Trump and his supporters are going all out with the election conspiracy theories this week — Trump delivered a speech on Thursday that comprised mostly unsubstantiated conspiracy theories — and Tucker Carlson couldn’t help but join in on the fun. The Fox News star’s new conspiracy is about as illogical as these things get: He said on his show Thursday that, somehow, the liberal media could decide to declare Biden the winner, and for some unknown reason the states would just go with that.
“Someday soon the news media will decide to shut this election down. Believe it or not, effectively they have the power to do that. Let’s say tomorrow officials in Philadelphia produce a large number of newly counted votes. Pennsylvania’s secretary of state hastily ratifies them, puts a seal of approval on them, and then declares Joe Biden the winner. Winning Pennsylvania would put Joe Biden over the threshold of 270 electoral votes, so Joe Biden is now the president-elect,” Carlson said.
While Calrson said many things during his show on Thursday, he didn’t provide any evidence for how or why this would work, or even attempt to give any further explanation for his unfounded theory. In fact, what he’s describing is something that Trump himself is already attempting to do as he has declared himself the winner and tries to stop any further vote counting. It was a speech that CNN fact check guru Daniel Dale said was “the most dishonest speech he’s ever given.”
Instead of acknowledging that fact, he just jumped straight to being outraged about this fictional hypothetical scenario that has no basis in reality. What Tucker is likely doing here is attempting to undermine any perception of a potential Biden victory in Pennsylvania. He’s preemptively declaring the Pennsylvania results invalid if the media calls Pennsylvania for Biden, and then the state later certifies the tally as a Biden win.
“How many of the 69 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump this week would believe that and accept it? At this point, not very many, not that anyone cares. And of course the fact that no one cares is the reason they voted for Donald Trump in the first place. But if you cared about the country and its future, you wouldn’t force Donald Trump’s voters to believe this,” Carlson said, about a situation that is not occurring.
Carlson carried on like this for a while.
“You wouldn’t force them to take you on your word. Instead, you would show them. You would convince them. You would pull back, you’d resist hasty calls. You’d make certain that we got to the bottom of any credible claim of fraud,” Carlson said. “Not all the claims are credible — some are. And you’d care. You would air the hanging chads. You’d let the process work as we did in 2000. Maybe in the end Joe Biden would win anyway, maybe he wouldn’t. But the public’s faith in the system, and that’s essential in a self-governing republic, would remain intact.”
Tucker delivered this screed shortly after Donald Trump delivered a speech signaling his intent to interfere with the election. But Carlson didn’t talk about that in his opening segment. He just kept going with this thread.
“Let’s say all you cared about was power. In that case, you’d go on television and declare Joe Biden the president-elect. Even as other states were still counting votes, and serious questions about the legitimacy of ballots remained unanswered,” he said.
“So let’s say the news networks decide to do that, shut it down,” he continued. “What then? Well, Donald Trump and his voters would complain obviously. But what can they really do? They’re not news anchors. They don’t own their own channels. And if you wanted to stop them from complaining, it wouldn’t be very hard. You’d just accuse them of attacking democracy, that you would censor their social media posts.”
Carlson never explained how any of these fictional actions by media outlets could actually lead to a fraudulent election.
As you may have heard, a judge recently ruled that Tucker Carlson is not a credible source of news.
You can watch the quoted portion of Thursday’s episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in the video embedded up at the top of this article.
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