Glenn Greenwald Defends Going on Tucker Carlson’s Show Despite Barrage of Criticism
The Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald — who resigned from the media outlet on Thursday in a scorched earth letter — explained on the Hill’s Rising why he appears on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight despite facing repeated criticism from liberals for doing so.
During an interview on the Hill’s Rising with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, Ball noted that Greenwald appeared again on Tucker Carlson Tonight, Thursday.
“During the Bush administration, Democrats loved to to use you, they loved you, and they loved to use you because you were making their point. Now obviously Tucker and others on the right love to have you on when you’re talking about Joe Biden,” Ball declared. “You know Tucker’s not going to cover any of the corruption that’s happening in the Trump administration, so people who have respect for you have told me like, ‘We feel like he’s getting used by the right in a way that’s not helpful.'”
Greenwald responded, “First of all, I think every cable show uses people,” explaining, “I used to go on MSNBC all the time at the beginning of the Rachel Maddow Show because I would go on and bash Bush and Cheney and I would argue even in the early Obama years that Bush and Cheney ought to be prosecuted, and Rachel Maddow would be like, ‘Hey, here’s the great journalist Glenn Greenwald to tell us why the Republicans are…'”
“So, you know, that’s why she was putting me on, because it served the narrative and the stories she wanted to tell. That’s how cable news
works, so I know that the reason I go on Fox is because Tucker has a story that he thinks… I’m an important piece of and can tell,” he said. “That’s true of every show though, like why do you think CNN picks the people it picks? Because they’re promoting the message it wants to serve.”
“The difference though is that, as you guys wrote a book about, the traditional categories of left versus right are either breaking down or at least metamorphosizing,” he argued. “They’re changing, they’re being redefined, and so you know I’ve gotten to do things on Fox like talk about the evil Jair Bolsonaro twenty minutes before he made his first and only live appearance on that network.”
Greenwald also pointed out that “Tucker was one of the most prominent defenders of me when Bolsonaro was trying to imprison me, which made a huge deal… was a huge deal in Brazil.”
“When I wanted to talk about the persecution of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, I got to go on Tucker’s show to do it and reach an audience that — even though they may not agree with everything I’m saying in the moment — by being able to communicate with them, and have an open channel of discussion with them, at least if they trust me they’re gonna give me a fair hearing,” he continued. Which is what you want, right, if you believe that the things you’re saying need to be heard and are important.”
Greenwald said that “it’d be so much easier to isolate myself in echo chambers where everybody applauds me,” but added, “The reason I started writing was because I wanted to bring attention to things that I thought the media was ignoring, not that the media was already covering.”
“I assume that my readers already know all the reasons why Trump is horrible. I’ve written negatively about Trump before,” Greenwald noted. “I just don’t think it’s a valuable use of my time or platform to just go around repeating what CNN and MSNBC and the New York Times op-ed page are all already saying. What good does that do other than win me applause?”
He concluded, “I want to bring attention to some of the kind of unseen trends that I think are really disturbing, that my readers would benefit from rather than just having their views reinforced, and I think that’s why I built up a loyal audience over the years.”
Watch above via Rising.
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