Weekly Mind Dump: What Is Tucker Carlson Up To in Moscow? Only a Useful Idiot Would Know
And - More Fort Sumters erupting. And - Has Trump's downfall begun?
Week of 1/28/24-2/3/24:
It Can’t Be Easy Being a Useful Idiot
At the height of his popularity with his Fox nightly program, Tucker Carlson proclaimed, “Why shouldn’t I root for Russia, which I am?”
In an essay last year, “Russia Calling! Tucker Carlson’s Fantastic Journey from Media Mediocrity to Putin Propaganda Shill,” I detailed how Carlson slavishly parrots the Kremlin propaganda line, particularly regarding Ukraine, and how Putin propagandists return the love. The Kremlin, in fact, had sent a directive to Russian news channels stating, “It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States and NATO.” Russia media monitor Julia Davis describes Carlson as “practically the co-host” of state TV propagandists who “is often quoted to support official Kremlin narratives.”
So, is it any surprise that Carlson turned up in Moscow last week, reportedly seeking a one-on-one interview with Vladimir Putin? Not to this writer.
I’ve previously compared Carlson to the 1930s Hitler apologist, Canadian-American priest-turned-radio propagandist Charles Coughlin. But another past figure also comes to mind: Walter Duranty.
Duranty was a British journalist who reported on the Soviet Union for the New York Times in the 1930s. He interviewed Stalin twice. His stories, in fact, won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1932. Trouble is, years later, it became apparent that Duranty was little more than a propaganda shill for the Kremlin.
His reporting glossed over Stalin’s imposition of mass starvation on the Ukrainian people to get them buckle under, what Ukrainians call Holodomor, in which about 13 percent of the population — some 4 million — perished.
“I have made exhaustive inquiries about this alleged famine,” Duranty wrote. “There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition. . . These conditions are bad but there is no famine.” He continued, “any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda” and “The ‘famine’ is mostly bunk.”
Other journalists at the time, notably British writers Malcolm Muggeridge and Gareth Jones, were reporting the opposite from their own travels inside the Soviet Union.
Privately, however, Duranty was telling others that he was fully aware of the scale of the catastrophe, for example, confiding to the British embassy in Moscow that as many as 10 million people might have died.
Stalin told Duranty, “You have done a good job in your reporting on the USSR, though you are not a Marxist, because you try to tell the truth about our country. . . I might say that you bet on our horse to win when others thought it had no chance and I am sure you have not lost by it.”
“Lying was Duranty’s stock in trade,” the late Joseph Alsop wrote, adding, he was “a fashionable prostitute” in service to Moscow.
In a review of Duranty’s reporting in 1990, the New York Times judged it “some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper.” A movement to get the Pulitzer Committee to revoke Duranty’s award, however, proved unsuccessful. He nonetheless is held up today as a paragon of amoral meretricious journalism.
Duranty was what is commonly termed a “useful idiot” — a shill for tyrants, one who knows better but for reasons of fame-seeking and ego parks his conscience in a distant dark place. And so is Tucker Carlson, who one day will join his notorious predecessor in shameful ignominy.
Are We Witnessing a Series of Mini-Fort Sumters?
Twenty-five Republican state governors have declared their support for Texas governor Greg Abbott’s defying federal authority along the southern border:
Because the Biden Administration has abdicated its constitutional compact duties to the states, Texas has every legal justification to protect the sovereignty of our states and our nation.
Abbott sent a letter to President Biden claiming that “the federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the states,” and therefore he was deploying the Texas National Guard and other state security personnel to “secure the Texas border” and stanch the migrant “invasion.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton furthermore vowed to defy Supreme Court rulings supporting the federal government’s authority on the border issue.
Abbott is copying and pasting from the Confederacy. The so-called compact theory was used by southern states to justify secession from the Union during the Civil War. The Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the theory since the early years of the republic.
Meanwhile, Texas’s laying razor wire in the Rio Grande has already cost the lives of at least three migrants, a mother and her two children. Texas National Guard troops are blocking federal officers from entering certain border areas.
Former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks writes:
I never doubted that our union would last — until now. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s actions at the southern border and his reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision in favor of the federal government make me fear for the continued existence of the United States of America.
Me too. We’ve been witnessing slow mission creep among Red states over the years in defying federal authority, including members of Congress as well as governors. President Biden has the authority to nationalize the Texas National Guard and forcefully confront Abbott. But he is wisely choosing to play it out in the courts for now. Recall Dwight Eisenhower federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and sending in the 101st Airborne Division in 1957 to enforce school integration when Gov. Orval Faubus refused to. Back then the country could withstand such a stress test. Can it now? Meanwhile, Jefferson Davis is smiling approvingly on Greg Abbott.
An Inflection Point in Support for Donald Trump?
I was struck by comments by E. Jean Carroll that, once she confronted Trump in the courtroom, her fear of him dissipated. She told CBS News, “Hans Christian Andersen’s great fairy tale The Emperor Has No Clothes, that is written about Donald Trump. We’re the ones who clothe him in all this power. He has none himself, it is his followers. It’s his hangers-on.” She told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, “I looked out, and he was nothing. He was nothing. He was a phantom. It was the people around him who were giving him power; he himself was nothing.”
Trump faces the reality of being stripped of his wealth by the courts: penalties approaching $90 million in the Carroll case and upwards of $370 million in the New York fraud case. Then there are the upcoming (though delayed) criminal trials that could land him in prison.
A New York Times/Siena College poll in December found 24 percent of those who said they would vote for Trump in the upcoming election also assert he should not be the Republican nominee if found guilty in one of his legal trials, “even if he has won the most votes.” And a January NBC News poll shows Biden narrowly edging out Trump if the election were held today.
Increasingly, one hears GOP figures referring to Trump as the “emperor with no clothes,” the latest being New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.
As the legal pressures rise, the more unhinged Trump becomes, slurring his speech and spouting crazier and crazier nonsense.
Could we be witnessing the beginning of the end of Trump and Trumpism? Stay tuned (fingers crossed).
It is useful to collate Tucker Carlson with Donald Trump, except only one of them is running for president- the other is also promoting his "brand" but needs to keep entertaining his audience.
A second level assessment, for an experienced journalist, would explore the underlying support and expertise behind Donald Trump, and render an opinion as to whether they were any more use than the last bunch.
If there were any credible US allies remaining, it would be fun to seek their heads of state's opinions as to whether they would prefer to deal with a DT or JB USA. Initially ask Japan, Taiwan, Australia, and perhaps Sweden- Israel has always been subject to the USA's great power (AutoPhil just gave me "Greta Power! } constraints.