Tucker Carlson isn’t used to being told “no.” Which partly explains how Patriot Purge, his new three-part documentary series which claims that January 6th was a “false flag” operation, came to be. Needless to say, the fact that the events of that infamous day—which left five dead—are being called into question at the same time the January 6th commission is doing its best to interview witnesses and participants (not all of them willingly) is enraging a lot of people. Chief among them, Liz Cheney, who holds one of the committee’s highest positions.
On Thursday morning, Cheney tweeted about the series, saying it’s this same type of dangerous propaganda that led to January’s insurrection in the first place: “It appears that @FoxNews is giving @TuckerCarlson a platform to spread the same type of lies that provoked violence on January 6. As @FoxNews knows, the election wasn’t stolen and January 6 was not a “false flag” operation.”
It appears that @FoxNews is giving @TuckerCarlson a platform to spread the same type of lies that provoked violence on January 6. As @FoxNews knows, the election wasn’t stolen and January 6 was not a “false flag” operation. @rupertmurdoch @jayawallace @Suzannescott @SpeakerRyan https://t.co/ODKZFVUFBa
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) October 28, 2021
While Cheney is far from the first or only person to express her outrage over the Patriot Purge trailer—even Carlson’s Fox News colleague Geraldo Rivera called it “bullshit”—Carlson took Cheney’s tweet as an opportunity to clutch his pearls and play dumb.
Politicians don’t get to put parameters around your thoughts or conversations. Free people are allowed to ask any question they want. pic.twitter.com/NK6QrYncal
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 29, 2021
Carlson, who’s now referring to Patriot Purge as an “investigative documentary” (yes, you can laugh), told viewers to:
“Keep in mind that Liz Cheney hasn’t even seen the film that she’s so angry about. Just the trailer. A minute and 42 seconds pulled from three full episodes. Liz Cheney’s not waiting for the facts here, she knows for certain that we’ve got weapons of mass destruction and she plans to invade.
According to Liz Cheney, this show is dangerous. Because we dared to report on what actually happened on January 6th, this show is somehow, she says, abetting violence.”
To Carlson, Cheney’s brand of reasoning is “a staple of the purple-haired college activists you see yelling at people in viral videos. ‘Your speech is violence,’ they shout. ‘Our speech… our violence is speech.’” Not even Carlson seems able to keep track of his own arguments. But, as The Hill reports, Carlson then set his diatribe up for the big payoff when he said that he could see why Cheney is so enraged by his trailer:
“Until yesterday she and Nancy Pelosi had a monopoly on how Americans were allowed to understand Jan. 6. Unfortunately for them, that’s not how a free society works. Politicians don’t get to put parameters around your thoughts or conversations. Free people are allowed to ask any question they want. They can follow the facts to their own logical conclusions and that’s exactly what we set out to do months ago when we began reporting out this story.”
Carlson ended his rant, which largely just served as a promotional spot for Patriot Purge, by mentioning that they had invited Cheney onto the show to discuss the docuseries, but that “she emphatically refused to come. It turns out that Liz Cheney is not simply a liar, she is also a coward,” Carlson concluded.
You can watch Carlson’s full segment below, and not watch his docuseries beginning November 1.
Politicians don’t get to put parameters around your thoughts or conversations. Free people are allowed to ask any question they want. pic.twitter.com/NK6QrYncal
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 29, 2021
(Via The Hill)