Understanding Tucker Carlson's Lies About Jews By Thinking About An Encounter With Matt Dillon
A strange experience with a Hollywood celebrity may partly explain Carlson's shameless lies and moral decline
On Saturday I happened to catch an interview with Tucker Carlson on Bloomberg Television. Carlson did what he has shown himself to have a special talent for. As Shakespeare wrote plays and Rodney Dangerfield told jokes, Carlson lies.
He told one after another. Carlson’s biggest lie was his claim that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had openly said that he wanted to destroy Europe. This assertion was so off-the-wall that the interviewer, Mishal Husain, asked Carlson if he was sure about this. Carlson insisted that he was. He said it was a fact, known by many, that Netanyahu had said that Israel must demolish Rome, and Rome could only be interpreted as a proxy for Europe.
Could it be, Husain wondered, that Netanyahu was merely saying Israel had to fight ancient Rome, which destroyed ancient Israel’s second temple in 70 A.D.?
No, Carlson said, that was not what Netanyahu had been referring to: Israel’s Prime Minister is an enemy of the West, and he seeks Europe’s destruction.
In fact, the basis for Carlson’s claim was an interview that Netanyahu had given a few months ago in which he had been asked what books he was reading. Netanyahu had responded by saying he was reading a book entitled Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World's Mightiest Empire by historian Barry Strauss. He then added, “Well, we lost that one. I think we have to win the next one."
Tucker Carlson dressing to look like a Regular Joe. He grew up in a mansion, went to a New England boarding school and, through his father’s remarriage, became an heir to the Swanson TV dinner fortune.
In other words, Netanyahu was discussing ancient times, and he was saying that Israel needed to defend itself against present-day foes lest it be destroyed a second time. He was certainly not referring to Europe, and he was absolutely not calling for its ruination. To Mishal Husain’s credit, she pointed this out in an afterword that she tacked on to her interview.
This is part of a pattern in which Carlson engages in horrific libels of Israel’s government and of the Jewish people. Some months ago he implied that Israel might have been the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, or that it at least had foreknowledge of them but that it failed to tell the United States about this. When he was later challenged about saying this, he responded by claiming that he had never done any such thing — though he had done so on camera on his own podcast.
Here are some other falsehoods he has put forward:
In February, Carlson claimed he and his staff were “detained” and hauled into a side room at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport and that Israeli security officials took his passport from him. But, as both the Israel Airports Authority and the U.S. Ambassador to Israel noted soon afterwards, he was only subjected to standard, routine security and passport checks. He was never delayed or interrogated. That took place after a brief conversation in which he was brought into a private VIP lounge specifically to protect his privacy. In fact, in video footage that appeared later, he can be seen smiling and hugging airport staff before his departure.
Carlson has frequently claimed that Israel has been decimating its Christian population. Yet data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics shows the country’s Christian community is growing. Indeed, it is the only Middle Eastern nation with an expanding Christian population and increasing numbers of churches.
Carlson has falsely claimed that Israel purposefully attacked a U.S. navy ship, the U.S.S. Liberty, in 1967.
