Tuesday, FNC’s Tucker Carlson opened his show with his reaction to the announcement of a three-count guilty verdict for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
The Fox News host took issue with Democrats’ use of the trial to advance their own political cause, which he argued interfered with the court case.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: So there was a political context around this trial, politics shouldn’t have any effect on any trial. Again, that’s antithetical to what justice is, but they did intrude at every level of this case.
We’ll tell you how.
After the verdict, Joe Biden declared that systemic racism is a stain on this country’s soul.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A jury in Minnesota found former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty on all counts in the murder of George Floyd last May.
It was a murder in the full light of day and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism the Vice President just referred to. This systemic racism as a stain on our nation’s soul, the knee on the neck of justice for black Americans.
Enough. Enough of these senseless killings. Today, today’s verdict is a step forward.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Systemic racism, a term that neither Joe Biden nor anyone else who uses it has ever defined with any precision whatsoever. But more striking is Biden’s posture. You’d think he would be excited by this.
Just this morning, as the jury was still deliberating, the President of the United States said he was praying for a guilty verdict.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: I’m praying the verdict is the right verdict. I think it’s overwhelming in my view. I wouldn’t say that but the jury was sequestered now, and now you hear me say that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: When was the last time a sitting President weighed in on a jury decision before it was made? Answer — never.
The White House was asked about this just a few hours later and pretended that Joe Biden hadn’t actually said what he actually said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
QUESTION: You’re not able to clarify what is overwhelming, the evidence or case presented by the prosecution?
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We’re not going to get ahead of the outcome. I expect when there is a verdict, he will have more to say.
QUESTION: The President has talked about the importance of an independent judiciary. Why is it appropriate for him to weigh in on the verdict, even though the jury is still deliberating?
PSAKI: I wouldn’t think — I don’t think he would see it as weighing in on the verdict. He was conveying what many people are feeling across the country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Yes, he was just conveying what many people are feeling. He wasn’t weighing in as the single most powerful man in the world on a jury verdict that hadn’t been reached yet. He didn’t say what you saw him say.
If that sounds like a familiar defense, it is exactly what Maxine Waters and her defenders throughout Washington are using today, after Waters threatened a jury with violence if it didn’t find a guilty verdict.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MAXINE WATERS (D-CA): You’ve got to not only stay in the streets, but we’ve got to fight for justice.
But I am very hopeful and I hope that we are going to get a verdict that would say guilty, guilty, guilty.
I don’t know whether it is in the first degree, but as far as I’m concerned, it is first-degree murder.
Well, we’ve got to stay on the streets and we’ve got to get more active, you’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So there’s a reason police were all over the streets in cities across the country last night and it is that, it is the threat of violence, and Maxine Waters threatened violence before the jury had even begun to consider the facts of the case. That’s so far over the line that we read some Democrats were shocked by it, and yet no one condemned it.
That includes the President, and that includes the most powerful people in the Democratic Party, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer of Maryland. They came out in support of Maxine Waters.
And then state media, literally state media, Public Broadcasting System came out today with an explanation at the White House press briefing. Watch this propagandist explain what Maxine Waters really meant.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
YAMICHE ALCINDOR, JOURNALIST: Representative Waters, as you said, clarified, she said, my actual words don’t matter. I wonder why the White House isn’t also coming to the defense of Representative Waters given the fact that she is now facing an onslaught of attacks, especially by I would say Republicans.
I wonder why the White House isn’t saying we back what she said about being confrontational. She was obviously not threatening violence.
There are Civil Rights leaders that are saying that’s what contra — that’s what Civil Rights is, it is to be confrontational, to be active.
PSAKI: Well, she could — she also clarified her own remarks, Yamiche and I think that’s the most powerful piece to point to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: That lady works for you. She literally works for public television and there she is ardently flacking for lunatic Maxine Waters at the White House press briefing.
Oh, it’s all normal. Don’t worry. It’s always been this way. It hasn’t always been this way.
And our leaders haven’t always talked like they’re seized by religious fervor. Here was the Speaker of the House today, thanking George Floyd because he died in order to make the Democratic Party more powerful, for his sacrifice, she said. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Thank you, George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice. Because of you, and because of thousands, millions of people around the world who came out for justice, your name will always be synonymous with justice.
So unless we can change the law, this will be an episode. We change the law, we’re going down a different path altogether.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So the guy dies on the sidewalk and here, this lady comes out and politicizes it so completely that he becomes sort of a Democratic Party saint, “Thank you for your sacrifice.” This is grotesque, it is a cult, obviously.
But what does it mean for the rest of us who have to live here under the leadership of people like that?
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor