Tucker Carlson Cries 'Insurrection' After Colbert Production Crew Arrested At Capitol; GOP Fodder

[appalachiablue]

- HuffPost, June 18, 2022.

Several crew members filming a comedy segment at the U.S. Capitol for “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” were charged with unlawful entry earlier this week, leading prominent Republicans including Fox News host Tucker Carlson to falsely cry “insurrection.” “Last night, producers from Stephen Colbert’s show on CBS committed insurrection at the United States Capitol,” Carlson falsely claimed on his show Friday night.

Carlson was referring to the arrest of 7 production crew members for Colbert’s CBS show Thursday night, which was filming a segment in the Capitol with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a crass puppet voiced by comedian Robert Smigel. Capitol police said Friday that the arrests happened after the building had been closed to visitors and the crew had already been told to leave the building. Colbert’s team had finished up prearranged interviews with lawmakers and were filming “final comedy elements” in the building’s hallways when the arrests took place, CBS news said in a statement. All 7 crew members were slapped with unlawful entry charges.

The arrests quickly became fodder for Republicans looking to distract from this week’s hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack by falsely equating the arrests of the crew members to the violence of former President Donald Trump’s supporters.

“It’s exactly like what happened on Jan 6., so we’ll take a close look at what the punishments are,” Carlson told his viewers Friday night. He’s wrong. In the case of Jan. 6, 5 people died and more than 140 officers were injured after hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory. In the case of Colbert’s crew, they were arrested filming a comedy segment featuring a puppet best known for hurting people’s feelings. And there were hurt feelings. Congresswoman and QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene took a photo of comedian Smigel with his puppet and posted it to Twitter to whine about “targeted harassment.”

“Now all of you engaged in insurrection & enabled targeted harassment against me and my Republican colleagues,” Greene tweeted. “I’m telling the full story next week.” Disinformation merchant and Pizzagate peddler Mike Cernovich echoed a similar talking point on Twitter. “If they aren’t charged criminally the same as J6 defendants, then more evidence of selective prosecution arises,” Cernovich said in a tweet. “Judges can only rig stuff so much before the judiciary loses all legitimacy. Throw the book at these trespassers.”...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/tucker-carlson-cries-insurrection-after-colbert-production-crew-arrested-at-capitol/ar-AAYChQX

[sop]

1. Tucker's entire repertoire consists of inventing absurd whataboutisms to justify the indefensible.

[appalachiablue]

2. Definitely, I've never followed Faux or Tucker much, a real carnival.

[CentralMass]

3. Tucker is an Asswad .

[Marcuse]

4. Carlson has a judicial license to lie.

Fox persuasively argues, see Def Br. at 13-15, that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer “arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism” about the statements he makes. 600 W. 115th Corp. v. Von Gutfeld, 80 N.Y.2d 130, 141, 603 N.E.2d 930, 936 (1992). Whether the Court frames Mr. Carlson’s statements as “exaggeration,” “non-literal commentary,” or simply bloviating for his audience, the conclusion remains the same—the statements are not actionable.
[link:https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2019cv11161/527808/39/|

[Hortensis]

5. Lol. We probably won't know how this particular silliness goes over with

young conservatives, but we do already know they've been losing a lot of them.

[PlanetBev]

6. Triumph the Insult Dog and his handlers as insurrectionists?

Really? Don’t these people know how stupid they look?