Tucker Carlson took a break today from spreading Russian disinformation and Covid misinformation to interview Rymma Zelenska, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s mother.
Fox News: Mrs. Zaxby’s, the whole world admires your son Voldemort for his
personal courage, determination, and brave leadership. You must be very proud.
Rymma Zelenska: My other son is a doctor.
(The above makes me wish that there was a web page that would generate a Facebook fact check PNG to add to non-Facebook pages. The kinds of images that we see in “Facebook versus the BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong” for example (note that folks at the 180-year-old medical journal claim to know more about medicine than Facebook’s independent fact checkers). Fact checking myself, I can’t find any Internet source suggesting that Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a brother.)
Meanwhile… Shabbat Shalom! (and I hope this is not too soon)
Related:
- Medical School 2020 (what it’s actually like)
Tucker Carlson was amusing for a while, ridiculing a lot of those who deserved to be ridiculed, but unfortunately he turned out to have very poor judgment — conflating the Russians massing on the Ukraine border with the illegals trying to cross the Rio Grande and assuring us that the whole Ukraine issue was something concocted by the Biden administration to take the public’s eye off something or other. He’s a demagogue, i.e., someone who appeals to the prejudices of the not very smart. Another demagogue is JD Vance, who also spread the same nonsense & obviously should have known better. Not that what these people had to say really mattered in terms of US preparedness since it it dubious that Biden’s own ineptitude was influenced by these demagogues. One the other hand the disappearance of Vance and Carlson from center stage probably would not be a great tragedy for the Republic.
Seems like the “Russia! Russia! Russia!” folks are the proverbial boy who cried wolf.
When you had a Russian Collusion hoax orchestrated by the Hillary campaign, including a Ukranian sub-source Alexandra Chalupa…
When you had an impeachment where the whistleblower was offered the position of Defense Minister of Ukraine…
When you had a Russian Bounties Hoax that was spread by the likes of Liz Cheney…
When Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were rewarded with directorships of Ukraine’s state gas company two months after the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine…
When you had 50 former spooks declaratively lie that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation… so the lie could be used as pretext for state and big tech partnered censorship of major news outlets…
Not to mention that the chronic Russia hoaxing and the perception that Ukraine is an American proxy state, were almost certainly factors in Putin’s decision to move militarily.
It seems completely reasonable that contrarian thinkers like Carlson and Vance would be skeptical of another Russian incident being touted by intelligence agencies, arriving at a time when Biden’s approval had plunged into the 30s.
Sure Carlson and Vance misjudged the seriousness of this war. But we shouldn’t fall into the trap of cancelling them over one misjudgement, which arose largely due to the lack of credibility of the folks issuing warnings, when we forgive entire institutions full of compulsive liars.
Blah blah. Those illegals are colonizers. The Russians may lob some artillery shells here and there, but they’ll be going home eventually, winners or losers.
And there are some advantages: Maybe the Russians will break up the Nazi-run weapons biolabs. (Fact check: The Nazis merely guard the weapons biolabs. They do not run them.)
Obama always said if you like watching Tucker Carlson you can keep watching Tucker Carlson. (This brain bird watches him every night and agrees with Steve 100%)
Yes, “disinformation” often turns out to be true after a year. Here’s another “Russian asset”, Glenn Greenwald, who appears to be vindicated regarding the Hunter Biden laptop story:
https://nitter.net/ggreenwald/status/1504811921790410803#m
“Russian asset” Tulsi Gabbard was accused of treason after citing Nuland’s official biolab answer on Tucker Carlson’s show:
https://nitter.net/ggreenwald/status/1503773930041094144#m
“Rymma Zelenska: My other son is a doctor.
“However, fact-checkers pointed out that the U.S. government had previously stated that the labs were researching possible epidemics, not bioweapons like Russian sources have long claimed.
The other son doctor might be Ukraine’s royal flush. If the other son doctor is playing with “gain of function” bat virus in a lab and there is Covid 2.0 then the Russian army will have to immediately socially distance, pack up and go home until there is new vaccine 2.0 available.
Philip, is it a joke about Tucker Carlson interviewing Rimma Zelensky? If not do you have a link? I did not find one. The first mention of Zelensky’s mother that I found was at https://showbizcorner.com/rimma-and-oleksandr-zelensky-volodymyr-zelenskyy-parents . It says that Rimma Zlelensky is an engineer and president Zelensky’s father is an Electrical Engineer – Scientist working on mining applications.
Frankly I had better opinion of Tucker Carlson. He seems to serve as Putin’s lawyer and conduit of misinformation on Ukraine. He once claimed that Zelensky was a Ukrainian dictator. Ukraine has no dictators, in a matter of fact not a single president in Ukraine was elected for second term, and Zelensky gathered over 70% of vote when he was elected. I guess no Tucker Carlson for me going forward, unless he really interviewed Zelensky’s mother.
In the picture in the article that I found above, Zelensky’s family seem to have sliced pork salami with sliced cheese on the same plate, I never heard of such traditional Jewish dish before.
I find it easy to detect exaggerations in Carlson’s show. It is overtly opinion based, sometimes with a humorous angle.
The “Ukrainian dictator” statement was before the war started, when NATO was hawkish and arrogant in the Munich “peace” conference. At that time Carlson believed that the Democrats were deliberately aiming for a protracted proxy war, which is not an unreasonable assumption.
If you filter out these obvious exaggerations, Carlson often highlights uncomfortable facts that the mainstream omits. Also, if you want the other side, at Fox News it is possible to listen to Hannity/Levin who are propagating the exact opposite view.
None of this is possible with mainstream media, who have a single dogmatic opinion and change or soften it when convenient:
https://nitter.net/ggreenwald/status/1504898343889166343#m
perplexed:
Many conservative leaning people today in a strangely symmetrical way joyfully play the roles of Putin’s useful idiots just as the left did with respect to Josef Stalin. The situation would be comical if it were not so tragic and reminds one about the American icon of the time Charles Lindbergh
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lindbergh-to-congress-negotiate-with-hitler
As I wrote before, many conservatives with whom I talked before and after the invasion regard Putin as a savior of the “Western values”, the last stand in the way of woke tsunami as it were. Apparently, for many such as Carlson or Tulsi Gabbard or Candice Owens, for example, it is mentally impossible to update their priors wrt. who Putin really is. What is sad is the fact that real legitimacy of many problems these conservatives raise, some of which are existential in distant or not so distant future, will be severely compromised by people like Carlson associating themselves with the Russian war criminal.
There are some conservative thinkers who managed to turn their ideological/mental ship from formerly pro-Russian orientation to clear understanding of what the modern Russia is in a matter of one day as Lubos Motl of the Reference Frame did (https://motls.blogspot.com/2022/03/dont-they-actually-have-deal-with-russia.html ), or those who understood that from the very beginning like Dennis Prager ( https://www.prageru.com/video/ep-229-dont-overcomplicate-the-war-in-ukraine, from minute 7).
Anon, I do watch other shows on Fox News sometimes. I think that “fair and balanced” is an oxymoron, it should be fair (honest) even if it would make it not balanced. I did watch part of one Tucker Carlson show since his “dictator” show but catching myself on having hard time believing him on other topics of which I know less.
Ivan, yes, I had read sources at which for years Putin’s media influence was promoting anti-police/Antifa/BLM crowd. I did not realize how deeply his “foreign intelligence” was also vested into other side of American debate. Tucker Carlson does not look like easily brain-washable type with a crush on Vlad the Terrible. I bet that Mr. Carlson has IQ around 150.