Tucker Carlson breaks down key moments in Biden's town hall
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host highlights 'misinformation' from Joe Biden in his CNN town hall
There’s been a dramatic escalation recently we need to tell you about in the Biden administration’s longest and hardest-fought war. That would be the war against what they’re calling misinformation. Almost daily, Biden’s battle-hardened flack mounts the podium at the White House with updates on the conflict's progress.
Last week, Biden's spox bot told the press corps that the campaign against misinformation has encountered serious and unexpected setbacks. Misinformation won a series of bloody skirmishes, on cable news and in social media. Thousands of Americans died, but the commander in chief is not bound by this. He's not giving up. Indeed, Joe Biden has just begun to fight.
Going forward, the First Amendment will be suspended until further notice. And if misinformation appears on your Facebook page or in your Twitter feed or even in your private text messages, Joe Biden will summarily execute misinformation. He will hunt it down and kill it himself. This is total war.
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All of us are going to have to make sacrifices in this war. The question is, what does the enemy look like? To this point, no one in authority has provided a clear description of misinformation. The White House still has not defined what it is or what it looks like. Like extremism and white supremacy, misinformation is an elastic and mysterious term like the Viet Cong, it appears out of nowhere from the night itself to take our lives. We hate misinformation with all of our hearts, but we can't really describe it.
Not that we need to really. In the federal agencies in Washington, there is a working definition for misinformation. It's any criticism of the Joe Biden administration or its policies. That's what we're fighting against. Like all patriotic media in wartime, the cable news network is fully on board with this effort.
Late last night, CNN posted a video to its website. It was from something called a presidential town hall right in the front of this war. The caption on the video reads this way: The president tackles vaccine misinformation. And tackle it he did. Joe Biden wrestled misinformation to the ground and spanked like a bad girl it is.
JOE BIDEN: Just like the other question, it's illogical and I've heard you speak about it because I'm not being solicitous, but you're always straight up about what you're doing. And the question is whether or not we should be in a position where you, um, are, why can't the, the, the experts say, we know that this virus is, in fact, um, uh, it it's going to be, excuse me, we know why all the drugs are approved or not temporarily approved, but permanently approved. That's underway, too. I expect that to occur quickly.
DON LEMON: Well, that means you mean for the FDA.
JOE BIDEN: For the FDA.
Yeah, experts say. You could imagine the chaos behind the scenes during that pivotal moment, you can hear the panicked producer in the control room shouting and Don Lemon's ear, "The Red Fox trots quietly at midnight code words." In other words, "Abort! Abort!" The situation is well past critical. And, within seconds, seconds that move very slowly, Don Lemon remembered the safe words he had memorized in rehearsal. "You mean for the FDA?" he said. And then a hushed silence descended in the control room at CNN. Beads of sweat drop from Jeff Zucker's forehead onto the stack of pop tarts he'd been cradling in his lap. The milliseconds felt like hours, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, Joe Biden regained consciousness. "Yes, the FDA!" he responded. He got the message. All was well, cue the commercial break. Crisis averted.
There are a lot of moments like that last night you could tell Don Lemon was very close, time after time to asking about the FDA. But time and time again, he held off, he had to. The audience might have noticed something was up. So CNN's producers had no choice but to let the commander in chief keep talking, as he did in this moment, as Joe Biden began to muse about black people and their love of basketball.
JOE BIDEN: And what we did when that original bill got passed was he would go down in the tough neighborhoods in my, in my, state and my city of Wilmington, which is an overwhelming minority city, and he'd go where everybody can tell me where the best basketball is played in a playground here in the city. You know where it is. You know who the best ballplayers are. You know where they are.
They know where they are. Corn Pop knows, Corn Pop knows who could hit the free throws, Corn Pop loves basketball. Of course he does. We kept waiting for Joe Biden to ask Don Lemon if he knows Corn Pop, but he didn't need to because, of course, he knows Corn Pop. All the basketball lovers know each other, please.
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It was pretty compelling television. Unfortunately, it did not get as much closer to our goal, which was to understand what the Biden administration means by the term misinformation. But then we came across this, and we understood. Joe Biden explained the benefits of vaccination.
JOE BIDEN: The various shots that people are getting now cover that you're OK, you're not going to, you're not going to, get COVID if you have these vaccinations.
Oh, finally, a definition he doesn't tell us, he shows us, he leads by example. That's what misinformation looks like. "You're not going to get covid if you have these vaccinations," said the president of the United States. But that's not true. How did all those vaccinated Texas Democrats come down with COVID? Then why was Kamala Harris rushed to Walter Reed Medical Center after she met with them if vaccinated, people can get COVID. And why are the pharmaceutical companies themselves telling us it is in fact possible to get covid after you've been vaccinated?
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So why would Joe Biden tell us the exact opposite? Now you know why. He’s showing us what misinformation is. Like a good leader, he’s modeling, as they say. And then he kept up. He kept showing us. Here, for example, is a question from a restaurant owner who was in the audience last night. He asked what the government was going to do to save small businesses like his. And it's a pressing question for him and millions of others. In just the past six weeks, the Biden administration has sent out billions in checks, and those checks have kept able-bodied adults at home and not working and also caused inflation to spike. Both of those are a disaster for small businesses. Read carefully as Joe Biden explains why he's doing this.
BUSINESS OWNER: And we're looking to hire more every day as we try to restart our restaurant business, the entire industry, among other industries, continues to struggle to find employees, how do you and the Biden administration plan to incentivize those that haven't returned to work yet? Hiring is our top priority right now.
JOE BIDEN: Well, two things. One, if you notice, we kept you open. I think it really is a matter of. People deciding now that they have opportunities to do other things and there is a shortage of employees, people are looking to make more money and end to bargain. And so I think your business in the tourist business is really going to be in a bind for a little while.
Just so you understand, it wasn't the government that closed small businesses last year, including thousands of restaurants. No, says Joe Biden, if you notice, we kept them open. Oh, it's the opposite of what you thought you thought governors, Democratic governors were shutting down restaurants.
No, no, we kept them open. The entire town hall was like that. It was misinformation on parade. At one point, Joe Biden referred to laws against voter fraud, like the ones where you need to show your I.D. to vote as, "Jim Crow on steroids."
What does that mean? More segregated water fountains, movie houses, restaurants, bigger firehoses. It's on steroids. But no one asked him. The crowd just applauded. Later, Joe Biden explained, and this was news to criminologists across the world, the real reason crime rates, murder rates are up in our cities isn't that parents aren't supervising their kids on the street, isn't that lunatics are shooting each other over tennis shoes or other disputes no one can even remember. It's not that the moral fabric of the country is collapsing in on itself. It has nothing to do with the fact that Democrats let violent criminals out of jail using the pretext of COVID, or that prosecutors funded by George Soros are refusing to put anyone back into jail. No. It has nothing to do with any of that.
You know what's causing all the murders? It's the gun stores. The gun stores are causing all the murders. So why are they telling you this? Well, clearly they want more power, but more than that, they want to show you what misinformation is for. Misinformation is a lie that makes the person who tells it more powerful. Joe Biden explained that because violence is caused by gun stores, he's going to shut them all down.
JOE BIDEN: And so what happens is I've got an ATF, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. I have them increase their budget and increase their capacity along with the Justice Department, to go after the gun shops that are not abiding by the law of doing background checks. … But my point is, all across the country, and it's not because the gun shops in the cities are selling these guns, they are either shadow gun dealers and or gun shops that are not abiding by the law. So we're going to do major investigations and shut those guys down and put some of them in jail for what they're doing, selling these weapons.
OK, so because Joe Biden's party has so mismanaged American cities for the last 60 years that children are murdering each other on the sidewalk and no one's do anything about it because the police have been defunded thanks to agitation from Joe Biden voters, because of all of that, your Second Amendment rights are now suspended.
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He suspended your First Amendment rights last week and now your Second Amendment rights are gone, too. It looks like Joe Biden is slowly working his way systematically through the entire Bill of Rights, right by right, voiding each one.
It won't be long before they're all gone, for the entire document is a relic of an antique race, a society that believed in individual rights and limits on political control. It's sad, in a way, the end of an era when you're at war with disinformation, you have no choice.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the July 22, 2021, edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
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