During Wednesday’s episode of FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson argued President Joe Biden’s pleas for unity during his inauguration speech should be viewed with a degree of skepticism because the new president was not referring to every American.
Carlson said in the name of defeating “white supremacy,” the new Biden administration was sending a signal it intends to use the power of the federal government against political opponents applying a broad definition of white supremacy.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Happy Inauguration Day. It’s a big moment for the country. The changing of the guard, a peaceful transfer of power, another reassuring display of the awesome pageantry of constitutional government.
There were solemn speeches today; sworn oaths, belted anthems, all echoing against the backdrop of 26,000 smartly attired federal troops who are guarding our capital city from unseen threats. There’s quite a display. It was all a lot to take, really.
So like many of you, we flipped on the tube to see what it meant. Here’s what we learned.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Joe Biden respects government. He respects people who disagree with him. He listens to them.
VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think that Joe Biden is going to train us to see the world differently.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He plans to usher in a new era of hope, and the action he is promising the minute he takes office.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We’ve gone from indecency to decency.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He filled that empathy void.
JONES: There was not one part of that that wasn’t just medicine in the wound.
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Those lights that are — that are just shooting out from the Lincoln Memorial along the reflecting pool, I look — it’s like almost extensions of Joe Biden’s arms embracing America. It was a moment where the new President came to town.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So to recap, Joe Biden respects people’s differences, but at the same time, he is going to train us to be very different from the way we are. He will bring hope and decency. He will fill the yawning void where our empathy should be. He is medicine.
Joe Biden’s arms lean and hard from decades of empathetic labor on our behalf will encircle us like lights from the Lincoln Memorial. And at that point, well, God knows, anything is possible.
If there’s a thin bead of sweat forming in your upper lip, as you think about all of this, that’s okay. Don’t feel shame. Shame isn’t necessary now. Joe Biden is here.
And not just Joe Biden, Jill Biden, too. Mrs. Biden, Dr. Biden. — together, the two of them, MSNBC informed us will redeem this nation through their love. Behold.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What a story though. What a great love story between Jill Biden and Joe Biden. It’s just a different kind of marriage.
This is a love match, like the Obamas were, so I think that’ll be healing for the country, too.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Biden’s marriage is healing for all of us, for the country. The Biden’s love is America’s love. Jill and Joe are the mother and father of this nation. From their loins, we are born and yet reborn. May their names emerge from our lips in praise forever, and so on. That was cable news today.
The funny thing is, and there are many funny things going on right now, every person with a microphone in every TV studio in America today knew the fuller truth when they said things like the ones you just heard. They knew, for example, for certain that Joe Biden isn’t well. Everyone in Washington knows that, but no one said it out loud, not a word. They withheld that news from you as they have for months, so much for speaking truth to power.
On the other hand, what did you expect? You’ve watched the lying for years now. You know what it is. You figured out how it works.
So it dawned on us today that maybe we ought to stop playing all these stupid media clips every night. It’s like watching the town drunk throw up on himself over and over again. Obviously, it’s repulsive and shocking. It’s hard to turn away. But can you really be surprised by it?
Throwing up on themselves is what town drunks do. If you keep watching them as they do it, maybe after a while, you are part of the problem. Maybe so. In any case, we flipped off CNN and decided to check out Joe Biden’s speech for ourselves. And it was interesting, actually, both for what it said and for what it didn’t say.
One particular part of the speech stuck out especially. Now, we didn’t support Joe Biden for President, you probably guessed that. But if we’re being totally honest here, and we want to be honest, we have to say it was very hard to disagree with this specific part of the address. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: On this January day, my whole soul is in this, bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. And I asked every American to join me in this cause.
With unity, we can do great things, important things.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Bringing America together, Biden said. Uniting our people, uniting our nation, to which we said as we watched it and we meant it when we did. Amen. Unity. That is precisely what this country needs more than it needs anything. We are all in this together, every single American and we have no choice but to hang together.
Let’s finally accept that we are one country and act like we are and make this a better place for everyone. Unity. No decent person opposes that.
If Joe Biden can bring unity to this country, he will be a legitimately great President. But there’s a catch. There always is a catch.
We’re going to bring America together, Joe Biden told us today, but not everyone is going to be included. Unity doesn’t mean every single American because not everyone who is born within our borders really is an American, some of us are beyond the pale of citizenship, morally. We may have American passports and birth certificates, but effectively, we are hostile foreigners, we are the enemy, we must be defeated.
Here is who Joe Biden says those people are.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: A rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront, and we will defeat.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: We will defeat political extremists, domestic terrorists, white supremacist, those are America’s enemies. We must wage war against them. We must, quote, “defeat” those people. That’s what Biden said today.
It seemed like a highly significant part of his speech and maybe a significant part of the Democratic Party’s governing agenda going forward. We’re not imagining this. We weren’t the only ones who noticed it. People who voted for Joe Biden heard it, too. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I heard a declaration of war against white supremacy and against the lies that brought our democracy to the brink.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And President-elect Biden will inherit an unprecedented domestic security crisis.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: A declaration of war against white supremacy. Now, you may not have noticed that because then on one level, it’s not very remarkable. Not many Americans support white supremacy. Most people in this country find it disgusting, of course, and they should.
But the question is, what is it exactly? Now that we’re waging war on white supremacists, can somebody tell us in very clear language what a white supremacist is? That’s not some Picayune semantic question. Joe Biden isn’t a high school debate coach, Joe Biden is the new President of the United States.
Joe Biden controls the largest military and largest law enforcement agencies in the world. He has now declared war. So we should know specifically and precisely who exactly he has declared war on. We have a right to know that.
Innocent people could be hurt in this war, they usually are. There could be collateral damage in this war, and the casualties will be Americans.
So again, what is a white supremacist? You might be surprised to learn just how broad the definition for that has become. Bloomberg News has described a wall on our southern border as, quote, “a monument” to white supremacy so be certain not to support that.
Colin Kaepernick who seems to have the unequivocal support of Corporate America calls the Fourth of July an example of white supremacy. So you’d better put away the fireworks and the hotdogs.
The United States Army, a trusted institution, if there ever was one has used an entire manual on what is and what is not white supremacy. So you should know this. Among the telltale signs of a committed white supremacist are these: celebrating Columbus Day, using the term American exceptionalism, any support for Federal border security or English only measures or, quote, “education funding from property taxes,” all white supremacy.
Using the phrase, “There’s only one human race” is white supremacy, too, according to the Army, and of course, voting for Donald Trump, all white supremacy.
Here’s the problem. Let’s say you don’t buy those definitions. Let’s say you’re, for example, white foot poor, and you have trouble accepting the idea that you’re benefiting from some kind of structural advantage. We better shut up about it if you know what’s good for you because according to the United States Army, the quote, “denial of white privilege” is a classic sign of yes, white supremacy, so no complaining.
You can see the problem with this, we definitely can see the problem. This show was not on the air for six months before there was an organized and highly aggressive campaign by prominent Democrats to denounce us as white supremacist. The first time it happened, the people who work on this show, many of them kids, were shocked and horrified by that. White supremacists? What’s worse than that?
The phrase evokes images of burning crosses and lynchings. It’s awful.
In our case, it was totally undeserved. This show is completely opposed to the practice of judging people on the basis of their skin color. We have said that repeatedly every week for four years. No show in all media has said it more or meant it more sincerely.
Why have we said that? Why are we opposed to judging people on the basis of their race? Not simply because we were taught to oppose doing that though we were, but because it’s immoral, and it’s immoral because we believe in God. That’s the real answer.
Believing in God doesn’t make you a good person, unfortunately. But believing in God does answer the question of where we came from. God made us, that’s what believers believe. Once you understand that, it is impossible to think that any one race is inherently better or worse than any other race, because God made every person.
God assigns an identical moral value to every individual. God cares about all of us equally. So we are judged by what we do, not by how we were born. We really believe that. Most Americans really believe that.
It’s not an accident that Martin Luther King was a Christian Minister and that Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong were not. Secular leaders are the ones most likely to count their populations by race, and then to embrace collective punishment. Through history, they often have. We’ve said all of that before in the show many times.
So the question is, why have they kept denouncing us, as of all things, white supremacists? We thought a lot about that, you should think a lot about it, too now that the Biden administration has declared war on people they claim to have white supremacist ideas.
In our case, it all started when we began criticizing the people in charge. Other channels fill their air with attacks on so-called Proud Boys, whoever they are, or the QAnon enthusiasts or gun owners in Central Pennsylvania who fix air conditionings for a living and tend to vote the wrong way. They go after those people, and you can see why. Attacking those people isn’t hard. None of them have real power. They don’t — let’s be honest, they don’t.
But private equity does have power, a lot of power. So does Google, so does Citibank, so does the government of China, so does even silly, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with her massive social media accounts. Those are the people who run our country. They don’t like to be criticized.
On the other hand, they don’t care to defend themselves directly with reason and fact, often they can’t do that. So instead, they denounce you, your critics, their critics, as white supremacists. And then they just ignore what you say. Fine. We’ve dealt with this for years, we’re used to it. It no longer hurts our feelings, we understand what’s going on.
But there’s a new regime in power starting today and they seem to be planning to accelerate things dramatically. They’re getting the FBI and the Pentagon involved in this hunt for people who may criticize them. That’s a very big change, and you should understand what it’s really about.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor