FNC's Carlson Scorches NBC's Hypocrisy On Campaign Finance Violations and Sexual Misbehavior

During Tuesday night’s edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” the eponymous host reacted to the media hysteria surrounding President Trump’s alleged violation of campaign finance law, where he directed his “fixer,” Michael Cohen, to pay off two women who claimed to have had affairs with him; immediately before the 2016 Presidential Election.  Cohen has actually become more of a traitor, or at the very least, an incompetent lawyer who has no understanding or respect for the concept of attorney-client privilege, as demonstrated by his recordings of his conversations with his client, President Trump.  President Trump expressed regret for his decision to hire Cohen during an interview with Fox News’s Harris Faulkner.   

Carlson pointed out that the latest source of mainstream media hysteria has become something of a phenomenon in politics, for better or for worse.  Carlson ran through a list of Democratic politicians who have faced campaign finance violations of their own; yet did not face impeachment or criminal penalties; only civil penalties.  He began by pointing out President Clinton gave Monica Lewinsky a government job so she would keep quiet about their repeated “exchanges” in the oval office.  The anointed one, Barack Obama, found guilty of campaign finance violations involving nearly $2 million, yet “impeachment or felony charges never entered the conversation.” Carlson went onto highlight campaign finance violations of Senator Chuck Schumer and Former Senator John Edwards, two of the consequences of the GOP’s overreach on Clinton impeachment in 1998.  While Edwards only served one term in the Senate, representing the redder-than-average state of North Carolina, the country must still deal with the consequences of New York State’s decision to throw out Republican Senator Al D’Amato in favor of Schumer 20 years ago.  I should actually say New York City’s decision to throw out D’Amato since upstate New York voted, albeit by a very narrow margin, to re-elect D’Amato.  Had Republicans spent the 1998 campaign focused on something other than impeachment, D’Amato could have retained his seat while Schumer could have returned to private life in the “lush farmland” of Brooklyn, as Ann Coulter put it. 

Schumer has won every subsequent re-election by substantial margins, including in upstate New York, and as a result, he now prides himself as a roadblock to the America First agenda.  Edwards’s campaign finance violation has more in common with President Trump’s since he paid more than $1 million in donor money to pay hush money to a mistress whom he fathered a child with, in the middle of his ultimately unsuccessful 2008 Presidential campaign. As Carlson pointed out, “He never spent a day in jail for that,” adding “he was sleazy. He wasn’t a criminal.” As a trial lawyer, Edwards developed a reputation as “sleazy” long before he cheated on his dying wife; earning a spot on Bernie Goldberg’s 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America a few years before his Presidential election (and his affair with Rielle Hunter).  

Carlson opined: “now, for some reason, you haven’t heard any of that background on NBC recently. The good people of NBC News are disgusted by what Donald Trump did. Paying off female accusers? That’s just wrong. As Nancy Pelosi might say, it’s immoral. It’s not something NBC would engage in or tolerate...ever. Except possibly under extreme circumstances, on those occasions when hiding the sexual misbehavior of its high paid anchors seemed important to quarterly earnings...or when accused rapist Harvey Weinstein called in a favor.”

The “sexual misbehavior of its high paid anchors” jab refers to longtime “Today” show co-host Matt Lauer, who suddenly disappeared from his top spot on the morning program after it became clear that he had developed a pattern of sexual misconduct over the years; including but not limited to, installing a button at his desk so he could shut the door in his office without getting up, telling co-host Meredith Vieira to “keep bending over like that,” and, according to his longtime co-host Katie Couric, grabbing people’s derrieres.   

Carlson continued: “but those were entirely different circumstances because Donald Trump was not involved and Trump is a very bad man.” That statement easily applies to everything else the Democrats find themselves nearly unanimously opposing despite feeling the opposite way about the said issue or person, say, a decade ago. For example, their overwhelming support for the Secure Fence Act of 2006 might qualify as “entirely different circumstances because Donald Trump was not involved and Trump is a very bad man.”  Similarly, their unanimous support for now-Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch back in 2006 when President Bush nominated him for a seat on the 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals stands in stark contrast to their overwhelming opposition to the judge when President Trump nominated him to the Supreme Court eleven years later.  Once again, the Democrats would probably say “those were entirely different circumstances because Donald Trump was not involved and Trump is a very bad man.”

Carlson then engaged in a conversation with likeable liberal Mark Penn focusing on the left’s jihad against President Trump, the ridiculousness of Special Counsels in general, and the Congressional slush fund of taxpayer money used to pay off women (or men) who accuse members of Congress or their staff of sexual harassment and/or misconduct.  By the left’s own standards in arguing that President Trump committed a campaign finance violation, shouldn’t any payoffs made from the slush fund constitute campaign finance violations as well?  That especially goes for the House of Representatives, where members have to face re-election every two years. 

Carlson played some clips from MSNBC programming showing how “NBC is extremely upset that the President may have paid off a former girlfriend. We should keep in mind, though, that NBC, the same people, protected serial harasser Harvey Weinstein (and)...made its own payoffs to people who said they were victims of harassment.” After playing the clips of MSNBC anchors expressing outrage over the thought of the President engaging in an extramarital affair and/or paying off women who he had extramarital affairs with, Carlson brought on The Hill’s media reporter, Joe Concha.  Concha pointed out that one of the anchors shown in the clip, Chris Matthews, “had to pay off a woman who he had made sexually inappropriate comments to in front of other people.” Concha also brought up Lauer’s troubles in addition to the recent dismissals of former contributors Mark Halperin and Harold Ford Jr.

No political party, news organization, has clean hands when it comes to sexual misconduct.  If only everyone in America would simply follow the Pence rule; especially Republicans.  As Ann Coulter pointed out, “Whenever Republicans get a Clinton in their sights…they immediately proceed to shoot themselves in the foot.  When impeachment was delivered to the Republican Congress on a silver platter, first Newt Gingrich, and then his designated replacement, Bob Livingstone, had to resign. Both turned out to be committed adulterers.”  The fact that top Republicans had committed adultery really undermined their case as they tried to impeach a President for lying about committing adultery under oath.  Two years later, “history called on New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to consummate a great and noble thing: the defeat of Hillary Clinton for Senate.  But now it turns out he’s frittered away the opportunity by chasing tail, too.”  Giuliani ultimately withdrew from the 2000 Senate race and Clinton ended up facing Republican Congressman Rick Lazio of Long Island as the First Lady who had never really lived in the Empire State, sought to replace the retiring Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  Clinton ended up winning by double digits and cruised to re-election six years later.  Fortunately, the American people did not share New Yorkers’ high opinion of the ex-Goldwater girl turned Saul Alinsky disciple.  Mrs. Clinton narrowly lost the Democratic Presidential Primary in 2008 to a junior Senator from Illinois while she lost the Presidential race in 2016 to a real estate developer who had no political experience. 

Fast forwarding twenty years, Carlson concluded that all of the MSNBC pundits, including Stephanie Ruhle, who looked mortified that the President would have an affair shortly after his wife had a baby, make up “the last group of people that should be judging other people’s sex lives.” Concha agreed, arguing that the media should “report it but don’t be so pious about it.”

While Carlson delivered an epic takedown of the media’s hypocrisy when it comes to campaign finance violations, the debate continues about whether or not the payments to Stormy Daniels and the “catch and kill” agreement with The National Enquirer constitute violations of campaign finance law.  As the sentencing memorandum for Cohen states, “In August 2014, Chariman-1 (also known as David Pecker of The National Enquirer) had met with Cohen and Individual-1, and had offered to help deal with negative stories about Individual-1’s relationships with women by identifying such stories so they could be purchased and ‘killed.’” Considering the fact that President Trump did not announce his run for President until ten months later, that makes it a lot harder to cite the deal with The National Enquirer as a campaign finance violation, although that probably will not stop the overzealous prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, in addition to the “thirteen angry Democrats” on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, from trying.

 

An opinion piece on Fox News argues that the President made payments to the women as a form of “brand management;” after all, allegations of an affair would do a great amount of harm to the Trump brand; in addition to turning the lives of his wife and young son upside down. Don’t underestimate the amount of damage allegations of sexual improprieties can do; just look at what happened to Brett Kavanaugh.  The court of public opinion, which almost works simultaneously with the liberal mob, will quickly declare a “defendant” (i.e. a man) guilty until proven innocent; especially if the man does not sign onto feminist orthodoxy when it comes to the sacrosanct, “Constitutional” concept  of  “reproductive rights.”

 

In response to the alleged “campaign finance violations,” members of the mainstream media and the left have declared the Trump Presidency dead in the water.  In spite of the non-stop drumbeat of negative coverage this administration has received, the media consistently receive lower approval ratings than President Trump.  Perhaps they should take a look in the mirror and listen to Carlson’s epic takedown of their hypocrisy and selective moral outrage.  Maybe doing so will help them figure out why they have such abysmal approval ratings.

Click here for a link of the segment on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” discussed in this blog. The relevant segment begins at 27:41 and lasts through the remainder of the video.