CNN’s chief media correspondent Brian Stelter said Sunday on his “Reliable Sources” program that Fox News host Tucker Carlson was the “new Donald Trump.”
Stelter said, “I have come to one conclusion about the GOP and the media. I want to see you if agree or disagree with me. Even though republicans are out of power, the use of the media, their use of the media has a major impact on the Democrats and on political dysfunction. So what I’m about to say directly impacts President Biden and his administration. All right, are you ready for it? Here is my conclusion. Tucker Carlson is the new Donald Trump.”
He continued, “Tucker has taken Trump’s place as a right-wing leader, as an outrage generator as a fire-starter, and it’s all happing on Fox, just as Trump’s campaign did. Which means Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch are ultimately responsible. Think about all of the ways these two men are similar. Every day, Carlson is throwing bombs, making online memes, offending millions of people also delighting millions of others, tapping into White male rage and resentment, stoking distrust of big tech and the media, generally coarsening the discourse, never apologizing for anything and setting the GOP’s agenda. Sounds like a recently retired president, right?”
He added, “He tells the same conspiratorial us verses them story that Trump told, the same they’re out to get you story that Trump told for years. It is the paranoid style in American politics all over again. Tucker now soaks up some of the same social media fury that Trump did. He stokes the same debates that Trump did.”
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