Buried in Dana Milbank’s Washington Post “Don’t blame the rats abandoning the USS Trump” column today is the word “used” which is a link to an article in The Guardian:
Tucker Carlson, an unstinting Trump booster, used (< link) the anonymity of a German-language weekly to put on the record that he questions Trump’s competence, knowledge, self-aggrandizement and personnel choices.
When you go to The Guardian where there’s another link.This one takes you to the long interview with Carlson in English in Die Welteroche Online by Urs Gehriger
«Trump is not capable»
Weekday nights Fox News Channel star, Tucker Carlson, can be found merrily berating hapless guests, grilling liberal pundits, and defending America’s working and middle classes. Puckish and pugilistic, the 49-year-old insists the Washington elites among whom he grew up despise America’s “normal people.” An ardent fan of Carlson who regularly tunes in to watch the hit cable gab fest is President Donald J. Trump. But as I learn in my interview with Carlson for the Swiss weekly DIE WELTWOCHE, the feelings are not entirely mutual.
Carlson’s primary gripes with Trump are similar to those of his Foxmates Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. They are that he hasn’t delivered on his nationalistic, xenophobic, and cruel promises.
Do you think he has kept his promises? Has he achieved his goals?
No.
He hasn’t?
No. His chief promises were that he would build the wall, de-fund planned parenthood, and repeal Obamacare, and he hasn’t done any of those things. There are a lot of reasons for that, but since I finished writing the book, I’ve come to believe that Trump’s role is not as a conventional president who promises to get certain things achieved to the Congress and then does. I don’t think he’s capable. I don’t think he’s capable of sustained focus. I don’t think he understands the system. I don’t think the Congress is on his side. I don’t think his own agencies support him. He’s not going to do that.
Carlson doesn’t think Trump’s role is to actually be president in any conventional sense. He said that he’s role was “to begin the conversation about what actually matters.” What matters to Carlson is of course immigration so Trump gets kudos for making people from Portland, Oregon where I live to Portland, Maine afraid of MS-13. He also says his “favorite” is question Trump brought to the forefront is “what’s the point of NATO?”
Carlson thinks that ‘the point of NATO was to keep the Soviets from invading western Europe but they haven’t existed in 27 years” and therefore even though Russia has already invaded Crimea and there’s talk in the press that they may have their eye on Ukraine. (“Is Russia about to invade Ukraine again? That may depend on Trump” in Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2018.)
Here’s Carlson on Fox News a month ago: “The word ‘Russia’ eliminates all rational thought in journalists.”
The word (Russia) itself is a kind of magical incantation that eliminates all skepticism and rational thought in journalists.
Whatever the claim is, they believe it wholeheartedly. Not just because they’re dumb, though obviously, they are dumb. But because — Russia!!!!!! It’s a spell, like “eye of newt.”
I have to wonder whether Putin has some compromising information on Tucker Carlson.
Carlson explains that the reason Trump hasn’t been able to implement his policies from building the wall to eliminating Obamacare and Planned Parenthood is the pesky Constitution which made change in policy a highly complex process because they were worried about the president having royal powers. He laments the fact that Trump doesn’t know how to make the legislature do his bidding.
Carlson says, perhaps shrugging wistfully (but I wasn’t there to observe this) “I’m not in charge of Trump.” Presumably if Trump did everything Tucker Carlson told him to do then he’d have succeeded and Tucker would be happy.
UPDATE proving to any rational person that Tucker Carlson is an idiot: Jan. 3, 2019: Tucker Carlson Blames Higher-Earning Women For ‘Men In Decline’
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