Tucker: Biden is giving the left more power to harass their political enemies
‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ host explains the dangers of government ‘censorship of political opinion.'
There was a lot going on right around the time of the last presidential inauguration, so you may have missed that on his very first day as president, Joe Biden ordered federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies to prepare a review of how the administration should fight terrorism. By last June, that report was complete. It concluded that after more than 20 years, Islamic terror is no longer the greatest threat to this country. Instead, the agency declared that domestic political extremism is "the most urgent terrorism threat the United States faces today."
That's a very stark assessment, so you have to ask, who exactly are these terrorists who threaten us so urgently? And they're not what you might expect. The report did not even mention the BLM riots, the deadly BLM riots that had just taken place. There wasn't a word about Antifa. There was nothing about the gunmen who murdered 800 Americans in the city of Chicago last year, many of them children.
Instead, the Biden administration declared that the "most lethal elements" of today's domestic terror threat are political conservatives. There are people who disagree with Joe Biden. Now that report was released almost exactly six months ago. Six months ago this Friday. It received relatively little attention and hasn't since. And no major news organization even asked the most obvious question: These terrorists who threaten us, where are they? If Trump voters are really the most "lethal threat" our country faces today, where are all the people they've killed?
That's not an easy question to answer. Just look at the numbers, which are fairly tightly kept. Take a look at all the Americans who died from violence over the past 12 months, and there are many thousands and thousands of Americans. Ask a simple question: How many of them were killed by right-wingers for political reasons? Not many.
Or, since we're talking about threats here, pose the question another way. Are you more in danger walking through a neighborhood that votes 90 percent Democrat, or a neighborhood that votes 90 percent Republican? Come on.
This claim is ridiculous on its face. There is no substantial right-wing terror threat in this country, certainly not in relative terms. There just isn't. And no one has shown there is. The White House knows this, of course, they can read the numbers as well as anyone else can. So they're working hard to create the illusion of that threat. Much hangs on their ability to do that.
You may remember this story this fall about a group called the National School Boards Association, which sent a letter to the feds asking the DOJ to take a look at parents who don't like their kids’ curriculums. Well, the Justice Department responded immediately to the letter. Talk about customer service.
Days later, the attorney general announced the FBI would investigate moms who dared to complain that school board meetings as potential terrorists. Many people were shocked by this story, but we just learned it's worse even than we thought it was.
BIDEN JUSTICE DEPARTMENT FORMS NEW DOMESTIC TERRORISM UNIT
A new Freedom of Information Act request has revealed that the National School Boards Association asked the feds to investigate parents because the feds asked them to ask the feds to investigate parents. See how that works?
Apparently, the Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, told school board administrators to write their letter to the White House. The White House then used that letter as a pretext to begin a crackdown on parents. See how that works? The snake eating its tail.
When you don't have enough domestic terrorists to justify a political purge, then you just go ahead and create them, and that's exactly what they've been doing. This week, the campaign against this new American al Qaeda entered a new and very ominous phase, again little noticed by the national media. This Tuesday, two days ago, the DOJ announced the creation of a new domestic terrorism unit. What will it do? Well, it'll target "anti-authority ideologues."
Anti-authority ideologues. Now, keep in mind, this country was founded by people who are anti-authority ideologues. That's why they created America and baked the idea of opposing authority so it doesn't get too big and take over your life into our founding documents. These ideas are central to the American idea. In fact, they are the American idea. But in this administration, they are now crimes. Here's Matt Olsen, the assistant attorney general, explaining:
MATT OLSEN: We face an elevated threat from domestic violent extremists. That is, individuals in the United States who seek to commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of domestic, social or political goals. Domestic violent extremists are often motivated by a mix of ideologies and personal grievances. We've seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus, as well as those who ascribe to extremist, anti-government and anti-authority ideologies. I decided to establish a domestic terrorism unit to augment our existing approach. This group of dedicated attorneys will focus on the domestic terrorism threat.
Who's a threat to the country? That guy is the threat to the country, and the people working for him, and those propping him up, and the people spreading the core lie here, which is that American citizens who distrust the government or don't like its policies are terrorists.
Just today on MSNBC, Jason Johnson, one of its contributors, described the entire Republican Party as a terrorist organization. So you can see where this is going. Again, and we're quoting now, this is the assistant attorney general, "We have seen a growing threat from those who subscribe to anti-government and anti-authority ideologies."
Really, is that threat growing? Is it true? Let's see here. That threat is being used to justify the creation of this agency, but it's not rooted in reality. Twenty-seven years ago, back in 1995, you'll remember 168 people were murdered in the Oklahoma City bombing. Another 700 were injured.
Now, the investigation into what happened that day involved nearly 30,000 interviews. Investigators gathered 7,000 pounds of evidence. We could go on. It was an enormous investigation. Attorney General Merrick Garland, by the way, was part of it at the time.
Here's the point: Despite the size of that investigation, no one suggested or even hinted that we might need to create a new domestic terror division within the DOJ to handle the problem. No, the whole thing was handled by FBI field offices, as things like this had been for many decades.
The FBI field offices did their jobs. The man accused of doing it got the death penalty, and you may have noticed it didn't happen again.
And then Joe Biden became president and the number of so-called domestic terror investigations more than doubled. So the question is: What exactly are they investigating if there's no substantial death toll from these terrorists in our midst? What exactly are the feds looking into?
Well, they’re taking a close look at crimes like the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a plot that helped her political fortunes considerably. What did it consist of? Well, that conspiracy turned out to have more FBI agents and informants involved than would-be kidnappers. The guy the feds said was running it turned out to be homeless. He was living in the basement of a vacuum repair shop. His friends called him Captain Autism, and they called him that for a reason. He wasn't the ringleader of anything. He couldn't have been. The whole thing was ridiculous, but it stoked the storyline that was politically expedient, and so the media uncritically promoted it again and again as if it were real.
The media's job, by the way, to remind you, is to push back against government statements to find out if they're actually true, because it turns out politicians may say things for political reasons. And it's the media's job to discern truth from spin. The media's job is not to act as spokesman for the people in power. And yet, that's what they're doing. Now, the DOJ, in case you haven't noticed, this incited the Jan. 6 protesters are the real terrorists. They're the insurrectionists you keep hearing about. And yet, weirdly, as of just two days ago, not one American citizen had actually been charged by the federal government with insurrection. They admitted that.
SEN. LEE: Has anyone been charged with the crime of insurrection? Following Jan. 6?
MATT OLSEN: I am not aware that anyone has been charged with that particular offense, even if it is an offense, I just am not aware of that.
Oops. They can't actually be insurrectionists if no one has committed insurrection. That's pretty embarrassing. Apparently, DOJ finally realized how embarrassing it was. So about 48 hours after the testimony you just saw, and more than a year after Jan. 6 today, the feds announced that they will charge someone with sedition, after all. Now, if you've got any questions about the timing of these charges or the merit of the sedition case, the DOJ just announced, the Biden administration would like to remind you to keep those questions to yourself.
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And just to make certain you do keep them to yourself or are unable to share them with anyone else, today, Joe Biden also announced a crackdown on the news media. As he put it, a crackdown on anyone who spreads "disinformation" and "misinformation" about his government.
PRESIDENT BIDEN: If you haven’t gotten vaccinated, do it. Personal choice impacts us, all our hospitals, our countries. I make a special appeal to social media companies and media outlets. Please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that's on your shows. It has to stop.
The misinformation that's on your shows. Yeah. Message received. It has to stop, Joe Biden says.
So that means that Big Tech and media organizations have to do what he says, just like his vaccine mandate, found unconstitutional today, by the way. It'll still be enforced because big businesses rely on the government to exist. They take government money, they're regulated from the very top to the very bottom by the government.
So it takes a lot to defy the president of the United States. If he tells you to do something, you'd better do it. What Joe Biden is telling media companies to do today is to censor their content so it doesn't contradict his decrees.
Now, CNN has no problem with this. In fact, they made fun of what Joe Biden said today. They made fun of his call for censorship. Not because it's obviously unconstitutional, which it is, but because it wasn't quite fascist enough. One of those weird-looking media reporters over at CNN wrote this: "I'm sure the Murdochs will get right on this now that this special appeal has been made!"
So they understand exactly what's going on here. Joe Biden is targeting Fox News for censorship. His call for censorship, by the way, comes after hundreds of doctors and scientists called on Spotify to adopt a misinformation policy that would shut down Joe Rogan's podcast. Rogan recovered from COVID without the vax, and they hate him for it.
So it's not just the government, of course. It's people acting on behalf of the government calling for the same thing, which is censorship of political opinions. What you're seeing here is dangerous. There's no other way to describe it. Far more dangerous than domestic terror threat they've been bloviating about for the last three days. It contravenes the First Amendment.
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Under the First Amendment, the government cannot coordinate with private actors to censor free speech. Period. Supreme Court has made that very clear over centuries. And yet that's exactly what's happening. Joe Biden did it today. Care to complain about that? Probably not. You may have noticed what happens to people who complain too much.
Roger Stone, for example, complained an awful lot about the government. He did it loudly, often, he did it for years, and the DOJ didn't like it. So in the end, they accused Roger Stone on the basis of zero evidence whatsoever of colluding with Russia. In the end, they charged him with lying to Congress, something that happens literally every day of the year. But in his case, they made it a felony, threatened to send him to prison for the rest of his life, and in the meantime, they sent a helicopter, a boat and armed paramilitaries to his home at dawn after coordinating the raid with CNN. Really, one of the darkest moments in civil liberties in recent history. We still have the tape.
Roger Stone (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
CNN REPORTER: Exclusive footage, you're looking at right now from CNN as the FBI arrives at Roger Stone's residence in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, taking him into custody. … They arrived before dawn there before 6 a.m. or just after 6 a.m., a dozen officers we’re told.
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So they coordinate with CNN just to make sure it's all preserved on tape to send the message to everybody else for the encouragement of the others, as the French used to say. And then they send guys with automatic weapons to your house to shut you up, to destroy you.
Now the people who ordered that raid should've been brought up on charges themselves, but they weren't. They were promoted. And now, thanks to Joe Biden, they have more power to harass their political enemies. Do you feel safer?
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the January 13, 2022, edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
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