During his show’s opening monologue that aired on Thursday, Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson explained how those in positions of power were attempting to capitalize off the coronavirus pandemic to increase the amount of power they have over the public.
Carlson offered examples of it and pointed out other examples of hypocrisy from those in charge.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: It is Thanksgiving. We hope you’re having a wonderful time with your family. Nothing is more important or happier than spending time with the people you love.
We haven’t had a lot of chances to do that this year, we’ve been pulled apart. Many Americans are alone tonight, more than any time in our history. A lot has changed in this country. But a lot remains the same and we should be thankful for that.
In a year when cultural vandals and tragically unhappy graduate students set out to destroy virtually everything in sight from statues of the saints to the very idea of Columbus Day, they haven’t gotten Thanksgiving yet. It remains and there’s a reason for that.
Americans care about Thanksgiving and they have for a very long time. Back in 1939, Franklin Roosevelt moved the holiday a week earlier. He said it was an effort to boost the economy during the Great Depression, but it seemed to many Americans weird and undignified, and they mocked him for it.
They called Thanksgiving, Frank’s giving. Congress heard what they were saying and eventually moved Thanksgiving back where it belonged, and where it is now. We’ve been celebrating Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November ever since then.
In a time of political upheaval, and this certainly is one, you’ll notice that no politician tried to move Thanksgiving or call it Juneteenth. We should be grateful for that. It’s an enduring American tradition.
At the same time, though, we have to tell you the obvious, we are witnessing fundamental changes in the way this country works; changes that Congress won’t be able to undo simply by voting and it’s not just because the coronavirus came here from Wuhan, China and upended everything, though it did, it is because our political class has deliberately decided to use this pandemic as a way to gain political power for themselves.
We’re not speculating about that. It’s not a conspiracy theory. They’ve said so out loud, over and over again.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. JAY INSLEE (D-WA): We should not be intimidated when people say, oh, you can’t use this COVID crisis in order to peddle a solution to climate change. No, we have to recognize the necessity of this moment.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): If there is any silver lining in the midst of this terrible, terrible and unprecedented moment in American history in terms of the economy, in terms of the pandemic, it is that maybe we start rethinking some fundamental tenets about the way our government and society works.
HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This would be a terrible crisis to waste as the old saying goes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: “This would be a terrible crisis to waste,” says Hillary Clinton. Well, if you wondered why Biden kept Hillary Clinton off the campaign trail this fall, that’s why. She doesn’t care anymore, so she can say what everyone else in the Democratic Party knows but isn’t dumb enough to say out loud.
As long as public health bureaucrats are throwing around oxymoronic, doublespeak, like social distancing and flatten the curve, politicians have the cover they need to empower themselves and their friends and that’s exactly what they’ve been doing.
It’s wound up in the form of tyranny. Some of the tyranny has been petty. It’s hard to forget, for example, that back in May, a Nassau County Executive told residents, don’t even think about touching another person’s tennis balls on the court.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Singles only no doubles. Only every other court, you have to have a court between players, between people, sets of people playing. Every player unless they’re from the same household has to bring their own tennis balls, so that you don’t touch other people’s tennis balls.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So you don’t touch other people’s tennis balls. The famous tennis ball press conference, your grandkids will watch that and laugh. This kind of thing happened all over the country for months. It became a kind of arms race of the neurotic and the officious.
In one surreal moment, and there were many, the Illinois governor explained to a reporter that henceforth, only two people would be allowed on a boat in his state and no exceptions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. J.B. PRITZKER (D-IL): It is restricted to two people per boat. It’s not — you can’t have five people or 10 people in a boat.
QUESTION: So, if it is a family of four or five, like husband, wife and kids, they’re going to have to pick two of them at a time.
PRITZKER: They will, yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Only two people on a boat, and no tennis balls. Kind of hilarious. Obviously, it’s authoritarian, but it’s a lot less threatening than some forms of authoritarianism, because it’s out in the open, we can laugh at it. Much has been happening quietly. You’re not supposed to notice as it does.
When Joe Biden for example, named Ron Klain to be his Chief of Staff, the media played it totally straight. CNN dutifully reported that Klain was picked because he is quote, “One of Biden’s most trusted campaign advisers.” Who writes this crap? But that’s what they wrote.
They went through this whole resume, Klain’s whole resume from birth until present. But they left something out and they did it on purpose. It turns out Ron Klain was appointed in 2016 to the Executive Council, something called Tech Net, know what that is? Oh, you don’t, then you don’t work in Silicon Valley.
If you did, you know that Tech Net is the trade group that represents Big Tech in Washington, they are lobbyists. And now, they’ve got their man in the White House. That seems like a story. But the corporate media didn’t report it. They didn’t want you to know, so they didn’t say anything.
They also didn’t mention that according to emails uncovered by WikiLeaks in 2015, Ron Klain wrote this, quote, “It’s been a little hard for me to play such a role in the Biden demise and I’m definitely dead to them. But I’m glad to be on Team Hillary, and I’m glad she had a great debate last night.” End quote.
Wait a minute, weren’t we just told by CNN and the other reporters that Joe Biden picked this guy because they are very close, they are old friends? So why is his old friend writing that he played a role in Biden’s quote, “demise” and he is now quote “dead to them”?
Why did Joe Biden really pick Ron Klain? That’s a real question. If we had a functioning media in this country, we might know the answer. But if there’s one bright spot to Joe Biden’s candidacy is that he sometimes can’t help himself.
He says the quiet part out loud and you can hear it. That happened back in May when he issued a request to Silicon Valley, censor the President of the United States and people who agree with him and do it now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: The President spends a lot of time especially this past weekend tweeting some pretty outlandish comments, retweeting others.
Can Twitter do something? Can they take action?
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yes, I think they should. I think they should say when things are patently not true, they should say so.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: We know what happened after that. Twitter started slapping warning labels on the President’s tweets almost immediately after Joe Biden called for it. Huh? Weird. Almost like it was coordinated.
Just a month later in June, the President dared to warn rioters and anarchists that they can’t set up a lawless commune on the streets of the Nation’s Capital. He tweeted this, quote, “There will never be an autonomous zone in Washington, D.C. as long as I’m your President. If they try it, they will be met with serious force.” Twitter then did what Joe Biden ordered. They hid that post from view. They said it was quote, “abusive.”
To defend the capital city of the United States from occupation by people claiming they are another country, that’s abusive.
So, Silicon Valley did everything it could to help Joe Biden become President and making sure that voters saw what he wanted them to see and nothing else. In return, Joe Biden is looking out for Silicon Valley. It’s an arrangement four years in the making, and it’s about to pay dividends for some of the richest people in the world.
In the near term, the implications for our democracy are very clear, Section 230 Reform is not going to happen. The multibillion dollar companies that enjoy legal immunity, as quote, “content platforms” can continue to pretend they aren’t publishing anything. If only we have that freedom here at FOX News.
It doesn’t matter if they continue to write bogus fact checks and censor posts, censor even entire newspapers as they did this year.
Donald Trump was standing in their way, Joe Biden will not stand in their way, just the opposite. So, that’s a problem that can’t be solved easily. You can move to Parler, we have by the way, and we’re happy about it. But it doesn’t solve the whole problem. It can’t be solved by deleting Facebook and Twitter from your phone.
Those sites aren’t simply hostile to anyone outside the academic left. They are also meeting places for the thugs who plan punishment for their political enemies. That’s happening now. It could get worse.
Earlier this month, for example, a former Pete Buttigieg judge staffer set up something called the Trump Accountability Project. That’s an effort to make Trump administration officials unemployable in this country.
We’ve never seen anything like that before. Of course, the CNN anchors celebrated it. Sandy Cortez celebrated it, too. She is a sitting Member of Congress. Here’s what she wrote, “Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future?” Well, that’s not scary or anything.
This isn’t anything new. It’s been happening for a while but since Election Day, it has accelerated.
Last year, “The Washington Post’s” conservative blogger Jen Rubin announced that Trump supporters should never again be welcomed in polite company. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JENNIFER RUBIN, “THE WASHINGTON POST”: What we shouldn’t be doing is shunning these people. Shunning, shaming these people is a statement of moral indignation, that these people are not fit for a polite society. I think it’s absolutely abhorrent that any institution of higher learning, any news organization or any or entertainment organization that has a news outlet would hire these people.
It’s not only that Trump has to lose, but that all his enablers have to lose. They have to — we have to collectively in essence, burn down the Republican Party.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Burn it down, says Jen Rubin. Shouldn’t we do a study — has anyone ever been won over by that person? Has anyone ever watched that person television and said whatever she’s into, I want to be into it, too. Probably not.
But when she says we need to burn down the party, of course, what she is saying is we need to burn down the country, and anyone else who disagrees with her. That hasn’t happened yet. And despite what’s happened this year, and it’s been a very long year for a lot of people, we can be grateful for that. It’s still America.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor