Inconvenient Truths

Why Tucker Carlson ignored the January 6 hearing.

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Dear Reader (Including those of you who needing more help with portion control of your newsletter consumption),

We’re going to have a lot of opportunities to return to the January 6 committee, so I’m going to hold off on a lot of the substance—and there was a good deal of substance in the first hearing—and just make two points about last night.

First, I made a mistake.

On Wednesday, in response to Fox News’ decision to not cover the January 6 committee live, I ran through a whole bunch of reasons why they came to that journalistically indefensible decision.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Tucker is a coward

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  2. Marc Miller

    I don't care what the committee determines. Jeez, Trump has only been impeached TWICE and the Senate failed to convict him TWICE. What conclusion do the voters make from that conviction record? Is McConnell being disingenuous by stating he thinks the Democrats will get him? I just wish they'd allowed the Republicans to select the members they wanted on the House committee to at least make it appear to be fair. While this dance goes on, the economy and the stock market and whirling in the toidy.

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    Paul B

    Jonah, I think you’re close to falling into an all-too-common conceptual trap re Tucker’s motivations: maybe he just honestly believes that the January 6th Committee hearings are deranged lies.
    Obviously, that’s nonsense. But bad faith is also also nowhere near as scary as the idea that someone as intelligent and articulate as Tucker Carlson could simply believe something so poisonous and demented as 1/6 being a nothingburger.

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    Marc Frischhertz

    To state the obvious, Fox can’t handle the truth. We know Tucker looks at minute by minute ratings numbers. He was absolutely concerned viewers would change the channel.

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    Bel

    I think this analysis of identity politics is accurate. There is chicken and egg question though - did the white working class leave the democrats or vice versa?

    The Democrats became less focused on class in the 90s, but didn’t go all in on racial identify politics until more recently. I think it’s plausible they initially lost working class voters because of a policy shift on economics toward the center, but didn’t really notice until Trump won at which point blaming racism made sense given his tendency toward all sorts of bigotry.

    However I think that understandable instinct overlooked the true central tenet of Trumpism; behaving like a jackass. The middle finger to the world was what excited people, and many would tolerate his bigotry in exchange for the thrill.

    Unfortunately, not only is racial identity politics a bad idea, it also triggers that middle finger reflex, trapping us in a cycle of reactions to reactions. We have one party celebrating being a jerk, the other policing identity, and no one embracing the capitalism and meritocracy that while flawed are the best options for living up to the tenants of the constitution in a diverse society.

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    Bono Vox

    It will forever be a mystery to me that a crony shameless, mendacious , narcissistic, megalomaniac conman, crony capitalist pig and America’s Now Biggest Sore Loser Donald J Trump G.O.P. crasher not only lowered the collective I.Q. but literally broke the moral compass of that Frrr Carlson, but especially a man I used to admire like no other, Dennis Prager….oh, and that neo conman intellectual V.D. Hanson, who sold his soul out to those knobs at a corn pon ultra MAGA site Trump porn site….curious, I didn’t think any of them needed the money, but than again the most cultured and seemingly civilized country in Europe went all in for a maniac too…at least, for now, only Ashli Babbitt still cannot be reached for comment. For the love of God and country, INDICT TRUMP, #REMEMBERASHLIBABBITT she died for a complete fing lie uttered over and over again by a man still residing in the Obersalzberg, I mean an oceanside villa. Gotta run on. Peace through superior mental firepower

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    1. Avatar photo
      Phil H

      For the record, Ashli Babbit was responsible for her own death. Just as Tucker Carlson, Dennis Prager, Victor Davis Hanson are all responsible for allowing themselves to be misled by Donald Trump, who has ruined many good men and women.
      I might add to the list, Rudy Giuliani, who once earned my respect as the mayor who led NYC in the awful wake of 9/11 -- respect he flushed down the drain buy taking oart in Trump's coup attempt.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Bono Vox

        Dito. As some entertaining commentator that I quit listening to cold turkey, when the shameless hucksters started spewing conspiracy theories aout The Clinton’s sacking Vince Foster. Ashli Babbitt still canned be reached for comment, as yet Americas Biggest Sore Loser Donald J Trump has yet to answer for perpetrating fraud that the loon bought by crook, line and sinker. If The Don had not ginned up The Big Lie and shamelessly incited his die hard true believer white trash rioters, she would still be alive. Thanks for your comments on my comments

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    KB0679

    "If the left were serious about winning elections so that it can implement policies it wants, it wouldn’t write off the white working class. Rather, it would do everything it could to attract them, because they’re necessary for you to reliably win elections, never mind attain significant majorities."

    When much of the white working class voted for Trump and other politicians who ran on an explicit anti-ACA platform despite how much they were benefitting or stood to benefit from it, it was evidence of what later studies indicated: much of their economic anxiety was bound up in racial resentment, and much of this resentment was directed towards Obama himself, the privileged African American son of a Kenyan immigrant who was raised in Hawaii by his White grandparents and went on to graduate from the Ivy League and essentially live the American Dream--insulated from the ravages of the greatest recession since the Great Depression which subsequently accelerated the economic decline of the heartland but conferred more advantages upon the already-prosperous coastal and major inland white-collar metropolitan areas. Not even Mitch McConnell himself could have conceived of a better scenario upon which to capitalize politically, and Trump and the GOP effectively (and hypocritically) weaponized Obama's identity and status for political gain, not only among the white working class but also Black Americans, such as making the argument that Obama had done nothing to improve the lives of Black Americans.

    Also, we can't forget about Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and the Mother Emanuel massacre, the latter being responsible for the initial push to have Confederate symbols removed from public places of honor all across the country. Combined with the reaction to and aftermath of George Floyd's--and, to a lesser extent, Breonna Taylor's and Ahmaud Arbery's--murders, all of these exceptionally tragic incidents had the cumulative effect of putting the spotlight on our legacy of race in unavoidable ways that transcended class under a Democratic president and his Republican successor.

    Furthermore, the popular conception of the working class is largely of members of the racial majority who reside in the larger cities of the Midwest/Rustbelt and were formerly employed in the steel mills, coal mines, auto plants, rubber factories, etc. who deserve sympathy over ridicule and a robust government response to their predicament, even as frustration, apathy, and distrust increasingly gives way to destructive habits and social breakdown in such places in the communities in which they reside. Rhetoric directed towards them typically excludes terms such as "bootstraps," "personal responsibility," and "success sequence." They are applauded for eschewing post-secondary education that would help prepare them to obtain better-paying jobs and aren't lectured about their deficient culture or failure to emulate immigrants as the true causes of their plight. On the flip side, the plight of the Black poor and working-class is characterized as 100% self-imposed and owing to bad life choices without an economic rationale in sight--and that's mostly for the urban Black poor and working class. The deindustrialization and disinvestment that plagues small town/rural Black America, which is largely within the South, is all but invisible. Even Bernie Sanders largely dismissed and ignored them during the 2016 primaries by barely showing up in Southern states to campaign, and when these states broke for Hillary on the strength of the Black vote, those voters were chastised as not knowing what was best for them by Sanders supporters.

    As far as other aspects of identity, one only look at the viscious epithets thrown at political figures like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, the rise of the #MeToo movement in the wake of the wave of sex abuse scandals involving high-profile men, and battles over abortion. Gay marriage was legalized under Obama and the opposition to that by local government officials in some cases as well as clashes over discrimination and matters of religious conscience have escalated since. And ever since the debut of Caitlyn Jenner, trans issues have been in the forefront in big ways, generating passionate opposition and support.

    Then there's Christopher Rufo. And I won't even elaborate on the recent outcome of the U.S. Senate GOP primary in Georgia.

    In short, the befuddlement by pundits about the Democratic Party's emphasis on issues of identity over the past several years over class is befuddling to *me* since I can clearly see how we got here. One may question its effectiveness as political strategy, but that misses the point since it wasn't even intended to be such. It's a legitimate reaction to a constellation of events and phenomena which are occurring at a particular moment in the nation's history against a specific historical political backdrop.

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    Phil H

    "(I think democracy would have survived even if Pence hadn’t behaved honorably and heroically"
    2 reactions to that:
    First, our democracy would have survived, but not without a period of dangerous and unsettling chaos. Before the issue were settled (perhaps by a Supreme Court decision), the government, and the military, would be in the untenable position of not known whose orders to follow as of noon in January 20.
    Second, it should not have been a close-run thing for Mike Pence. He has alway struck me as weak-willed (going back to how as Indiana governor he caved on the Indiana RFRA law). he should have made clear to Trump, the first time he was asked, he was not going to do it. I'm glad he didn't, but that was his Constitutional duty to count the votes as submitted.
    If anyone was really a hero, it was Dan Quayle, whose counsel stiffened Pence's resolve.

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  9. Jon

    Tucker lives deep in Jonah’s head. Apparently 7 networks wasn’t enough for the dispatch team. Zero chance a single one of the 7 would have honored the request that this be televised if it was a R committee hearing.

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    Ed P

    Jfc, “ The left should Ruy the day” section is one hideous fallacy after another. The absolutism you suggest is entirely your own, or perhaps your own false interpretation. But not an accurate depiction of any left I know, and I’m in uber librul Philadelphia with my children in a ultra progressive school. Windmills. When there are real dragons to contend with.

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