Wednesday, FNC’s Tucker Carlson decried the politicization of the Derek Chauvin trial, which he said is what in part led to the verdict.
According to the Fox News host, the verdict was guided by the “mob,” which he said had intimidated the jury.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Oh, the drama. But at least the Chauvin trial is over. Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted yesterday on all counts. The trial went on for more than a month and at times the testimony was complex, it was technical.
But at the center of the case, there was always really just one piece of relevant evidence and it was the videotape of George Floyd’s death in the street in Minneapolis in May.
If you haven’t seen the tape recently, it remains every bit as shocking as the day it was shot. You watch it and you can see that George Floyd knows on some level that he is going to die. And in the end, of course, he does die.
It is crushing that way. Millions of Americans reacted in that way they saw it, they were horrified. And many decided, as they watched it that Officer Chauvin must have committed an act of criminal brutality. So really, it’s not surprising that the jury yesterday concluded the same thing.
The images in that tape seem to tell the whole story. And in fact, honestly, it is possible that even if no one outside the courtroom in Minneapolis had ever seen that tape, just the jury, it’s possible Derek Chauvin still would have been convicted. The tape is that powerful. That’s totally possible.
Unfortunately, we don’t know that. We can only speculate about it, because that’s not at all what actually happened.
The George Floyd video went around the world. It became the centerpiece of a new political movement. Political actors harnessed the emotion over that video and over Floyd’s death, to control the country and change it forever, and then — and this is the key and the thing that we should think a lot about — in the last month, some of these same people went further than that. They worked to change the outcome of Derek Chauvin’s trial.
That is the one thing that we can never allow, no matter how we feel about a specific case. Civilized countries have impartial systems of justice, that’s the hallmark of a civilized country. It is what separates the country you want to live in from a place you don’t even want to visit.
Civilized countries demand, above all, that every citizen is held to precisely the same standard under the law as every other citizen is and that applies, no matter how popular or unpopular a particular defendant might be. It applies no matter the alleged crime.
Countries like this, civilized countries do not tolerate jury intimidation. You see it, you stop it. They don’t allow the threat of violence to influence the outcome of a trial ever, under any circumstances. That would be the opposite of justice. It would be mob rule.
In America, it used to strive hard to be like that. And yet, just yesterday, we saw the President of the United States throw his backing behind Derek Chauvin’s prosecution, and he did that even as the jury in Minneapolis was still deliberating the case.
We saw one of the most powerful members of the United States Congress tell a group of angry people they should act out in violence if the jury dared to acquit. We watched the City of Minneapolis concede responsibility for the death of George Floyd right in the middle of the trial Before Derek Chauvin’s lawyer could even sum up his case.
And then least noted, but most ominously of all, we saw thugs threaten a defense witness with death. They smeared pig blood on the door of what they thought was his house, and then get away with it. No one in authority seemed especially interested in catching them.
These were terrifying acts, and it doesn’t matter whether you think that Derek Chauvin was guilty and deserves what he got. It doesn’t matter who you voted for. It doesn’t matter what you think about anything else. Seeing mobs trying to influence this trial should shock and horrify you at least as much as the George Floyd video did.
This is a picture of a country moving backward at high speed, but the strange thing is that most people didn’t seem shocked or upset by any of this. They seem relieved by the verdict. They have of course seen the boarded-up buildings. They watched the troops in the streets, and they understood very well what an acquittal would mean.
They believed that a conviction, whether it was justified or not, would buy the country peace. Many people thought this, not just cynical people, most people, including many Republicans, some of them said so.
If we obeyed Maxine Waters and ignored the pig blood, hopefully, the chaos would end and you can see why they felt that way.
After 11 months of violence and intimidation from BLM, mostly unrestrained, Americans just decided to pay the ransom. They understood Derek Chauvin as a sacrifice for the sins of a nation; and on television, they told us this was the case. They said it in the clearest terms, “America is on trial,” they told us. It’s not just Derek Chauvin, one cop from Minneapolis on the stand. No, it’s all of us on the stand. Our history, our culture, our system.
And we internalized that and we went along with it, but we were foolish to go along with it.
A wise country stands on its principles. It puts down mobs. It does not obey mobs. Mobs are never sated. It doesn’t matter what demands you follow, they demand more.
And now they are demanding more, not surprisingly. Here are the two most powerful people in the United States reacting to yesterday’s verdict, and keep in mind, as you watch this, that no one has ever shown that race or skin color played any role in the death of George Floyd. If you watched the trial, you know that, but these people didn’t watch the trial. They’re not interested in the trial, the details of the case, their plan is to use the trial the way they used George Floyd.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS (D), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A measure of justice isn’t the same as equal justice. This verdict brings us a step closer, and the fact is, we still have work to do.
We still must reform the system.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No one should be above the law, and today’s verdict sends that message. But it’s not enough. We can’t stop here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: “But it’s not enough. We can’t stop here.” “We must reform the system.” They don’t say how. But their intent is obvious. They mean it.
So it turns out that Derek Chauvin’s conviction was not the end of the revolution. It was not the terminus of what we’ve seen for the past year after the death of George Floyd. It was just the beginning of the revolution.
The Attorney General himself announced yesterday that the investigation into Floyd’s death, overseen presumably by avowed racist Kristen Clarke of the Civil Rights Division is, quote, “ongoing.” It’s ongoing? Didn’t we just have a month-long trial that presented all the evidence? Yes, we did. But once again, that was just the start.
So what can we expect next? Well, it’s hard to know exactly. But there are signs. Here for example are BLM activists celebrating the verdict last night in New York.
Now, George Floyd died 1,200 miles from New York in a totally different region. Presumably, they didn’t know George Floyd. They probably didn’t watch this trial. But for people like this, justice for George Floyd, isn’t the point. Never-ending ethnic conflict is the point. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don’t want you here
CROWD: We don’t want you here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don’t want you here.
CROWD: We don’t want you here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don’t want your [bleep] money.
CROWD: We don’t want your [bleep] money.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don’t want your [bleep] taquerias.
CROWD: We don’t want your [bleep] taquerias.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Owned by [bleep] white men.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So people with the wrong skin color now have to leave New York City, they’re not allowed to own restaurants. That’s what they just said.
Everyone, of course, pretended not to notice that they said it, but they did say it. The point is, people didn’t used to talk like this in public. And when they did, they were scolded, at the very least. You can’t have a multi-ethnic nation hold together if people are going to scream stuff like that on the street without anyone disagreeing with them.
So why are they doing it now? Well, they’re doing it for one simple reason. It gets results. Radicalism works, violence works. That’s the lesson.
We’ve taught them, being the mob, that lesson. And here’s at least one BLM activist who is willing to say it out loud.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was a mixture of violent and nonviolent protests that yielded this result. That’s the bottom line.
America doesn’t listen to us when we march peacefully. I’m not saying, oh, people will be back in the street. But America must know that if you continue to allow us to be murdered in the streets without justice, we will raise hell in America.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So it’s that simple. Violence gets results. Now that’s a threat, of course. But it’s also unfortunately, true. Rioting does work. When you burn cities, you get what you want. You get rich from corporate handouts. You can buy four homes. You get the jury verdicts you have demanded.
Rioters know this very well, even if the rest of us will not admit it.
By allowing Wendy’s to be torched and Macy’s to be looted and police stations to be destroyed, the rest of us have relinquished our power as citizens and instead handed it to the most violent, unreasonable and least productive people in the country. Why would we do something like this? Maybe historians will be able to explain it.
In the meantime, prepare for the next phase. But once again, don’t kid yourself, Derek Chauvin’s conviction did not settle accounts, it merely increased the debt. Here’s the Democratic Party’s pet academic radical Henry Rogers, now known as Ibram X. Kendi letting us know that Derrick Chauvin was just the beginning, the national transformation is on the way.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
IBRAM X. KENDI, AUTHOR: So now what? Chauvin is headed to jail, but is America headed to justice? Is justice convicting a police officer or is justice convicting America?
It is easy to just blame individual officers like Derek Chauvin, but the problem is structural. The problem is historic. Justice has convicted America. Now, we must put in the time transforming this nation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So we’ve all been convicted of murder. And by the way, you can’t blame Ibram X. Kendi. That guy has gotten many millions of dollars from our captains of industry. He is incubated within the Academy. You may be paying tuition to support his salary. Why are you doing that? Why are the rest of us doing it as he calls for punishing you for a murder you didn’t commit?
So this transformation that Ibram X. Kendi is calling for, what exactly is that going to look like? What’s the shape of the reform to come?
Well, Bree Newsome has some ideas. Newsome is one of the most famous BLM activists in the country. This morning, she announced that henceforth, police officers should not be allowed to break up knife fights. Quote: “Teenagers have been having fights, including fights involving knives for eons. We do not need police to address these situations. By showing up to the scene and using a weapon against one of the teenagers, everyone should be frightened that the ruling white elite have done such a thoroughly successful job of not only disconnecting us from the means of basic self-sufficiency, but also convincing us we need armed white officers to manage our children and communities,” end quote.
You may roll your eyes at Ibram X. Kendi, or the President and Vice President or at Bree Newsome and the many like her. But be assured that the Biden administration does not roll its eyes, it takes every word very seriously and that means your neighborhood may soon see reforms like this one. And what will happen then?
Well, if you live in an affluent neighborhood, you’ll be absolutely fine because you’ll hire private security. And there will be many American police officers who are eager to become private security guards because it pays better and you don’t have to listen to Ibram X. Kendi. He’ll doubt what’s happening.
But for everyone else, what next? Well, here’s some data and it comes from, of all places, the website VOX, which cites the following study, quote: “From 2014 to 2019, a researcher called Campbell tracked more than 1,600 BLM protests across the country, largely in bigger cities, with nearly 350,000 protesters.” Now the net result was, quote: “Roughly 300 fewer police homicides in census places that saw BLM protests.”
Okay, 300. But here’s the cost of that, and we’re quoting, “Campbell’s research also indicates that these protests correlate with a 10 percent increase in murders in the areas that saw BLM protests. That means from 2014 to 2019, there were somewhere between 1,000 and 6,000 more homicides that would have been expected if places with protests were on the same trend as places that did not have protests.”
You’re following the math there? Thanks to BLM says this researcher, police shot about 300 fewer suspects. And in exchange for that, up to 6,000 new murders took place, many of innocents and children.
So that’s the bargain that we have made and we just doubled down on that.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor