Devious Tucker Carlson, having it both ways
by digby
Crooks and Liars caught Tucker Carlson playing both sides.
On the Tucker Carlson Tonight show Thursday night, Carlson debated Democrat Richard Goodstein about the Ukraine scandal, which prompted Democrats to launch a formal impeachment inquiry.
Carlson agreed with Goodstein that Republicans who led the impeachment against Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal would now call it a mistake. “All of them would express regret,” Carlson dubiously asserted. (If you’ve heard any of them express regret, let me know.)
But Carlson moved on to suggest that Trump’s Ukraine is even more of a nothingburger than Clinton’s Lewinsky:
CARLSON: That’s absolutely right. If you were to ask Republicans in Washington now, including the Republican in Washington who led the impeachment charge, of course the then-Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, who we just talked to about this – all of them would tell you it was a mistake, all of them would express regret.
All of them, you know, they don’t like Clinton, but that was not a good idea. So I just wonder, like, if — since you brought that up, two years from now, are Democrats really going to say it was a wise idea to make up this ludicrous, unbelievably dumb story about Ukraine?
No one even has their heart in it. No one really believes anything bad — the impeachable happened. Do you really think in two years, Democrats would say that was really smart to do that?
Three hours later, a column co-authored by Carlson was published in which he characterized the Ukraine scandal essentially as an abuse of power that just didn’t rise to the level of meriting impeachment.
Donald Trump should not have been on the phone with a foreign head of state encouraging another country to investigate his political opponent, Joe Biden. Some Republicans are trying, but there’s no way to spin this as a good idea. Like a lot of things Trump does, it was pretty over-the-top. Our leaders’ official actions should not be about politics. Those two things need to remain separate. Once those in control of our government use it to advance their political goals, we become just another of the world’s many corrupt countries. America is better than that.
So, either Carlson had a sudden change of heart after his show ended at 8 PM, then hastily co-wrote the column that was published at 11:19 PM, or he has brought new meaning to the term two-faced.
Very interesting. I wonder if he thinks that most people who watch his show won’t read the op-ed? He might be right. I suspect that most prime time Fox viewers get all their information there and don’t really read much at all.
Carlson was on MSNBC during the Bush administration and he almost certainly observed Chris Matthews who pulled a similar sleight of hand when he was a cheerleader for Bush and the war on the air while being critical in his newspaper column. When the war went south he was able to show that he’d been “against it all along” although any of us who watched his show certainly knew better.
.