Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson argued against the National Guard troop presence currently on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in place since the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.
Carlson noted the troop presence around the Capitol despite other places nearby in Washington, D.C. remain unsafe.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Well, it looks like this is the part of the revolution where they start throwing their political opponents in jail. Wow, that was fast.
It was just a week ago they were telling us about unity. Remember that? What we didn’t know at the time is they meant that everyone with power should unite against the rest of the country. Unity meant oligarchy.
Oh, Doug Mackey learned that the hard way this morning. Mackey is a 31- year-old conservative journalist from Florida. At 7:00 a.m. FBI showed up at Mackey’s house, they threw him in handcuffs and dragged him to his cell. He now faces 10 years in prison. His crime: he made fun of powerful Democrats on social media.
As the Federal criminal complaint puts it, quote: “Mackey made coordinated use of social media to spread disinformation relevant to the impending 2016 presidential election.” This disinformation in the Biden administration solemnly explained, quote: ” … often took the form of memes.”
Yes, memes: online mockery. Mockery online is now illegal when it’s aimed at the wrong people. Doug Mackey hurt their feelings, so they put him in jail.
According to Joe Biden’s Justice Department, Doug Mackey violated 18 U.S. Code Section 241. He did this by tricking people like the dastardly trickster that he is into not voting in the presidential election.
What’s interesting is that prosecutors showed no evidence whatsoever that Doug Mackey actually tricked anyone into anything voting or not, not a single person. But that doesn’t matter shrieked CNN, Doug Mackey is a bad person with bad views. And by the way, we have no idea what Doug Mackey’s views are. We don’t care.
What CNN is telling us is that those views are a crime. He is a criminal. Lock him up. Give him a longer sentence than we give to rapists — which they’re trying to do.
As of tonight, that is the official position of the lynch mob channel. But hold on a minute, as a legal matter, have you ever read 18 U.S. Code Section 241? Probably not. But you should. Look it up.
When you read it, you will learn that Joe Biden’s Justice Department is lying in a very obvious way and that should make you very nervous. It turns out that Federal law does not ban memes or for that matter, misinformation, whatever that is. The law that Biden’s prosecutors are citing instead prohibits, quote: “Conspiring to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate anyone from exercising the right to vote.” According to the law that would include kidnapping voters, invading their homes, sexually abusing them.
Doug Mackey didn’t do any of that — not even close to any of that. Doug Mackey made memes, therefore, he’s a domestic terrorist. Speech is violence, dissent is a felony.
What you may be wondering does a case like this mean for the First Amendment? Well, it means that it’s effectively suspended. You can now be arrested for saying the wrong things and at 7:00 a.m. this morning, one journalist actually was arrested for that.
Almost no one tonight seems to be defending him. He had bad thoughts. He deserves it. They think it’s okay, and that shouldn’t surprise you because we’re clearly living under some form of Martial Law at the moment.
How do we know that? Well, here’s one indication. There are nearly 10,000 Federal troops in our capital city tonight. Oh, that’s a hint. Why are they there? How long will they be staying? Nobody is being very specific about any of that, so you’re left to draw your own conclusions, which people naturally are.
And by the way, it’s not making anyone more moderate. If you’re really worried about extremism, you probably wouldn’t put 10,000 Federal troops in your capital city, making everyone more radical and crazy. But they don’t care about that.
The point of this whole highly militarized exercise is to remind you of what Chairman Mao once famously said: political power grows from the barrel of a gun. Unfortunately, that is true in every country at all times.
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy is no genius, but he does understand that. As he explained today, as long as his political opponents exist, those soldiers will stay.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): The threat to the country is not over. Right? We still have 5,000 National Guard members surrounding the Capitol Complex. Why? Because there are still existing threats, present threats to the security of the Capitol.
And so, so long as Donald Trump is empowered by Senate Republicans, there is still the chance that he is going to incite another attempt at the Capitol. The threat is still very real to American democracy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Okay, so as long as there are people in this country who persist in disagreeing with Chris Murphy, explains Chris Murphy, we’re going to need to keep thousands of heavily armed soldiers on the scene. Why specifically? Because — and we’re quoting now, “The threat is still very real to American democracy.”
But wait, democracy requires soldiers? We thought it was voluntary. If you’re starting to think that maybe someone at some point secretly redefined the term democracy, changing its meaning to roughly 180 degrees from what it was just last year, you may be onto something.
What we’re looking at now is not democracy in the classical Athenian sense, where everyone gets to vote and the voice of everyone matters equally. No, what we are looking at now is instead democracy in the 1970s Eastern Bloc People’s Democratic Republic sense. This new version of democracy is a democracy where everyone fervently agrees with the people in power, or else they go immediately to jail.
Doug Mackey’s problem, it turns out, is that he didn’t properly understand what democracy is. Thankfully, Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio does understand it and he explained it to us today.
“We’re not letting those soldiers go home,” Tim Ryan said, until they do what our special operations forces did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. TIM RYAN (D-OH): Who in our government, in our military have had experience around crowd control, maybe even Special Operations Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan? Like, how can we learn everything we need to learn to reset the posture on Capitol Hill? And we’re not going to let the National Guard go home or we’re not going to create an unsafe environment for the country’s business until we have that figured out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, they are specialists in controlling unruly populations. We get it. Rather than answer our questions or improve our lives, you’re bringing in people with guns to remind us that you’re in charge and dissent is illegal. That’s a big change.
You may have thought you were a decent American in good standing. Ten years ago, nobody in this country would have called your views extreme. They weren’t extreme then. You don’t think they’re extreme now? You’ve always considered myself a pretty moderate person: live your life and get along with others. Oh, that’s not possible now, because the rules have changed.
You are now a dangerous insurgent. You are no different from a bloodthirsty Pashtun in Helmand Province or an ISIS terrorist in Erbil. You’re part of a guerrilla insurgency. Maybe it’s a gorilla insurgency. That’s possible, too. Have you seen the pictures from January 6th? Some of those terror leaders seems suspiciously furry.
Here’s the mastermind behind that terrible insurrection. The jihadi known by his nom de guerre Chewbacca guy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey. [Bleep] man. Glad to see you guys. You guys are patriots. Look at this guy, he has got — he is covered in blood. God bless you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You good, sir? You need medical attention.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I’m good. Thank you. I got shot in the face. I got shot in the face with some kind of plastic bullet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Any chance I could you get you guys to leave the Senate wing?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will. I’ve been making sure they ain’t disrespecting the place.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Okay, I just want to let you guys know this is like the sacredest place.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Sad news tonight. Chewbacca guy is no longer available for your kid’s seventh birthday party. He is in prison tonight. We will tell you when they move them to Gitmo or some undisclosed black site. And when they do, Sandy Cortez will breathe easier.
Back during the Great Terrorist Siege of January 6th, Sandy Cortez found herself in the same city as Chewbacca, literally in the same city, trapped and abandoned. Just like those lonely valiant troops in Corregidor so many years ago. She really thought she was going to die.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): I had a pretty traumatizing event happen to me. I can tell you that I had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So thankfully, they’ve arrested Chewbacca guy and the rest of his marauding band of terrorists, many of them well over 65 years old. So there is still a little justice in this country.
But hairy stoners in Viking hats are not the only threat that Sandy Cortez faces tonight. No, far from it. There are the other Members of Congress to worry about, some of them are Republicans, and you know what that means. At any moment, these people are likely to open fire indiscriminately on the House floor purely out of racism. And of course, she’s worried about that. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CORTEZ: We still don’t yet feel safe around other Members of Congress.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: How many —
CORTEZ: I think a very considerable amount. The moment you bring a gun onto the House floor in violation of rules, you put everyone around you in danger.
I don’t care if you accidentally set it off. I don’t care if you intentionally set it off. I don’t care if you set it off at all. You are putting — you are endangering the lives of Members of Congress. And it is absolutely outrageous that we even have to have this conversation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It’s outrageous. Absolutely outrageous, said the leader of America’s narcissism party, the fastest-growing party in the country. Even on the House floor surrounded by other elected Members of Congress, democratically elected — Sandy Cortez did not feel safe.
And that, my friends, is why we need tens of thousands of armed Federal troops right outside her office tonight, so that Sandy Cortez can finally for once take a breath and get back to the vital business of making perky Instagram videos about herself. The business of the people. It must go on.
Well, of course, it must. We all support that.
Now that we’re talking about the people, you’ve got to wonder what they think of all of this, the actual people. No one in power cares what they think, obviously. None of this is about the people who are actually suffering in our country, the millions of them. No, we’re watching one of those rare revolutions, rare in world history that’s being waged, not on behalf of the general population, but waged against it.
All of this is being done expressly for the oligarchs. None of it is being done for you. Of course, if you live in Washington, D.C., you already know that very well. Federal troops are not protecting your home tonight.
Sandy Cortez doesn’t care if you get robbed or carjacked, as more and more people are as crime skyrockets. Sandy Cortez and her friends want to abolish your police, not their police. Here’s a scene from the rest of the City of Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Carmelo Duncan was 15 months old when he was fatally shot Wednesday night in the Southeast. His father was driving the vehicle and the toddler was strapped into his car seat when he was struck with bullets. A preliminary investigation pointed out at least two people opened fire on the car as he drove by Southern Ave., hitting the car at least 10 times.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: The toddler was struck with bullets in his car seat right next to his father. This happened in Washington, D.C. within walking distance of the Capitol, but no one inside that domed building, the ones who are so afraid of Chewbacca man noticed or cared.
So whatever else you conclude from this, this tale of two cities — to dip into the cliche bin for a moment — here’s one thing you can be certain of. It’s not actually violence that Sandy Cortez and her fellow Democrats are worried about. No, it’s something else.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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