(Video: Fox News)

During the opening segment of his Fox News show, Tucker Carlson posed some interesting questions on the eve of Thursday’s yawner of a primetime January 6th extravaganza.

Most importantly, Carlson wondered, why is the president himself—who has claimed often and loudly that anyone who has suspicions about the legitimacy of the 2020 election is at best an ignorant proto-fascist and insurrectionist, and at worst a Russian asset—now preemptively casting doubts on the forthcoming midterm elections, which are shaping up to be a Republican blowout?

“The people you saw outside the Capitol on January 6 were not brainwashed robots mindlessly following their leader,” Carlson explained in Wednesday’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” monologue.

“Whatever you think of them, they weren’t sociology students from Wesleyan telling you with a straight face there are 400 genders because their professors told them so. No, they’re just the opposite. These were mostly sober, middle-class people, older, for the most part, small business owners from smallish towns, far from the fashionable coasts. They were mostly passionately patriotic Americans, the kind who believe in the Bill of Rights and know what it says,” he continued.

Carlson then went on to explain that the events on January 6th of last year represented a legitimate expression of what many voters felt was a rigged and unfair election—and that none of the plentiful checks and balances in the American system, which were designed to assuage these doubts, had been allowed to operate as intended.

“These are people who genuinely love America far more than, say, Chuck Schumer loves America,” Carlson observed. “So why were they there? Why did they go to the Capitol? Well, because, again, unlike Chuck Schumer, they actually believed in democracy, and they believed their democracy had been taken from them. They were convinced that the presidential election was unfair, which it certainly was. Some of them believed the election had been rigged. We will let others debate whether that’s true, but the fact is many that day believed it was true, and that itself is a huge problem for all of us going forward.”

Even mainstream outlets like US News & World Report have had to grudgingly concede that polling data shows that many Americans are still angry over the 2020 election travesty, with two-thirds of Republicans and a third of all Americans (at least) questioning the legitimacy of Biden’s election.

“The fact that large numbers of Americans believe democracy isn’t real,” Carlson continued, “may itself be the biggest threat to our democracy because in order for our system to work, the population has to believe that it works. In other words, that our elections are fair and transparent and therefore legitimate.

“You can’t just censor or arrest people for thinking the system is rigged. You have to show them the system isn’t rigged. That is your baseline obligation if you lead the country. And yet the Biden administration, amazingly, is doing just the opposite. After screaming at the rest of us for questioning elections – ‘That’s immoral,’ they said – Joe Biden himself has begun to do just that.”

Carlson then played clips of Biden blatantly casting doubt on the legitimacy of the upcoming 2022 elections in his replies to reporters earlier this year.

“Huh?” Carlson asked. “So, 2020 was the most secure election in American history. They tell us that endlessly, and you’re a nut, probably a criminal, if you say otherwise and they say that because Biden won. He got—what do they say—81 million votes. But things are different now because the Democratic Party understands it will be severely punished. It will be spanked at the polls five months from now. So, because they know what the outcome is going to be, Joe Biden is now telling us that that election could ‘easily be illegitimate.'”

Carlson concluded the segment by getting right to the heart of the matter, and why this moment represents such a profound crisis for our country and “our democracy.”

“But ultimately,” he explained, “what matters long term for all of us is that people believe our system is real, that democracy is not a charade, the outcome is not predetermined, that everything in this country is not controlled by a small group of people, billionaires, and the people who work for them in Washington, that everybody has a voice, that we’re all equal and that all citizens have an equal chance to choose their leaders.

“That’s the core promise of democracy, and people no longer believe it. So, the question is: Can we now, with the current rules in place, have faith in November’s elections?” he asked. “That really matters, not just because the outcome in November matters, but because the system itself matters more than anything.”

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Todd Jaquith

Staff Writer

"Originally from South Florida, Todd Jaquith now lives in sunny Santa Fe, New Mexico. He holds a degree in Anthropology from Florida Atlantic University."

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