Tuesday during his opening monologue, Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” host Tucker Carlson took aim at American intelligence agencies, which he called “corrupt” and “politicized” and the driving force behind allegations that the Russian government colluded with the Trump campaign last year to help Donald Trump win the presidency.
Carlson joked about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier in the day, being a “foreign agent.” He also said Sessions’ testimony made it seem as if the committee’s inquiry into the allegation “hit a cul-de-sac.”
“[I]t’s always possible that a high-level Russian defector will appear sometime in the future with documents proving that Jeff Sessions is, in fact, a foreign agent, perhaps of a sleeper cell sent to Alabama during the Cold War and activated at Vladimir Putin’s request during the last election,” Carlson quipped. “That would be a game changer. Otherwise, the Russian conspiracy seemed to hit a cul-de-sac this afternoon in the Senate, but that doesn’t mean there are no scandals for Congress to investigate.”
“Here’s one – maybe the biggest one of all – our intel services are corrupt, and they’re politicized, and they’re making it very hard to run U.S. government,” he continued. “And that may be the point since they clearly like to run it themselves and they are to some extent. Does that sound like an overstatement? Consider how much of American politics now revolves around information that has been strategically, often misleadingly and illegally released, for political effects. The hearings you watched today are just one example.”
Carlson listed the numerous leaks from intel community about the Trump administration in recent months and question how it might advance U.S. national security. He warned that continued abuses by the intel community could undermine American democracy.
“How could this possibly have advanced American security interest, which is what they were supposed to be doing?” he added. “None of it did. It was entirely political. And then in March, as if to prove this point, a half-dozen current and former intel officials told The New York Times how they sought to spread classified intelligence information about the Trump campaign as widely as possible throughout government to assure that it would all eventually leak. Now, leaks are as old as government, and sometimes they are welcome. In general, the public ought to know a lot more about government than it does. But we are seeing something new at work here. These are not leaks from political appointees, the kind that formed the basis of Bob Woodward’s books – the kind we benefit from in journalism a lot.”
“These are strategic leaks, the release of classified intelligence from people whose job it is to collect and safeguard that intelligence. And in that way, it’s an utter perversion of the system,” Carlson continued. “We give enormous power to our intelligence agencies – CIA, NSA, the rest of them. We let them listen to our phone calls, read our email, watch us from satellites. We let them do that so that they can keep a safe from foreign threats, not so that they can pick our political leaders or devise our policies. We have elections to do those things. In a democracy, we are in charge, not them, not unelected bureaucrats. That’s changing, and we ought to be worried about that change. But, Congress isn’t worried because a lot of people there would rather have the policies they prefer than a constitutional government. That is worse than immoral. It’s a mistake. Once the bureaucracy has shoved aside unelected government, they can easily do it again. At that point it’s over – democracy is dead.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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