Tucker: This may be the most important way to restore the public's faith in elections
Fox News host Tucker Carlson reflects on January 6 Capitol riots and discusses restoring Americans' confidence in the U.S. election system on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
A year and a half after January 6, the date much of the news right now, it's interesting that even the most basic questions about what actually happened that day remain mysteriously unanswered. First and most obviously, if you've seen the tape, why did law enforcement open the doors of the building and let protesters walk right into the Capitol? That's bizarre behavior, no matter what they say.
So why did it happen and then once it did happen, why did authorities lie to the country for months and tell us that Officer Brian Sicknick had been murdered by the mob when in fact the medical examiner determined that he died of a stroke hours later? Just tonight on CBS News, we were informed, just a moment ago, as Norah O'Donnell stared on like it was true, that five police officers were murdered by the mob on January 6. Really?
We know of one killing on January 6 and that killing was committed by Officer Michael Byrd, a Capitol Hill police officer with a confirmed record of highly reckless behavior with firearms, and yet, for some reason, he was allowed to shoot an unarmed, non-threatening woman in the neck. Why was he allowed to do that? What was the justification? No one's ever told us. Why is that? And by the way, just how many FBI agents and DOJ informants were active in the crowd on January 6, and what exactly were they doing there?
Why can't we know the answer to that question? Seriously? Why did Kamala Harris lie about where she was on January 6 and why there's still no leads on those two attempted pipe bombings on Capitol Hill? Remember those? There are massive amounts of physical evidence, but the FBI apparently got nowhere. How come? And so on.
President Joe Biden gives remarks in Statuary Hall of the U.S Capitol on January 6, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images)
So, there is still, once again, a remarkable amount that we don't know about what happened that day, despite the fact they tell us it was the largest FBI investigation in American history. That's very strange. We'll address it all in some detail on tomorrow's show, but tonight, we want to get to the most basic question of all you never hear asked and it's this: Why did so many Trump voters show up at the Capitol in the first place? Somehow no one's ever really explained that.
For a year and a half, Democrats have searched for a smoking gun that would prove some sort of pre-planned conspiracy to storm the Capitol. They haven't found that because there wasn't a preplanned conspiracy. So instead they've told us that the crowd converged on the Capitol that day because their orange cult leader commanded them to. Now, Trump did encourage a protest that day. That is true. But it's not a real explanation for what happened next.
The people you saw outside the Capitol on January 6 were not brainwashed robots mindlessly following their leader. Whatever you think of them, they weren't sociology students from Wesleyan telling you the 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.
These are people who genuinely love America far more than, say, Chuck Schumer loves America. 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.
The fact that large numbers of Americans believe democracy isn't real 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. Here's Biden in January.
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REPORTER: Speaking of voting rights legislation, if this isn't passed, do you still believe the upcoming election will be fairly conducted and its results will be legitimate?
PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well, all depends on whether or not we're able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election.
REPORTER: You were asked whether or not you believed that we would have free and fair elections in 2022 if some of these state legislatures reformed their voting protocols. You said that it depends...Do you think that they would in any way be illegitimate?
BIDEN: Oh, yeah, I think it would be easy to be illegitimate.
Huh? 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."
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Illegitimate? How would it be illegitimate? Well, if states required voter IDs at the polls to stop voter fraud, that would be racism. It would be the new Jim Crow. Remember that? Then when primary elections in Georgia, the state most debated actually took place, those supposedly racist voting laws led to what? A 200% increase in early voter turnout.
Well, how'd that happen? Well, no one in the Democratic Party explained or even acknowledged that it did happen. Instead, they got back to work thinking of new ways to destroy the public's confidence in this upcoming election, the one they're almost certain to lose.
In the state of Michigan, a political activist called Jocelyn Benson, now the secretary of state, a former employee of the Southern Poverty Law Center by the way, just accused other secretaries of state of trying to rig the election by spreading "disinformation." Watch.
JOCELYN BENSON, MICHIGAN SECRETARY OF STATE: The very threat of potential secretaries of state using these increasingly high-profile positions as a bully pulpit to spread misinformation and lies, thereby causing citizens to disengage and lose faith in their democracy is one of the most dangerous and pernicious ways in which this office can be misused. We facilitated a meeting with law enforcement officials throughout the state, the attorney general's office and local election officials in our state to build connectivity so that we can preemptively prepare for anything and it's a big job of what we have to do... in this moment. And if you don't have a secretary of state leading in that way, you can instead open the door for all their pernicious attempts to undermine our democracy.
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Okay. So, first of all, people who don't blink enough ought to make you nervous. People who recite pre-masticated chunks of language handed to them by the DNC ought to be dismissed because they're not thinking for themselves. They're repeating propaganda. But secretaries of state should do that, should be feared because secretaries of state are responsible for certifying elections. So, if you were a secretary of state who wanted to restore the public's trust in election results, you'd probably do your best not to sound like a low IQ MSNBC weekend host on MSNBC. Instead, you would try to come off as competent and sane.
But Jocelyn Benson is deliberately doing the opposite. Why is she doing that? Why is she trying to shake your faith in the coming elections? You've got to wonder and of course, Jocelyn Benson's concerns about election integrity are strangely selective or maybe not so strange.
She never mentioned, for example, a major and supposedly unintentional screw-up by the Census Bureau that just took place you probably haven't read about. The census just acknowledged they dramatically miscounted the population of 14 states and you may not be surprised to learn that most of the overcounted states were controlled by Democrats while the undercounted states were heavily Republican.
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Why does this matter? Because the census determines congressional apportionment. So, the mistakes the census just made could give Democrats control of the Congress. Therefore, Democrats aren't bothered by it. That's not a crisis. Democrats also aren't very interested in making sure that votes are counted quickly. Counting votes quickly, like delivering justice quickly and certainly, may be the single fastest way and most important way to restore the public's faith in the institution, in this case, in elections.
Pennsylvania just held a primary election, and it took weeks to get the answer. France just held a national election and announced the winner within a few hours using paper ballots, again the same day, and in Pennsylvania, a primary took weeks to decide. So, what's the difference? Well, in France, there's virtually no voting by mail. There's no early or absentee voting either. Ballots are hand-counted.
Our system is obviously much slower and critically, far more susceptible to voter fraud. Why? Because Democrats like it that way. They want you to distrust this fall's election results and that's why they're going on television to warn you that White supremacists, a term they never define because its power lies in its ambiguity, but somehow White supremacists are going to hunt down election officials and "attack the election." Watch this.
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REP. STEVE COHEN, D-TENN.: We all should be concerned about the midterms being harmed and all public officials should be concerned about their own safety, I fear. Jonathan Martin, our friend who wrote that "This Shall Not Pass," makes it clear in his book that this is something that is a continuing part of American government, American politics, that the "Big Lie" continues, the fealty to Trump continues and the encouragement to the White supremacists and the terrorists to be involved continues.
White supremacists and the terrorists — terms they never define. The most powerful words in the English language, by the way, words they used to suppress the vote and terrify you, but Steve Cohen is telling you it's the White supremacist you have to worry about and by that, he means anyone who disagrees with him in any way.
What you don't have to worry about is BLM, the Democratic militia who torched courthouses or shot people in the street, or the people who show up at the homes of Supreme Court justices with guns. None of that is a threat to democracy because all of that in the end helps the Democratic Party.
Very few people say any of this out loud. One of the very few who's been brave enough to do that is, of all things, an NFL defensive coordinator called Jack Del Rio. He was attacked relentlessly for pointing this out. Here's what he said in response.
JACK DEL RIO: I think we all, as Americans, have the right to express ourselves, especially if you're being respectful. I'm being respectful. I just asked a simple question, really.... Let's get right down to it. What did I ask? A simple question. Why are we not looking into those things? If we're going to talk about it, why are we not looking into those things? Because it's kind of hard for me to say. I can realistically look at it. I see the images on TV. People's livelihoods are being destroyed. Businesses are being burned down, no problem. And then we have a dust-up at the Capitol. Nothing burned down, and we're not going to talk about, and we're going to make that a major deal. I just think it cut two standards and if we apply the same standard, and we're going to be reasonable with each other, let's have a discussion. That's all it was.
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Yeah, exactly. But ultimately, 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? That really matters, not just because the outcome in November matters, but because the system itself matters more than anything.
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