Tucker Carlson: NPR is the radio station of permanent Washington
Fox News host Tucker Carlson shreds 'state-affiliated media' NPR on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
On Tuesday, two days ago, Twitter slapped a warning label on all tweets from National Public Radio. Going forward, NPR will be identified for users of Elon Musk's social media site as "state-affiliated media." That is the same category as Russia Today or China Central Television. It means that NPR is not that different from the Tehran Times, with the exception, of course, of being less accurate and more anti-American. That happened on Tuesday. Why are we telling you about it? With all the momentous changes underway around the world, why would we open a show with a story about Twitter re-categorizing NPR as state media? Well, because it's true. That's the reason.
Finally, thankfully, somebody in authority has told the truth about something, and that is thrilling to see on its own terms. In a world defined by lies from our leaders, this seemed like a rare sign of hope and progress. Telling the truth is the most revolutionary act of all, far more than taking up arms, and yet you rarely see it. Human beings created language to describe the world around them more precisely than they could with, say, grunting or sign language, but unfortunately have been subverting our own creation ever since, but not tonight. By calling National Public Radio what it is, Elon Musk has used English as it was intended to be used in order to tell the truth. Of course, NPR is state media.
Have you listened to it? It has all the hallmarks: repetitive dishonesty, authoritarian politics, unwavering devotion to the party in charge. Of course, that could describe virtually all media in this country. The difference is the state actually pays for NPR. NPR was created more than 50 years ago by a law signed by Democrat Lyndon Johnson. It was called the Public Broadcasting Act and from its very first day, NPR was wholly dependent on tax dollars in order to exist, and it still is. "Federal funding is essential to NPR," explains NPR's own website. So, there is no factual debate about that fact, but there is a great deal of lying about it.
Every year, NPR lobbyists head to Capitol Hill to demand more tax dollars. "Democracy can't exist without us," they screech, while simultaneously at the very same time telling you at high volume that NPR takes virtually no tax money. "So, we don't need federal subsidies. Don't even want them, really, but you have to increase them." That is NPR's line and has been for decades under the political leadership of both parties, and it's essentially unchallenged by anyone. It just stays. Wars and recessions come and go, but NPR funding remains, but after more than half a century, it is very clear that there is nothing public about National Public Radio. NPR is the radio station of permanent Washington. That's who pays for it. That's who benefits from it. By adding three simple words to NPR's tweets, Elon Musk exposed that forever to the world. Such is the power of truth. It exposes and, of course, it infuriates those who are exposed.
NPR LABELED 'STATE-AFFILIATED MEDIA' ON TWITTER, SAME AS RUSSIA'S RT AND CHINA'S XINHUA
NPR howled in outrage, but with its signature pursed-lipped fussiness. Here's a direct quote from a piece on NPR's website, which really does belong in the Museum of Uptight Liberalism: "NPR officials have asked Twitter to remove the label. They initially assumed it was applied by mistake," NPR spokesperson Isabel Lara said. "We were not warned. It happened quite suddenly last night," Lara said. In response to an NPR email for the story seeking comment and requesting details about what in particular might have led to the new designation, Twitter's press account auto-replied with a poop emoji.
It was just so perfect, you couldn't improve it. "Hey, Twitter. Stop calling us what we are," OK, NPR. Here's a skat cartoon. She can forget the rockets and the electric cars. Elon Musk is a hero for this alone, but NPR wasn't finished. It still had fight. National Public Radio was so angry, so enraged to be called state media that its supporters enlisted the help of the regime's top spokeswoman to claim otherwise. "Stop calling it propaganda," said the propagandist. Again, it's an irony-free zone and just too great.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: There's no doubt of the independence of NPR's journalists and it has been, if you've ever been on the receiving end of their questions, you know this. You know that they have their independence in journalism. NPR journalists work diligently to hold public officials accountable and inform the American people. The hard-hitting, independent nature of their coverage speaks for itself, and so I'll leave it there.
REPORTER ACCUSES KARINE JEAN-PIERRE OF TRYING TO 'SILENCE' HIM AFTER REMOVAL FROM WHCA
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images))
That is so Baghdad Bob, it's unbelievable. Here she is reading a press release for NPR that tells us they are famous for hard-hitting independence, which speaks for itself. Really? How many tough questions have they asked you, Karine Jean-Pierre? Not a single one. They're fluffing her every day. "She's so smart" — and so she pays them back. Hard-hitting independence.
This is the same radio station that in the final days of the last presidential campaign took a look at the biggest political story in years, the New York Post story on Biden's laptop, and then ignored it completely — and not only ignored it completely, but because they are fussy and self-righteous to their very core, they bragged about how they were ignoring it completely. "We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories," said NPR's managing editor Terence Samuel, "and we don't want to waste listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions."
Two weeks before a presidential campaign, we find out the Democratic candidate has been taking money from a foreign adversary, but that's just a distraction. So, whatever happened to Terence Samuel? What did he get in return for helping Joe Biden become president at the state-affiliated media network he serves? Well, Terence Samuel has since been promoted to NPR's executive editor, but he still has time to spare because it's not that hard to put "Morning Sedition" on the air. You know what he does in his spare time? Terence Samuel hosts seminars on recruiting "disinformation and democracy" at something called American University, and no, we're not making any of this up, nor are we fabricating NPR's report from just last month that informed us male athletes have no inherent performance advantages over female athletes. None at all.
REPORTER SLAMS KARINE JEAN-PIERRE FOR REFUSING TO TAKE HIS QUESTIONS: 'THEY LOOK DOWN ON ME'
That is a fact, ladies and gentlemen. Men and women are physically the same size. They have the same muscle mass. There is no difference whatsoever in their bone structure. We checked with experts. So, as you know, NPR is famous for its widely respected science coverage, but that's not the only reason that NPR is now the go-to news source for unhappy female attorneys over 50. No, there's more to it than that. There are the lifestyle pieces, the features, as they used to say in the newspaper business. Here's a piece, for example, on how one African-American Barbie doll, ahead of its time in the toy industry, changed the life of a Latinx girl forever.
GRISELL VALENCIA: I remember this one Christmas my cousin's father gifted us all Barbies and when everyone was unwrapping, you know, the excitement… the paper, and I opened up the Barbie, and my Barbie was Black, you know? And everyone kind of, like, looked at my Barbie and I looked at their Barbie, that I could kind of, like, identify to their Barbies too and I was in this kind of like, as Melanie did, as with Barbie, and I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I am different."
Unhappy, middle-aged ladies talking about themselves. The narcissism piped directly into your Audi. That's NPR. You got to say they know their audience. They don't only serve their audience, they put their audience on the air. So, it's kind of a continuous loop. The snake eating its own tail. So, you probably shouldn't be too surprised that with an audience like its desperately unhappy, barren, personal life audience, that NPR is all in on the question of romance novels.
'THE VIEW' BLASTS AFRICAN REPORTER WHO BERATED KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: 'HE'S A HORRIBLE PERSON'
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I'm like, really big in the sci-fi ones, one of the books was a gay couple, and one of them was a Kraken, and I didn't want that to unlock something in me. Unfortunately, it did. "Before I knew it was happening, Cyrus was carrying the muscular lengths of his tentacles supporting our combined weight and shuffling us toward the stall without breaking our kiss. I knew he was strong, but I didn't think he was that strong. ‘You like that, Rolands?’ he asked as his tentacles slammed the door to the shower stall open and we stumbled on inside."
Well, so it's tentacle porn. OK. Yeah. I mean, technically it is tentacle porn, which is its own subgenre and we're not going to pollute your mind by telling you any more about it than that, but what it really is is narcissism, because here you have an upper-income Oberlin graduate talking about — well, what would he be talking about? Himself, of course — because that's what NPR listeners want to hear about: themselves. And that's the real journalism, the hard-hitting, independent journalism Karine Jean-Pierre was touting from the White House briefing room, and NPR didn't just start doing it after they got Joe Biden elected. They've been doing it for generations. Their health coverage in particular stands out. Any news organization can run a piece on how to be more healthy, but only NPR dared to affirm the snack habits of its listeners by telling you, "Yeah, go ahead and be fat." Here's an anti-diet dietician.
CHRISTY HARRISON: So, diet culture is this overarching system of beliefs and values that's really endemic to Western culture at this point in history.
ANITA RAO: Christy Harrison is an anti-diet registered dietitian with a master's in public health.
WSJ DETAILS HORRIFIC CONDITIONS OF INFAMOUS PRISON WHERE REPORTER IS BEING HELD: 'COMPLETELY ALONE'
We've been trying to get Christy Harrison, the anti-diet dietician, on our show for years now, but we're not NPR, so no luck so far, but if you're looking for coverage of LGBTQIAZ+ issues, well, you've come to the right place because it's not just the conventional stuff — gay marriage or trans issues. They've taken it to another level as befits a cutting-edge, totally independent news channel like National Public Radio. Here they are reporting on trans dinosaur experts.
RILEY BLACK: Many people who are queer, whether they are trans or some other form of gender-queer, or whatever it is, we love dinosaurs.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: Along with being a dinosaur expert, Riley is herself transgender, and according to Riley, there is a whole community of gender-queer dinosaur enthusiasts online. We had no idea, so we checked it out. Sure enough, there, there. We found dozens of paleo artists online that identify as queer.
AMORY SIVERTSON: Type "dinosaur" into the LGBT subreddit. Hundreds of results with pride dinos, rainbow dinos, dino moms, dino dads, and a lot of puns like Ally-saurus.
BEN BROCK JOHNSON: Trans-ceratops.
Trans-ceratops, Trans-osaurus Rex. Now, a lot of people say if the topic of NPR comes up in conversation, yeah, I'm all for National Public Radio and I'm happy to work an extra day a year to pay for it, but I'm not a trans dinosaur. I'm not. So, what's in it for me as a non-trans dinosaur? That seems a little niche, and that's a common misperception about National Public Radio. As long as you're talking about yourself and doing so in a self-satisfied, completely out-of-touch way, NPR's the station for you. In other words, they're interested in all forms of diversity. Back in 2021, NPR discovered a trendy new television show. Why did they like it? Well, here's why.
DOUALY XAYKAOTHAO: Well, Kumari, what TV show were you bingeing this year?
KUMARI DEVARAJAN: I was watching "We Are Lady Parts." It's a musical comedy about a punk band in London that is made up of all Muslim women.
"What are you watching?" That's the hard-hitting news coverage that makes the difference between democracy and tyranny. What are you watching? Self-satisfied, fussy people with nose piercings talking about what they're watching in their tiny little apartments in Brooklyn. "Well, I'm watching a musical — an all-Muslim, trans musical — a punk band. It's great." So, that's NPR in 2023 and the truth is, NPR's always been kind of awful, kind of unbearable, kind of cringey, as they say, but now you can't even listen to it because the people who work there are deranged. They're ideologues, and ideologues, of course, in the end go crazy and start attacking each other.
The revolution inevitably eats its own and we're seeing that on display now and frankly, kind of enjoying it. So, after NPR laid off 10% of its staff recently, one NPR show called "Louder than a Riot" — "Louder than a Riot," they love riots at NPR — tweeted this: "The hardest part is that our szn" — if you're not Hungarian, you probably don't know what that means. We certainly don't — "Our szn is about misogynoir queer, trans, Black women face in hip-hop. Yet within NPR, the majority impacted in these layoffs were queer, POC staff and programs."
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In other words, racist. By the way, misogynoir, in case you aren't up on your NPR speak, has something to do with bigotry against women who are Black, not that NPR bothers to define any of those terms, anyway, it gets better because once you put crazy people in charge of your newsroom, well, crazy things happen. So, they try to call an all-hands meeting to explain why people are being fired. The real reason, of course, that no one wants to listen to this crap, but the NPR executive had to get out there and try to speak slowly and tell these people why they were fired, and people started screaming at him. So, he called for civility and then one employee said, you need to read this piece, "When civility is used as a cudgel against people of color."
That's NPR, ladies and gentlemen, on the inside. NPR, by the way, we told you that the outside is now officially state media and honestly, that tells you a lot about the state.
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