Thursday, March 4, 2021

See What I mean About Tucker?

I made a few points about Tucker Carlson in my post from a few days ago. 

Now I love the guy, and I rarely miss an episode of his show. But c'mon! It took me one second to search Google and up pops his comments from 2003, defending the George W. Bush administration's foreign policy, and in particular the Iraq war. See, "Questioning Bush's motives on Iraq."

What's happened, I think, and not wrongly, from the perspective of good television opinion commentary, is that Tucker's "changed his stripes," so to speak, to keep up with the times. He's transformed himself into a "populist-nationalist," obviously because there's been a big market for it this last four years, and he's good at what he does. 

But when he airs commentary like we can see at this video below, unless you're someone who has a long history of following politics (and cable news), then you'd probably wouldn't notice Tucker's wishy-washy hypocritical bull. Remember that old saying about, "having your cake and eating it too"? Well, that's Tucker.

The thing is, interestingly, I personally like a restrained foreign policy. I mean, while Trump didn't start any "new wars" during his time in office, he himself indeed took dramatic and effective military action to defend vital national interests (like the drone strike killing Major General Qassim Suleimani, who was a very bad man, who was personally in charge of killing 100s of U.S. troops during the Iraq war). So, while I think Biden's actions in Syria a week or so ago look questionable by comparison, it's a joke to argue the President Biden doesn't have "the authority" to launch such a strike. Can you name any president since, I don't know, Gerald Ford, who in fact hesitated to take swift military action, even without congressional approval? I can't. And the reason is that the "War Powers Act" itself is probably unconstitutional, though it's never been struck down by SCOTUS. 

Again, I think Tucker's great, and I won't be tuning him out any time soon. His coverage of Biden's immigration disaster is superlative. And Tucker's consistent championing of the forgotten "working class" of this country --- and his hilarious segments taking down the left's "indoctrination" fascination --- is worth the ticket right there. But I'm not going to be some uncritical "rube" who just nods along with everything the guy says, because, remember, it's not insignificantly for *show.* And obviously, his show pays, as there's no chance Fox News will "cancel" Tucker, and indeed, his programming is being expanded big time, starting in April, with exclusive "Fox Nation" subscription content, coming to your screen in no short order.

So, it's all good. Hopefully my faithful readers can see what I'm saying. (And if you're so inclined, you can read some of the best political science research on such matters, here: "Don't Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment.")

With that, carry on dear readers, and thank you for your support. 

Here's Tucker at the video from earlier this week:



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