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“WE’VE HAD a few days to reflect on it and have concluded that no honest person could believe that the raid on Donald Trump’s home last week was a legitimate act of law enforcement”, said Tucker Carlson in one of his most recent monologues. Carlson, America’s top cable news host, spoke at length about the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago and how Biden’s DOJ has invested efforts to muzzle political dissent.
The FBI’s Intent Behind the Mar-a-Lago Raid
Carlson noted that the raid against Trump was so far outside the bounds of law enforcement that “even the Biden administration didn’t really bother to pretend otherwise.” He also added that “the official explanations that we have heard for the raid make no sense at all. It doesn’t matter how forcefully they are repeated by the media, they’re nonsensical.”
No honest person believes the raid on Donald Trump’s home last week was a legitimate act of law enforcement. It wasn’t. Even the Biden administration didn’t bother to pretend otherwise. pic.twitter.com/COee4Wvirr
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 16, 2022
He then began to explain them one by one, before denouncing Biden’s DOJ for targeting former President Trump’s inner circle over the past 18 months.
The Fox News host quoted historian Michael Beschloss, who, getting ahead of himself and not knowing what specifically the FBI seized, charged Trump for allegedly having top-secret documents at his Florida residence. Basically, Beschloss insinuated that the former president was irresponsible for keeping documents that could jeopardize national security if obtained by America’s enemies, especially “terrorists.” Tucker was unforgiving of the historian’s unsubstantiated remarks.
The Alleged Classified Documents and ‘Nuclear Secrets’?
“Are you listening to this? So, it’s not just classified documents in the basement of Mar-a-Lago, but according to Michael Beschloss, the pet historian of the halfwits who run our country, these are ultra-classified documents, the most classified kind, just sitting there helpless in boxes like maidens in bikinis, waiting to be photographed by terrorists. You just imagine al-Qaeda taking selfies with these documents, one after the other relentlessly, repulsive and terrifying”, Carlson added, and went on to explain that another important point, but little discussed in the national media, is that almost no one is asking what these supposedly classified documents contained.
“Did those documents contain meaningful information? Should they have been classified in the first place? Is there a good reason the rest of us should not have been allowed to see those documents?”, blurted Tucker, before questioning the other information circulated in the national media: the alleged classified documents Trump had in his residence hold “nuclear secrets.”
“Two words for you, my friend. Two words. “Nuclear secrets.'”, said Tucker Carlson. “What! Nuclear secrets? Nuclear secrets are the highest classified status. Ultra-secret nuclear secrets. Donald Trump stole those. Ladies and gentlemen, America is in danger tonight. That was their new explanation for the raid. Now, that revised storyline was leaked anonymously to an obedient press corps, which, as you just saw, repeated every word like it was verifiable fact.”
“Once again, no one even bothered to explain what these nuclear secrets might be”, continued the TV host. “What’s a nuclear secret exactly and what did Trump plan to do with them? Did he plan to defect to Moscow, give the launch codes to Vladimir Putin, start his own rogue state in the Bahamas? Nobody said, but that didn’t stop former CIA director Michael Hayden from suggesting that Donald Trump should be executed, fried to death in the electric chair, for committing these crimes, whatever these crimes were. We still don’t know.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson during his most recent monologue discussing the FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago. (Screenshot)
Silent Authoritarianism and Double Standards?
As Tucker Carlson tried to answer the question millions of Americans are still asking, “Why did the FBI raid Trump’s residence?”, the host questioned the double standard of the national press and liberal analysts who have mouthed the phrase “no one is above the law” the past two weeks to justify the raid against the former president and opposition leader.
“There was endless huffing on television about something called the rule of law and how absolutely no one is above that. No one. Not even a former president”, Tucker added. “We’re informed of this by the same people who paid rioters to burn down our cities, the ones who eliminated bail, the ones who encouraged tens of millions of foreign nationals to ignore our federal immigration statutes and move to our country permanently at public expense as a reward for breaking our laws, but keep in mind, no one is above the law”.
He also pointed out that there are still no official findings to explain why the raid was carried out and that those who support the authorities’ actions can only rely on the blind faith of officials and bureaucrats who have previously manipulated and lied to Americans.
However, according to Tucker, there is an explanation in the air that few dare to explain: American institutions are increasingly corrupt, politicized and those who manage them seek, ultimately, to maintain power.
Attorney General Merrick Garland is one of the main officials questioned after the raid against the residence of former President Trump. (EFE)
For Tucker Carlson, neither the potential violation of the Presidential Records Act, nor the nuclear top secrets, much less the alleged compliance with the rule of law, are serious explanations that justify the raid. However, ambitions to maintain political power are.
“Nuclear secrets? If the Biden administration really believed that, if they really thought Donald Trump possessed documents that posed an imminent danger to American national security, then you have to wonder, why did they wait a year and a half to do anything about it? Why did they wait till 90 days before a midterm election, an election that polls suggest they will lose? It doesn’t make, oh, wait, actually, it does make sense”, the host continued. “In fact, the question answers itself. Despite superficial appearances, the raid of Mar-a-Lago was not an act of law enforcement. It was the opposite of that. It was an attack on the rule of law. It was a power grab.”
The host argued that the same week the White House announced that Biden will seek a second term, with just 90 days left before an election vital to the future of his administration, security and justice agencies mobilized to go after the country’s main opposition leader.
“Pause for a minute. If The New York Times told you that something like that was going on in Chad or the Gambia, what would your reaction be?”, Tucker said. “You’d probably say to yourself, ‘Thank God I don’t live in a place like that, a country where politicians used armed men to cling to power’. Oh, but you do live in a country like that. You do. The evidence is all around us. We just don’t want to see it. A week to the day after Joe Biden was inaugurated, the FBI arrested a 31-year-old man from Vermont called Douglass Mackey. According to the subsequent DOJ press release, Mackey committed an extremely serious crime. Like Vladimir Putin, he conspired to subvert the 2016 presidential election.”
Tucker said Mackey was basically vilified by the New York Times for calling him a “far-right troll” and unfairly persecuted by state forces. The anchor insisted that the young man was not an electoral crime mastermind, but a guy who used his computer to taunt politicians via the Internet, in this case, by making a joke about casting votes wrongly. Now this man could go to jail for ten years.
“Douglass Mackey may have been the first victim of the new authoritarianism, but he was hardly the last one. Over the last 18 months, virtually every significant figure in the orbiter at Donald Trump has been swept up by Merrick Garland at Department of Justice”, denounced the host, denounced the host, who mentioned several important cases, such as that of Eric Herschmann, who was recently subpoenaed by the DOJ to talk about January 6 and represented Trump during the first impeachment.
According to Tucker Carlson, “Herschmann never worked in the White House counsel’s office”, however, “the Biden administration is going after him anyway because he gave legal advice to his client, Donald Trump.”
“That used to be allowed. People used to be allowed to have lawyers and speak to them privately, but it’s not allowed anymore. That’s what the CIA seized attorney client records from Mar-a-Lago. It’s also why the DOJ is now directly targeting Trump’s most prominent personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani”, added the host, who continued to bring up cases and question the federal agents who allegedly seized Trump and his family’s passports during the raid.
Tucker Carlson’s fierce monologue raises, in effect, a stark and perhaps difficult to assimilate reality: that security and justice agencies use their political power to attack dissidents and, for the time being, the national media turn a blind eye. As if the United States were immersed in silent authoritarianism.
Read the full transcript of the monologue here.
Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón is a journalist at El American specializing in the areas of American politics and media analysis // Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón es periodista de El American especializado en las áreas de política americana y análisis de medios de comunicación.
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