Thursday, FNC host Tucker Carlson opened his program by admitting he and his show got the Ukraine situation wrong but blamed Vice President Kamala Harris’ involvement for the incorrect analysis.
Carlson told his viewers that given Harris was involved, he assumed the situation could not be “serious” given she was not a serious person.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: [T]he invasion of Ukraine already is a legitimate disaster for Europe and the rest of the world. Europe just lost a huge percentage of its energy supply, which is not a small thing. We’re all being reminded of that.
So this situation appears to become more chaotic by the day, possibly even spinning out of control. And that, we must be honest, is shocking to us.
We’ve been taken by surprise by the whole thing. We’re not the only ones who were, but we’re willing to admit it. The only thing more embarrassing than being wrong in your estimates is pretending that you weren’t.
So, why didn’t we see this coming? This total loss of control? Well, because we assumed that if things were dire, serious people would be involved in fixing them. But we looked up and we saw Kamala Harris involved, and that reassured us.
Harris had just come back from Europe where she had been conducting, quote, “diplomacy” with our allies, and that appeared to be proof this could not really be a big deal. The situation in Ukraine had been legitimately serious. If the future of Europe and the world hung in the balance as now, so obviously it does, of course, the Biden administration would not have sent Kamala Harris to fix it, because that’s not her job.
Kamala Harris’s job is to trot down to the Blue Room periodically to greet delegations of TikTok influencers or to cut occasional PSAs for the Children’s Dental Health Awareness Month, which was in February, so we assumed should be working on that right now.
But averting war with Russia? Saving the civilized world? Come on. That’s absolutely not Kamala Harris’s job. That was our assumption.
But as noted, we were wrong. Why were we wrong?
Well, we spend a lot of time watching Kamala Harris, you probably don’t. Unless you are a junior producer at MSNBC, you’re probably not that familiar with Kamala Harris.
We should say by the way we didn’t underestimate Vladimir Putin, we overestimated Joe Biden. But we knew that once Kamala Harris was involved, it couldn’t really be that serious, and we knew that because this is what she’s like.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAMALA HARRIS (D), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It is time for us to do what we have been doing and that time is every day. Every day, it is time for us to agree.
This whole thing about the border, we’ve been to the border, we’ve been to the border.
LESTER HOLT, NBC NEWS ANCHOR: You haven’t been to the border.
HARRIS: And I haven’t been to Europe. And I mean —
I don’t think, and my pronouns are she, her and hers.
CHRIS CUOMO, FORMER CNN ANCHOR: She, her and hers.
HARRIS: She would look down at me and “Kamala, what do you want? What do you want?” And I look back up and I said, “Fweedom.”
[LAUGHTER]
HARRIS: You’re going to literally see the craters on the moon with your own eyes.
UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: Oh my goodness.
HARRIS: With your own eyes. I’m telling you —
We must together, work together, to see where we are, where we are headed, but also see it as a moment, yes, to together.
It is the perspective of a woman who grew up, a Black child in America, who was also a prosecutor, who also has a mother who arrived here at the age of 19 from India, who also you know, likes hip hop.
Like, what do you want to know?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: This is just not a serious person, not surrounded by serious people. And yet, we’re in an extremely serious moment that demands seriousness, of course, we must together work together to see where we are going together, but also see this as a moment together.
If you’ve taken peyote, you know what she means, otherwise, you’re probably baffled. Once again, it’s time for us to do what we’ve been doing and that time is every day.
It’s like a Khalil Gibran poem, but the illiterate version, impossible to parse.
When Kamala Harris speaks, you get the feeling you’re either too dumb or too smart to understand what she is saying, but then within a few sentences, you settle firmly on the latter.
What do our European allies think of this? Well, of course, they’ve come to the same conclusion. Less than two weeks ago, as all of this was brewing on the brink, the Biden administration sent that person, Kamala Harris, to represent the United States at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
And while she was there, she assured the world that she and Joe Biden had this situation completely under control. Yes, Putin would like to invade Ukraine. Of course, he would, but not on her watch, not while Kamala D. Harris was on the same continent.
This continent known as Europe. No way.
Harris exuded what novelists call a steely resolve. Imagine being first in line for a shoe sale on Black Friday. Kamala Harris had that look, she knew what she wanted, and she knew where to find it.
And here is how she expressed that resolve. And yes, this is a verbatim quote from the Munich Security Conference, quote: “Perhaps this is a moment, as life does present us with those moments that challenge us to ask, what is our reason for being? And I think we all know the history of NATO, and its reason for being, the spirit behind this term, we use, the transatlantic community, the word community, meaning a collection, not a collection of individuals who see themselves as a collection, than as one. And that’s where we are now.”
So if the Vice President of the United States interrupts an adult Security Conference to talk like that, you’d conclude that whatever crisis they’re talking about at the conference couldn’t be imminent. They must have plenty of time to fix it, and that is why they could afford to send Kamala Harris in the first place, because actually, it’s not as big a deal as it seems.
Clearly, the White House must see the European Heads of State as equivalent to TikTok influencers. This is some kind of photo-op. That’s what we concluded. How could we not conclude that?
And then there was this clue. The day after Kamala Harris said the words we just read, talked about her reason for being, the day after she said that, she explicitly encouraged Ukraine to join NATO, quote: “I appreciate and admire President Zelensky’s desire to join NATO.” She said that at a press event.
And when we saw that, we thought, obviously, the Biden people must have this under control in some way we don’t know about. They must have some secret backchannel to Putin. They must have been fully assured that saying something so unbelievably inflammatory is not going to push Putin to invade Ukraine.
We assumed that. I mean, how could it be otherwise? It’s the United States. It’s a real country.
The idea that Ukraine might join NATO obviously caused this crisis in the first place, whatever you think of it. We know because we’ve watched for years, the more Western leaders pushed the idea of Ukraine in NATO, the closer Russians came to invading Ukraine.
It’s not a defense of that. It’s just observation of it. That’s true.
So obviously, no sane person would say something like that with Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border. You’d have to want an invasion of Ukraine to say something like that.
And at the time, we didn’t think they did want that. So we got it completely wrong.
And honestly, we’ve continued to get it wrong ever since. We assumed that once Kamala Harris humiliated the United States in Munich and jeopardized its core interests that maybe her boss, Joe Biden would realize maybe borders aren’t her thing. Maybe if you want to keep the border between two countries from being violated, maybe you don’t send Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris believes borders are racist or something, so obviously, it’s pretty hard for her to protect borders.
So it was always a strange personnel choice. Biden has been around a while. You’d think he’d know, the key to good management is matching the person with the job. Not everybody is good at everything.
So if you’re looking for someone to date Montel Williams, well, maybe she is the person you would choose. She could be a solid choice that she has done it before. Dated Montel Williams, you know? It is something that’s within her range of experience.
Is she good at it? We can’t say she’s — but she’s done it.
But this new gig — de-escalating a world-ending conflict with a nuclear-armed rogue state? No. No. Not when nuclear reactors are on fire. But they’re doing it anyway. Humiliating our country, jeopardizing our safety and the future of the world.
Kamala Harris is now the point person on Ukraine, in diplo-speak, she has got the Ukraine portfolio. What is she doing with that portfolio? We will start at the beginning, explaining things to the American public.
If the world economy is going to collapse, and you’re no longer to be able to afford meat for dinner, if you’re not going to have power, you should probably know why. And it has nothing to do with the issue with the criminal negligence of people like Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. No, it’s because of a place called Ukraine. Listen.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
HOST: Break it down in layman’s terms for people who don’t understand what’s going on, and how can this directly affect the people of the United States?
HARRIS: So Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So basically, that’s wrong.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
CARLSON: If you are patronizing people to that degree in the middle of a crisis this serious, you should not be in a position of leadership. Translation: I’ve never read a book in my life. I’m assuming you haven’t either. Let’s talk.
“Ukraine is a country in Europe.” Right? Okay. Following you, Kamala Harris.
Can you imagine? Watching this, maybe you’re starting to understand what the whole point of this administration is. This is the equity agenda and under the terms of that agenda, only the least capable are allowed to assume positions of authority in the United States. It is governed by the dumbest.
That’s how Pete Buttigieg, a guy who can barely drive his own car, wound up in charge of all of our roads.
That’s how all these people got their jobs. It was intentional.
Now, Washington has worked this way, to some extent for a long time. It’s just that under this precedent, the principle has reached its horrifying, but logical endpoint.
The last President hired Michael Cohen to be his personal lawyer. But the difference is, Donald Trump didn’t make Michael Cohen the Attorney General the United States. Biden absolutely would do that as long as Cohen was transgender, and you know that.
So, it shouldn’t surprise you, though it should horrify you and make you nervous, that according to The Hill newspaper, Kamala Harris, is going back to Europe, to see how much worse she can make this disaster.
She’ll be heading to Warsaw, Poland and Bucharest, Romania to, quote “show solidarity” with Ukraine, which means to badly damage key American interest in inventive new ways you haven’t yet imagined. That’s what’s going on.
A crisis that gets more grave by the day, whose ramifications are clearly more serious than anyone expected overseen by people who have no wisdom or foresight or restraint, and fundamentally don’t have the interests of our country at heart when they make their decisions.
And Kamala Harris isn’t the only problem, but she is the most glaring symbol of it.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor