Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” network senior political contributor Brit Hume reacted to Carlson’s earlier report that an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller has not solely focused on potential collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Now reportedly it includes elements of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Donald Trump’s opponent in that election.
Hume said that the “tide may now be turning” on the probe, which is that it may now implicate some long-time Washington, D.C. Democrats.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Brit Hume is a Fox News senior political analyst and he joins us tonight. Brit, the fact, or the idea from our source that Paul Manafort was working for the Podesta group on behalf of Russian interests before running the Trump campaign changes this story completely, it seems to me.
BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It does to change completely, Tucker. It suggests that what collusion there have been between Paul Manafort and the Podesta group on behalf of Russian interests. And the Podesta group — these two guys, Tony and John, they lie at the heart of the Democratic Party and certainly of the Clintons and their political endeavors.
So, this changes the whole character and focus and it does raise also the question, Tucker. When you’re coming around to getting at this now, and that’s remarkable on your part to have gotten this source to come and talk to you, how could it be that all these journalists working for other news organizations have been chasing this story, these many months, and never run across any of this? Remarkable indeed.
CARLSON: Well, that’s exactly the point.
HUME: It does change things.
CARLSON: Well, how could actually, I mean, you’ve been in journalism longer than I’ve been alive, how could the central front group that Manafort was representing, the money goes through the Podesta group and nobody notices? I mean, the Podesta group has 75 employees in Washington, nobody has mentioned that to a journalist in the past 11 months? I find that not believable.
HUME: Well, it’s pretty striking, and it suggests that the work has been done and this story has not been of the best quality or this would have turned up and I would also suggest that you have a pack of journalists who are so determined to follow one story line that they completely missed this. But this is a big deal on a lot of levels. And it is particularly noteworthy that we hear that Robert Mueller is on this and suggested that his investigation, which might have been initially about Russian efforts to influence the election, is now much more broad gazed effort to determine the extent and depth of Russian efforts to influence American policy going back several years.
And if that’s the case, and if all we hear about the Podestas is true, it seems to me that the Democrats have been complaining about this and making all kinds of allegations about this all this time are going to be very disappointed in its outcome.
CARLSON: Well, yes, I mean, considering that for the last year we’ve heard that America faces no greater foe, has never faced a greater foe than Putin’s Russia and they’re seeking to undermine our democracy, destroy our country, and now it turns out the two of the people closest to Hillary Clinton were working for them.
HUME: Yes.
CARLSON: I mean, I don’t really know how Democrats will respond to that.
HUME: Well, it is also the case too of course, if we look at this Uranium One matter that is coming more and more to light, it appears that we have the Obama administration in its effort to seek a closer relationship with Russia acquiescing a sale of materials that are strategic and that could certainly be argued place American security interests at some risk and, you know, all of this going on of course while and this has been known — unlike what you’ve just reported, this has been known for some time, but it seems to be coming into sharper focus at the moment and will be the subject of the Congressional investigations going forward.
So, Democrats can scream a lot and they no doubt will that all of that is a diversion, but I’m beginning to think that those claims and accusations are going to ring a little hollow in light of what your reporting and in light of what else is coming out even as we speak tonight.
CARLSON: We can’t get a Democrat on the show tonight, we can get a member of Congress. Of course we reach out immediately to the Podesta group for comment on what we found, we didn’t hear back from them. As if there isn’t enough news today, there’s late-breaking news that apparently the information that comprise the now-famous dossier that BuzzFeed printed, that information was paid for by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. I’m not even sure how to respond to this.
HUME: Right. You know, well, it is striking because, you know, that dossier, even as it appeared at the time, was pretty widely recognized even among media unsympathetic to Donald Trump as curlers and a lot of it was demonstrably false. So, this was a pretty shabby piece of business here and if it turns out that, as we now believe, that it was paid for in considerable measure by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party. And of course, this contained within it, Tucker, were allegations about Trump collusion with the Russians.
So, that tends to soil that whole allegation even further. So, the tide may be now turning in all this in political terms, and one might also open journalistic terms.
CARLSON: Kind of brazen though. I mean, if one of your chief fundraisers and the guy who’s running your campaign is in effect working with Paul Manafort, it’s a little brazen for you to run around claiming that Paul Manafort when he worked for Donald Trump was colluding with the Russians, no? I mean, what does it take to claim something like that?
HUME: Well, brazen might be the right word. You know, one hardly knows what to say about that, but it certainly reveals another side of the story that may be bigger and more important than these allegations, which have so far remained virtually without evidence.
CARLSON: Yes.
HUME: The allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign itself and the President, the man who is now president, and the Russians, is virtually nonexistent. After all these months.
CARLSON: Yes.
HUME: And now we hear about all this other stuff. So, as I suggest Tucker, the tide may now be turning on all of this and not in a way the Democrats are going to enjoy.
CARLSON: No. I would be concerned if I were the Podestas, very concern. Brit, thank you very much for that. Appreciate it.
HUME: You bet, Tucker.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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