On his show Thursday night, Carlson attacked the media for not calling accused classified document leaker Jack Teixeira a “whistleblower.” Carlson sneered that the media’s “only job is to tell the truth.” Which is beyond hypocritical coming from a guy who has just been outed as promoting lies about the 2020 election and trying to get a reporter fired for telling the truth because it was bad for his stock portfolio.
But we know that Carlson is nothing if not shameless, so he continued by ramping up his violent rhetoric, saying, “Tonight, the news media are celebrating the capture of the kid who told Americans what’s actually happening in Ukraine. They are treating him like Osama bin Laden, maybe a little worse, actually. Because unlike Al Qaeda, apparently, this kid is a racist.” Actually, there’s no comparison between 9/11 mastermind bin Laden, who was killed by the U.S., and Texeira who was merely arrested. But maybe bin Laden is another Carlson hero, too.
More importantly, Teixeira is not a whistleblower. Media Matters nicely debunked all the lies and distortions in Carlson’s martyrizing monologue, noting that the evidence so far shows that Teixeira leaked the classified material to impress people on Discord.
Maybe Carlson needs some Russia Rehab now that the Kremlin darling has been outed as a Trump hater. Or maybe #TraitorTucker actually believed his false claim that the leaked documents show Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin lied to Congress when he said Russia is losing the war against Ukraine. More likely Carlson figured that making accused leaker Jack Teixeira into a conservative martyr was good for Tuckums’ stock portfolio. It couldn’t have hurt Teixeira’s Carlson cred that he was caught on video yelling racial and antisemitic slurs during a target practice at a shooting range.
One thing we know for sure: Carlson was against leaking classified documents before he was for it. In 2017, Carlson railed against Reality Winner who pleaded guilty to leaking a top secret report on Russian hacking attacks against local election officials and voter registration databases.
Lordy, there's a tape:
