Tucker Carlson Blasts CNN, Equates Jake Tapper to ‘Sicilian Mafia’ for Urging National Unity
Tucker Carlson sarcastically dismissed his network’s rival, CNN, and likened anchor Jake Tapper to making a thinly-veiled mob threat over calls for national unity.
In his opening monologue on Monday night, Carlson attacked the press, claiming it was “demanding you shut up and accept Joe Biden” as the newly-elected president after all the major news networks declared him the winner on Saturday.
“In other words, no one in this country is going to set up a resistance to Joe Biden. They will make certain of that,” Carlson ominously warned. “Those are for Range Rovers only, no pickup trucks allowed. Try and you’ll find out. Overstatement?”
The Fox News host then singled out a tweet by Tapper that sympathized with member of Donald Trump’s inner circle and campaign staff over the election loss, but asked them think about “what’s best for the nation” as the president spreads baseless conspiracies about widespread voter fraud.
“Got that? Your character is on trial here. Future employers, take note,” Carlson soberly intoned, before wildly mischaracterizing Tapper’s post. “In other words, accept Joe Biden now or you will never work again. Do what CNN tells you to do or good luck feeding your family.”
“Did the Sicilian mafia ever make threats that explicit?” Carlson then added, taking his threat analogy to an absurd level by implicating the nation’s federal law enforcement system in a plot with the press to force Biden onto the public. “No they didn’t, because they knew the FBI was listening but in this case the FBI is on board and so is the entire media establishment.”
The Fox host continued this vein of ridiculous exaggeration, when he then slammed a CNN video calling for post-election unity as having an insidious, authoritarian subtext.
“After Joe Biden claimed victory on Saturday, CNN released an ad demanding its viewers to accept Joe Biden as their lawful president and holy savior,” Carlson said. “If you don’t let Joe Biden into your heart there cannot be peace.”
Finally, after his intra-media attacks, he trained his fire on Michelle Obama. Again, he picked out a tweet — and then conducted an obvious bad-faith interpretation of it, to include ignoring half of what she wrote.
“So what exactly is this healing that they are looking forward to and commanding you to participate in?” Carlson asked, before showing a tweet from the former First Lady.
“In her message of unity, Michelle Obama wrote this quote: ‘Let’s remember that tens of millions of people voted for the status quo even when it meant supporting allies, hate, chaos and division.’ End quote.”
Except it clearly wasn’t the end of Obama’s quote, as Fox News viewers could plainly see. In fact, Obama made an explicit appeal of outreach to Trump voters, saying: “We’ve got a lot of work to do to reach out to these folks in the years ahead and connect with them on what unites us.”
The Fox host ignored that key context, however, and again darkly hinted that Democrats and the press were making enemies lists.
“That’s the unity message,” Carlson snarked. “Let’s remember who disobeyed. Let’s hurt them.”
Watch the video above, via Fox News.
