On Thursday’s episode of his Fox News show, Tucker Carlson let forth quite a rant bashing unnamed reporters who have debunked a conspiracy theory he keeps plugging. And on his list of bash-ees? Apparently one of his own coworkers, national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin.
Tucker Carlson has for the last couple of weeks frequently talked about one of the lies Vladimir Putin has advanced to justify his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine: accusing the United States of funding biological weapons research in Ukraine. Carlson seems to believe this is true or at least possible, but it actually isn’t true. In fact, what actually happened is that the U.S. has been funding efforts to safely convert old Soviet-era bioweapons labs for use in more benign purposes.
The stories have been debunked by multiple reporters, even on Fox News. But on Thursday’s episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Carlson doubled down and all but directly accused those reporters of openly lying on behalf of the U.S. government. He then pivoted to the slightly less inflammatory insinuation that they are simply all stupid hacks, or perhaps just cowards.
And in one telling aside, he appears unmistakably to include Griffin in those accusations and insinuations.
“You know that the Pentagon talking points you saw reported as fact on television today — and last night — were an utter lie. Did the reporters who repeated those talking points verbatim know that they were a lie? Maybe they did. On the other hand, how would they know? They didn’t bother to do any reporting what. So. Ever,” Carlson said with an angry scowl.
“They got a text from some Biden administration flack and they just read it on the air like it was true. You shouldn’t be surprised because that’s what they do. And it’s possible that they’re afraid not to do that. They know if they stray from the script the White House has written for them, they’ll be denounced from the briefing room as tools of Putin,” Carlson added with sarcastic emphasis on the word “Putin.”
He continued along these lines later when speaking to ex-Intercept journalist Glenn Greenwald.
That “last night” aside above was almost certainly a reference to Griffin, who appeared on Wednesday’s episode of “Hannity,” which airs immediately after “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “Those are Soviet-era biolabs that U.S. has been engaged since 2005 in trying to help Ukraine convert the research facilities safely,” Griffin explained to Sean Hannity.
This isn’t even the first time Carlson has appeared to trash his coworker either. Here is how he spoke about the matter on March 1:
Must make for some awkward all-hands meetings. Meanwhile, we’re not sure why Carlson is so enthusiastic about the Putin version of events in Ukraine, but it’s his TV show, not ours, so he gets to pick the content.