: he’s arguing both sides.
But that comment was about stopping a Russian advance. Now things are going the other direction, with the Ukraine counteroffensive advancing on Russian positions. If anybody wanted to use floods to slow down an advance, it’d be the Russians, not the Ukrainians.
“any fair person would conclude the Ukrainian’s probably blew it up”
Any fair person would conclude we have no evidence either way. Fair people demand evidence not just rhetoric.
To be fair to Tucker, some of the mainstream stories are slanted against Russia saying it’s probably Russia’s fault. This isn’t fair either, as they have nothing more than speculation. But most news stories aren’t slanted, one way or the other, because there’s not enough evidence.
Reasonable people can’t even conclude it was blown up at all because it could’ve been an accident. As described above, the dam has experienced damage, and the water levels are the highest they’ve been for 30 years.
Or, it could’ve been partizans, paramilitary groups aligned with one side or the other, but not controlled by the side. It might have been done by traditional terrorists rather than state-sponsored terrorists.
Fair people recognize that none of us has any firm evidence with which to make a conclusion. It’s the pundit class like Tucker who make arguments without evidence.
“…just as you would assume they blew up Nordstream (the Russian natural gas pipeline) last fall. And in fact, the Ukrainians did do that, as we now know.”
We don’t know who blew up the Nordstream pipeline.
We know a 50-foot yacht named Andromeda was involved. They’ve matched explosive residue from the yacht with the residue at the pipeline. They’ve got records of people with false identities who rented the boat.
But nobody has produced any more definitive conclusions than that. In Tucker’s programs, he repeating his claim as fact, so that through repetition his audience will believe it, but it’s speculation.
The attacks are easily within the abilities of non-state actors. Current US intelligence suggests that a pro-Ukraine group did this, rather than Ukraine itself.
There’s no smoking gun. It’s all conjecture until we have proof.
[straw-man] “Vladimir Putin is exactly that sort of man who would shoot himself to death to annoy you, we know this from the American media, which wasted no time this morning in accusing the Russians of sabotaging their own infrastructure.”
This is the meat of Tucker Carlson’s rhetoric. He creates straw-man versions of what the “media” says in order to point out they are foolish. Nobody in the media has claimed Russia would sabotage their own infrastructure. Nobody believes it’s Russian infrastructure. That’s just the claim Tucker made above. When you read the actual media (such as this Guardian story or this NYTimes story), it’s clear they believe it’s Ukraine infrastructure.
Which, then, inverts Tucker’s argument. It’s he who is claiming Ukraine performed a terrorism attack against its own infrastructure.
”Bill Kristol, the man who once told us Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, …”
Bill Kristol is indeed famous for being a neo-con who help justify the invasion of Iraq after 9/11.
But he never said Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. Instead, his claims where that Iraq possessed WMDs (weapons of mass destruction). He makes that very clear in articles like this one.
Bill Kristol “immediately denounced Putin as a war criminal, and even more savagely compared him to Donald Trump”
Tucker appears to be referring to this tweet by Kristol: “Putin floods homes and towns in Ukraine. Trump floods the computer server room at Mar-a-Lago. A war crime and a farcical crime. But the farcical crimes are dangerous too.”
I’m not sure the tweet really matches Tucker’s straw-man version. Kristol isn’t denouncing Putin so much as assuming for the sake of argument it’s true.
”The rest of the pundit class made, clearly coordinated, noises. Putin did it, Putin did it. Their reasoning was simple: Putin is evil and evil people do evil things purely for the dark joy of being evil.”
This again is Tucker’s main shtick, full of rhetoric about the mainstream elites, creating strawman versions of their arguments. Nobody has argued that Putin does evil things purely for the dark joy of being evil.
To be fair, a lot of pundits blamed Russia or Ukraine, depending upon sides, trying to be persuasive despite nobody haven’t any substantiated claims. It’s no different than what Tucker does here (he’s a card carrying member of this pundit class).
There’s no evidence they are “coordinated”. Every major story like this sees the pundits come out making noises related to their side. Tucker repeats claims made by others on his side, and likewise people on his side are going to repeat claims Tucker has made. There’s no evidence he’s coordinated with his side or his Russian masters (sic), either.
Pundit class claiming ”In this particular case, Putin attacked himself, which is the most evil thing you can do, and therefore perfectly in character for a man that evil. That was their explanation.”
Again, Tucker continues with the implicit assumption everyone agrees that it’s Russia’s infrastructure, even though nobody besides Tucker has made this claim.
“No-one who is paid to cover these things seem to entertain even the possibility it could’ve been Ukrainians who did it”
Most everyone who is paid to cover these things express uncertainty about who did it, taking neither side. They even accept it might be an accident..
For example, the Associated Press has this story that says:
Ukraine accused Russian forces of blowing up the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power station, which sits on the Dnieper River in an area Moscow has controlled for more than a year. Russian officials blamed Ukrainian bombardment in the contested area, where the river separates the two sides.
The NYTimes has a similarly even-handed story describing all various reasons each side might want to destroy the dam, while also highlighting the fact it may be an accident.
Even the White House is honest, saying that it can’t conclusively pin this on Russia.
In short, it’s the mainstream who is fair on this issue, it’s Tucker who is distinctly one sided.
[straw-man] “Ukraine, as you may have heard, is lead by man named Zelensky. We can say for a dead certain fact that he was not involved, he couldn’t have been. Zelensky is too decent for terrorism.”
This is yet more straw-man statements. Nobody says Zelensky is too decent to do bad things.
“Now you see him on television, it’s true that you might form a different impression — sweaty and rat-like.”
What the fuck? Tucker has been teetering on the rails of rational discourse from the beginning of his video, but here he totally goes off the rails. I don’t even know how to respond.
“A comedian turned oligarch.”
This is Russian propaganda that has been widely debunked. Instead, estimates put his net worth at around $20 million, entirely from his show business career.
“A persecutor of Christians”
This Russian propaganda that has been widely debunked. Ukraine cracked down on a Russian branch that was supporting Russia. This means nothing to the 78% of the population who worships in Ukrainian churches.
“A friend of BlackRock”
BlackRock is the world’s largest private investment group. Of course the president of Ukraine is going to court investors to come to Ukraine to rebuild after the war. I’m not sure how this is even a criticism — it’s the sort of innuendo that you put out there without coherent claims to let people make their own conclusions from the subtext.
[straw-man] “Actually, Mr. Zelensky is a very good man, the best really. As George W Bush once noted, he’s our generation’s Winston Churchill. Of all the people in the world, our shifty dead-eye Ukrainian friend in the track suit is uniquely incapable of blowing up a dam. He’s literally a living saint, a man in whom there is no sin.”
This whole bit is a straw-man argument, a caricature of what the press says about Zelensky. Sure, they are more favorable toward Zelensky than Putin, but nobody thinks Zelensky is a saint.
What’s funny about this is that nobody thinks Winston Churchill was a saint, either. Winston Churchill committed atrocities worse than blowing up a dam, such as fire-bombing Dresden. Churchill also blew up dams, causing just as much suffering among civilians as the Kakhovka dam collapse.
Zelensky is compared to Churchill not because either of them are good, but because they fought against an evil invader bent on genocide where the very existence of their country was at stake. Far from implying he’s a saint, comparing Zelensky to Churchill means agreeing that blowing up dams is something Zelenksy might do if it means saving his country.
something something “Lindsey Graham” something [strawman] “your job is to support Ukraine”
He spews a bunch around the 4 minute mark about Senator Lindsey Graham meeting Zelensky, showing a video of their meeting. It’s misrepresented. What you actually see here is Zelensky struggling with his poor English skills without a translator, making conversation very difficult, with everyone smiling and laughing in discomfort.
You don’t see such interactions with other world leaders because even when they speak English better than Zelensky, they still go through their translators step-by-step as if they didn’t. It avoids this sort of uncomfortable nonsense, and more importantly, avoids misunderstandings.
We see again Tucker’s needless comments on physical attributes, as if they convey some meaning about a person’s character. He quote Lindsey Graham followed by “as a smile spreads across his thin quivering lips”.
[Paraphrasing Nikki Haley] “It’s vitally important for you to support Ukraine because it’s necessary for Ukraine to be supported by you”
At 4:30 into the video, Nikki Haley says that it’s in the best interests of America for Ukraine to win. Tucker creates a straw-man version of this in the above format, rephrasing it as a tautology, which she didn’t say at all.
“Back when they taught logic, statements like this were known as ‘tautologies’ … there was a time when ‘tautologies’ were considered illegitimate arguments, not to mention hilariously stupid. Only dumb people talk like that.”
Well, yes, Tucker’s statement was a tautology, but it’s not what Nikki Haley said.
Back when they still taught critical-thinking, statements like Tucker’s were known as ‘straw-man’, caricatures of what was actually said, phrased in a way to make them easier to argue against. There was a time when straw-man arguments were considered illegitimate and hilariously stupid.
In short, Nikki Haley isn’t making logical fallacies here, Tucker is. Only dumb people talk like that.
“Now everyone talks like that [using tautologies]; diversity is our strength, trans women are women, Zelensky is Churchill, it’s all self evidently true, it doesn’t need an explanation, and don’t ask questions.”
To be fair, Tucker has a point, a lot of wokeness tells people to shut up and not ask questions. It’s through asking questions that we acquire knowledge.
But at the same time, the opposite side is even worse. Tucker demonstrates this, such as the top when he declares without proof that the dam is Russian infrastructure despite all evidence to the contrary. It doesn’t need explanation, don’t question it.
And then we have the hilariously stupid Churchill reference again — Churchill committed worse atrocities than the destruction of the Kakhovka dam. It doesn’t imply Zelensky is a saint, only that Zelensky is fighting an existential threat.
“That’s the pap they are serving us day after day, in steaming lumpy portions. By this point it’s possible that American citizens are the least informed in the world.”
Possibly true. Most of the world knows that Churchill committed lots of atrocities during WW II. It’s Americans like Tucker Carlson who appear not to know this.
But the real issue here is “they”. Who is “they” in this sentence. Tucker Carlson mentions “them” a lot, the things “they” tell you, the things “they” don’t tell you, but he’s always a little vague from moment to moment who precisely “they” are. Sometimes it’s fellow pundits. Sometimes it’s the mainstream media. Sometimes it’s the Democrats.
But “they” aren’t responsible for informing US citizens. If US citizens aren’t informed, it’s their own responsibility. Listening to Tucker Carlson, who delivers almost no information at all, makes you ill informed.
Conversely, while the mainstream journalists certainly have biases, they do a good job informing. They don’t declare which side is responsible for the dam collapse, or even that it was intentional. Journalists don’t say diversity is strength, trans women are women, or any of the other pap from the punditry class that Tucker comes from.
“The average yak herder from Tajikistan knows who blew up the Nordstream pipeline, it’s obvious.”
Tucker complains that if you keep saying things over and over, people will believe it’s true. Here, he keep claiming over and over it’s obvious who (Ukraine) blew up the pipeline.
It’s no obvious. We have no evidence. We have very good reasons to believe it was either the Ukraine government or a party whose interests lie with Ukraine. But still, “good reasons” aren’t “evidence”, it’s not the same thing as “confirmed”.
We have no direct evidence, Tucker has never cited any, he just keeps repeating it as if it’s true.
“Does he [Tajik yak herder] think some skinny dude in a dress is actually a girl?”
I dunno. It varies form culture to culture. But on the whole, the more educated the world, the more accepting they are of trans rights.
Tucker has a complex view of what it means to be “informed”. The more a person is educated, the more they disagree with Tucker on issues like trans acceptance. Obviously, then, it’s the wrong sort of education.
But it’s not the wrong sort of education. The more educated people know that Churchill committed atrocities in war, for example. It’s Tucker’s audience that is profoundly uneducated and ill informed on most all issues, from history to science to economics to world events to critical-thinking.
Tucker’s content contains almost no information. He’s not informing you. He’s instead trying to persuade you. It’s the mainstream journalists and mainstream educators who are trying to inform you.
“you have to be lied to at full volume over a period of years to reach conclusions like that [trans women]”
Well, no. I’ve been pro trans rights since the 1980s, back when “they” (mainstream whatever) were against trans rights. Obviously, it wasn’t “them” who converted me.
Instead, it’s simply the fact that society is changing. Young people are confused about the strange rules old people have about when it’s socially appropriate to wear a dress and makeup. “They” (mainstream whatevers) aren’t pushing the change so much as catching up to it.
“The media lie, they do. But mostly they ignore the stories that matter.”
The media is full of flawed people. Mainstream journalists have biases, which sometimes taint their reporting. But they don’t deliberately lie.
You can tell they care about truths because they acknowledge their mistakes. They are constantly correcting the mistakes they make. It’s people like Tucker who appear to make no mistakes.
And they always cover stories that matter. It’s just that we have disagreements on what matters. They reject unsupported conspiracy-theories (in general), the sort of thing Tucker embraces. But the flaw here is Tucker, not the mainstream media.
“What’s happened to the hundreds of billions of dollars we’ve sent to Ukraine?”
That’s an excellent question. But Tucker has as much power to answer that question as any journalist. If he thinks such things should be answered, then he should answer it.
That’s the difference between journalists and Tucker Carlson. Journalists report answers to such questions, while Tucker simply sits back and asks the questions, blaming the journalists for not being able to answer them.
Answering this question is really hard. The US government almost certainly has some answers, but it’s not going to reveal them during the war. The answers are almost certainly not good. Ukraine has a history of corruption, so it’s pretty damn certainly that a lot of money is being wasted on corruption. But it’s something US planners already factor in, which is why we don’t give money, but specific aid that less likely to be lost due to corruption.
Over the next decade with leaks and investigations, we’ll probably get a better picture of this.
But Tucker isn’t investigating himself, he’s complain about what others do. He doesn’t have facts, all he has are assertions, innuendo, and “questions”.
This is an important question. But instead of criticizing the mainstream media for not answering it, we should be criticizing Tucker for not answer it.
“Who organized those BLM riots three years ago?”
They weren’t “organized”. Tucker’s asserting without proof that they were “organized riots”. There’s no evidence of that. It’s one of those things that when you repeat them often enough, they become true. These are facts true to Tucker’s audience but nowhere else.
In any case, it’s again something Tucker can answer as well as any journalist, so why doesn’t Tucker investigate the facts?
”What exactly happened on 9/11? How did Jeffrey Epstein make all that money? How did he die? How about JFK? and so endlessly on?”
Now Tucker’s just spewing conspiracy theories.
“Not only are the media not interested in any of this, they are actively hostile to anybody who is”
The media is interested in one thing: evidence.
They are very interested in such questions as “how did Jeffrey Epstein die”, but they demand evidence. This NYTimes article spent a lot of effort tracking down and citing all the evidence, either way. It’s the non-journalists who believe in things that aren’t evidence.
Journalists are actively hostile to anybody who makes claims without evidence, like innuendo saying he was murdered instead of committing suicide. If you have evidence, the media will be on your side, because they love such a story. The problem is that nobody has any evidence suggesting suicide.
It’s the mainstream media who work very hard finding evidence. It’s the pundit class like Tucker who are supremely uninterested in evidence, who instead sits back and questions any evidence that doesn’t fit his conspiracy-theories.
[straw-man] “In journalism, curiosity is the gravest crime”
It’s not. Speculation without evidence is the greatest crime, the thing that Tucker does. Journalists are intensely curious, which is why they hunt for evidence. It’s Tucker who in incurious, spending no effort gathering evidence. He’s not interested in anything that conflicts with his narrative.
This post is full of things that conflict with Tucker’s narrative because I’m curious in getting to the underlying details. It’s a level of fact-checking that Tucker avoids.
“Yesterday, for example, a former Air Force officer who worked for years in military intelligence, came forward as a whistleblower to reveal that the U.S. government has physical evidence of crashed non-human made aircraft, as well as the bodies of those who flew those aircraft. … And it was clear he was telling the truth. In other words, UFOs are actually real, and so apparently, is extraterrestrial life. … In a normal country this news would qualify as a bombshell, the story of the millennium. But in our country, it doesn’t.”
The story is about David Grusch, who has not touched any such aircraft or remains, who has not even seen pictures of such a thing, who has no first hand knowledge of anything. Instead, he is (by his own admission) just passing along hearsay and rumors.
In no country that I can find is this the story of the millennium. It’s behind the dam destruction in every country’s news that I can find, such as the BBC, Deutsche-Welle, and AFP.
Even in Tucker’s video, it’s buried 70% the way in, after a length discussion of the dam, and then forgotten after a brief mention. Tucker isn’t treating it as the story of the millennium, just insisting everyone else should.
Mainstream newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times demand evidence, first hand accounts. They are uninterested in hearsay. The want sources that can be held accountable for their own claims, not people who repeat other people’s claims.
“If you are wondering why are county is so dysfunctional, this is a big part of the reason [media ignoring stories Tucker thinks matter]”.
Our country isn’t dysfunctional, things are working as well as one can expect. For the most part, the population is as prosperous and and happy as it’s ever been.
Basing news on the Tucker approach of misrepresentation and speculation is what would truly be dysfunctional.
“Nobody knows what’s happening. A small group of people control access to all relevant information. And the rest of us don’t know. … But go ahead and talk about something that truly matters, and see what happens. If you keep it up, they’ll make you keep quiet. Trust us. That’s how they maintain control.”
This again is just his conspiracy theory about the media.
Firstly, everyone is a journalist. Anybody can track anything down and report on it, and they’ll be taken seriously. The only qualification is that you actually need evidence. All the complaints from the Tucker world pushes claims without evidence, which is why they are so frustrated that the mainstream doesn’t take them seriously. I’ve been investigating things like Trump election fraud claims for the past couple years: there’s no evidence anywhere, but his supporters think there is (lots of it), but they continue not supplying any evidence that clearly hasn’t been debunked.
Secondly, those like Tucker who don’t care about evidence are incredibly popular. He was the top rated show on Fox News, until his lies started bankrupting them in defamation costs. His video on twitter has 100-million views. The best known writer for the New York Times has a fraction of the audience as Tucker. I agree it’s a travesty when social media censors things, but those they censor are still finding huge audiences. (Which from a free-speech perspective is a good thing, even if I despise Tucker).
But Tucker’s audience isn’t about informing his audience, but questioning the real journalists who do provide information. He provided no information about the dam breach, unlike all the stories linked above. He simply sat back and misrepresented what journalists said, and questioned their accuracy.
[some story about Soviet Union control of information and US government classified documents] “The few Russians who understood what was really going on in the rest of the world had learned about it from listening to short wave radio broadcasts, sometimes under the covers so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. 50 years later it’s bewildering to consider the ironies here. We are the ones who live in ignorance now. The U.S. government has managed to classify more than a billion so-called public documents. So at this point, we can’t possibly know what our leaders are doing, we are not allowed to know. By definition, that is not a democracy.”
The definition of “democracy” never mentions this sort of thing. I can’t find any definition of “democracy” that includes “government transparency”.
All democratic governments have secrets. Our government is ranked as one of the more transparent.
Yes, our government over-classifies things. But it’s got a system called “FOIA” that allows citizens and journalists to fight it. Every major news organizations has stories about things they’ve successfully FOIAd from governments. Tucker, notable, doesn’t mention anything his team has FOIAd.
His shtick is to sit back and criticize what journalists do, not doing any of the journalism himself.
“As of today, we’ve come to Twitter, which we hope will become the short wave radio under the blankets. We are told there are no gatekeepers here. If that turns out to be false, we’ll leave. In the meantime, we are grateful to be here. We’ll be back with much more real soon.”
Now we’ve come to the end.
Tucker has the sides reversed. He’s not like the reliable news Russian dissidents struggled to get from the west, based upon facts and accountability. He’s like the propaganda and rhetoric spewed by those supporting one side. Moreover, his side is that of totalitarianism, not of the classically liberal tradition.