In regard to the formulation about the US, Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, let’s hope that the second portion at least is still true.
Fox News’s Tucker Carlson accused the National Security Agency last week of reading his private emails and planning to leak their contents to take down his show. Meanwhile, Axios just confirmed the Biden administration targeted Carlson after he sought a televised interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But instead of being outraged that a government agency could once again be spying on Americans — or even bothering to question the NSA’s failure to deny reading Carlson’s emails — blue checkmarks on Twitter banded together with Democrats and corrupt corporate media outlets to write him off as a right-wing conspiracy theorist.
While Axios claims it can’t confirm that the government spied on Carlson, the details of the story make it clear that the host was targeted, that his communications were collected, that he was unmasked, and that details of his communications were shared with reporters.
Fake news “conservatives” were some of the first people to have full-blown meltdowns over Carlson’s claims just minutes after they aired.
Go here to read the rest. This is Third World tin pot dictatorship stuff, meaning it is standard procedure under the current administration. Go here to read my take on the mendacious non-denial denial of the NSA.
I would also point out, if they were monitoring Fox News in general (or another organization/group he is a part of), Tucker would not be a “target”.
Went to check Jonah’s twitter feed and he STILL has apologized or retracted nothing, now playing semantic games over what he meant.
I’m used to being disappointed by politicians, I don’t expect any better from them. The disappointment from conservative thought leaders I used to respect is truly heartbreaking. What’s worse than sheep without a shepherd? Sheep who’s shepherds have betrayed them.
We know the FBI’s entrapment scheme contra Gen. Flynn went all the way to the top. Note, the man who ran the IRS during Lois Lerner’s escapades never did explain why he had dozens of visits to the White House during his tenure when his predecessor had just one.
The disappointment from conservative thought leaders I used to respect is truly heartbreaking. What’s worse than sheep without a shepherd? Sheep who’s shepherds have betrayed them.
I suspect in Jonah Goldberg’s case it’s ego at work. You think he’d get over it after four years and change.
Note, National Review‘s board has replaced capon Lowry with Ramesh Ponnuru. For a number of years, the website has been edited by Charles CW Cooke, a canny libertarian. He’s now departed in favor of Philip Klein, who is, like Ponnuru, a never-Trump die hard. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, David French and Ross Douthat are in the business of supplying sophistic arguments in favor of doing nothing of consquence about CRT (which I’m sure the Chamber-of-Commerce blockheads in the Republican Party will recycle). Douthat, of course, works for the Sulzbergers. You’ll recall that The Weekly Standard‘s patrons shut the publication down when Wm. Kristol’s NeverTrump business non-model generated a vertiginous decline in subscription revenue. I think its a reasonable wager that people like Pierre Omidyar in essence bought control of National Review around that time. (His patronage of The Bulwark has been out in the open). If you have a look at some of NR‘s IRS 990 forms, you’ll see some of NR‘s principals – Lowry and Kevin Williamson in particular – have been paid salaries that are around 2x and 3x what they could expect to earn from an employer whose compensation schedule was a function of arms-length transactions. It would appear that Douthat, French, and NR are being kept on a shorter leash these days. Stephen Tonsor, Samuel Francis, and Austin Bramwell all offered critiques of the subculture of which Goldberg and Lowry have been a part. They’re looking prescient as we speak.
Don’t forget that French and Goldberg are running the Dispatch nowadays as well. You’ll have to teach me your art, Art, of digging into the records of it.
I remember I was an avid listener of the GLoP podcast for awhile. I had to stop when, after hearing for YEARS about how Trump’s jokes about Russia and a few other sayings were cause for concern and reason to investigate him for possible ties, they held a several minutes long sessions mocking any suspicion over Biden’s ties to China.
Everything was better under President Trump.
They’re as much bodyguards of lies as the left.
They’re in it for the money.
Look at the funds sources.
Conservative media seems money-run by rats not much better than the sold-out-to-China Dem and left oligarchs.
So-called ‘conservative’ NeverTrumpers don’t hate Trump. They hate you, me, and 75 million real Americans. .
Chinese Joe didn’t win. We were robbed.
Wish I could get a refund of all those bucks I tossed into the NR and TWS manure heaps over the years, thinking they were actually worthy causes. Live and learn.
I wonder if we should call the “Never-Trump” conservative media the establishment conservative media? Didn’t the do nothing establishment Republican politicians need their own establishment conservative version of the MSM to cover for their failure to represent the voters’ interests? Didn’t Trump blow the cover of the establishment conservative politicians’ and media’s duplicity?
I am doubling down on my prediction that the media will start to say that the spying was justified because Tucker spreads “dangerous conspiracy theories” (i.e. like the idea he is being spied on.)
I don’t think anyone with any integrity at all could stand being employed in media today for any length of time. You have this feedback loop which leaves the whole mess in the hands of rubbish like AG Sulzberger and Jeff Zucker.
Trump delenda est.
Here paraphrasing Angelo Codevilla, President Donald J. Trump represents real Americans’ just outrage over the arrogant, corrupt, incompetent ruling elites – including media conservatives and establishment/globalist/big-government Repubs.
He continues to lead our visceral disrespect for the bums. Ergo, DJT, and any vocal supporter, must be destroyed.
As a retired federal employee, I marvel at the NSA writer’s comments regarding “never been an intelligence target”. He/she is truly a master of denial without actually saying anything. This comment is far more obscuring than anything I ever wrote. As we know from the lying testimony of Clapper some years ago, the NSA scoops up information like a vacuum cleaner and exercises little or no effort to protect the innocent who get caught up in their collection programs. Little wonder that the public distrust of government has spread to many other areas such as vaccines.
I can see five scenarios that would have played out exactly the same way, and I can’t think of a good reason to favor any one of them:
– NSA spying, whistleblower telling Tucker, and NSA leaking
– foreign agency hacking, telling Tucker it was NSA, then leaking
– private / troll hacking, telling Tucker it was NSA, then leaking
– Tucker or staff accidentally leaking, then claiming they were spied on
– Tucker or staff purposefully leaking and claiming they were spied on
inky,
You forgot the more likeliest in addition to your items 2 to 5 – AWIENS!
I like the way you think, T! No evidence for that one either.