Tucker: American media has changed forever
Prestige media outlets have gone extinct and given way to Buzzfeed.
We have seen an awful lot of change during the two years Trump has been president. American politics has been completely reordered, but also the American media has changed forever. News organizations that seemed like a big deal just five years ago are now extinct -- some of them are totally forgotten. Those that remain have either degraded themselves beyond recognition, like The New Yorker, or they have been purchased by Jeff Bezos to conduct unregistered lobbying for Amazon.com like the Washington Post.
It's hard to remember that not so long ago, America had prestige media outlets. Harvard graduates literally went to work for Newsweek, rather than private equity. Not anymore. "Teen Vogue" now has a news division and so does a New York based cat blog called BuzzFeed.
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If you are an affluent single person in that gentrifying part of Brooklyn who likes cats -- of course, that's redundant, because they all like cats -- then you know and you love BuzzFeed. When a BuzzFeed headline commands you to "Stop everything and watch this cat who loves the ocean," you do. You stop everything and you watch that cat.
When BuzzFeed offers one of its trademark cat quizzes, you dutifully take the quiz. What kind of "purr-sonality" does your cat actually have?" Or "How cat are you? Take this quiz." Meow! You think you know a lot about cats, BuzzFeed knows more. On all questions feline, BuzzFeed is the final authority.
But what happens when BuzzFeed tries to do real news? Well, in early 2017, we found out the site released the now famous Trump dossier. It was a catalog of salacious and unverified gossip financed by the DNC originally about President-elect Trump.
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Many other news outlets, nearly all of them anti-Trump, had seen the dossier, but passed on it. It was just too irresponsible to run. But not BuzzFeed. They thought it was purr-fect. Meow! So they ran it.
Two years ago later, the BuzzFeed dossier has come to define the entire Trump Russian collusion conspiracy tale. The problem is, a lot of dossier is pretty clearly untrue. For example, one of the key claims in the dossier that BuzzFeed ran is that Trump attorney Michael Cohen held secret meetings with Russian agents in Prague. They never offered any evidence that that happened; there never was any evidence. And then finally last week, Michael Cohen himself confirmed it never happened in his testimony before lawmakers.
"Have you ever been to Prague?" Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C. asked.
"I have never been to Prague," Cohen responded.
"Never have?"
"I've never been to [the] Czech Republic."
The Mueller investigation itself batted down BuzzFeed's story almost immediately after it came out, and yet, BuzzFeed never retracted the piece. Once again, in its feline way, the site pretended that nothing had happened. You can yell at a cat, but you can't make a cat pay attention it turns out.
Well, so, that seems like a pretty big development. Two years ago, BuzzFeed told us -- you remember, we did a show on it -- that Michael Cohen held a secret meeting with Russian spies in Prague. We have been hearing that about ever since in Congress and on cable news. We have, in fact, halted the normal workings of government in part because of that meeting. Now it turns out, it never took place. So it's not a small thing to learn from Michael Cohen.
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How did BuzzFeed cover this latest stunning development? Well, they didn't cover it. They ignored it completely. As of Monday night, BuzzFeed was floating instead a story entitled, "21 Completely Life Changing Things You Can Make in a Waffle Maker." There was nothing about the non-existent Michael Cohen-Russian spy meeting in Prague. If you only read BuzzFeed, you would never know that that story was false.
Well, apparently, a lot of people in the media only read BuzzFeed and not simply for its lavish cat coverage. This January, BuzzFeed published a story with this sentence: "President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney, Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow." BuzzFeed presented no evidence to show that that was actually true, just unnamed sources. But it didn't matter. The cat lovers on cable news went crazy with the "bombshell" report.
It was really a bombshell actually, at least in some sense, it was. The claim was, anyway. Directing someone to lie under oath is a felony, and it ought to be. Had this been true, the Trump presidency likely would have ended, and for good reason, a legitimate reason.
But it was not true. Instead, it was a lot like the claim that, I don't know, a cat sucks the breath from babies or that a black cat brings bad luck. It was an old wives tale posing as fact.
The Mueller investigation itself batted down BuzzFeed's story almost immediately after it came out, and yet, BuzzFeed never retracted the piece. Once again, in its feline way, the site pretended that nothing had happened. You can yell at a cat, but you can't make a cat pay attention it turns out.
To be clear, here are the key quotes from the January BuzzFeed story: "Trump directed his longtime attorney, Michael Cohen to lie to Congress." And again, "The President personally instructed him to lie." "It is the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia." Explicitly telling a subordinate to lie, that's the claim. OK.
Democratic members of Congress asked Michael Cohen last week about that specific claim. Cohen was under oath at the time, a declared enemy of Donald Trump, not someone who had any reason to lie about this. Here is how he responded: "Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That's not how he operates."
Okay, let's try to make sure we've got this totally clear. Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie. He personally instructed him to lie. He "explicitly told him to lie." Those are the claims from BuzzFeed. Did Michael Cohen really do that? Here's his account again during the hearing.
U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va.: Did the president, in any way. from your point of view, coach you in terms of how to respond to questions or the contents of your testimony before a House Committee?
Cohen: Again, it's difficult to answer because he doesn't tell you what he wants. What he does, again, "Michael, there is no Russia. There is no collusion. There is no involvement. There is no interference." I know what he means because I have been around him for so long. So, if you are asking me whether or not that's the message. That's staying on point, that's the party line that he created that so many others are now touting. Yes, that's the message he wanted to reinforce.
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That's the message. So Michael Cohen says that Trump claimed there was no Russian collusion and no interference in the 2016 presidential election. If that sounds familiar, it's because that's exactly what Trump has been telling the world for two years, every day, in a loud voice to anyone who will listen.
BuzzFeed claims that this is somehow proof that its original story was entirely accurate. Nineteen adorable Siamese kittens that are actually talented investigative reporters. We're waiting for that story next.
Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on March 4, 2019.
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