On his Wednesday evening Fox News show, Tucker Carlson scorched MSNBC's Joy Reid, described at the New York Times in February as a "Heroine of the Resistance," for claiming that 12 year-old posts at her now-defunct blog were somehow retroactively hacked to make her look even more bigoted against homosexual behavior than the posts she admitted to writing in 2007-2009 back in December.
Carlson saved his harshest criticism for NBC, which for now is defending her logically impossible claim, calling it just the latest in a series of scandals exposed at the network during the past several years which it has glossed over or ignored.
In his searing opening monologue, Carlson also decried the fact that "almost nobody else in the (mainstream) media is saying anything" about this or challenging NBC in this matter (shortly after Carlson said this, some media pushback finally occurred, as seen at the end of this post):
Transcript:
TUCKER CARLSON: So an honest explanation would have been just fine, and we would have defended her in that of course. But that's not what Joy Reid did. Instead, she lied about it. She claims she never wrote those blog posts in the first place; someone else did. She said she'd been hacked. Sinister agents, perhaps employed by Vladimir Putin, somehow broke into her blog retroactively to add the remarks. It really sounds like an MSNBC segment, part of what they run every night. She said it was a disinformation campaign. Waged by whom? We don't know. Shadowy forces. That was her explanation. It was a crock, a total crock. And we know it was a crock, because Reed's blog posts were archived by other websites, including the Library of Congress here in Washington, all the way back to 2006. That means in order for her claims to be true, which they're not, the secret hacking plot must have begun at least 12 years ago before anyone knew or cared who Joy Reid was. That's a lie. It's a childish lie. You have to be a moron to believe it. Yet she's telling it.
Here's the interesting part, though. NBC News is endorsing all of this as true, and trying to convince other people it's true. Yesterday, the network circulated a vague report by an extremely odd person called Jonathan Nichols, who says he's an "independent security consultant," whatever that is, in which he affirms Joy Reid's ludicrous fantasy. Obviously, he offers no evidence.
Keep in mind that NBC, which is passing this out to other news organizations, claims itself to be a news organization. And news organizations are not supposed to lie. That's Rule 1. And yet NBC executives make a habit of lying. They lied about the Access Hollywood tape a couple of years ago. You'll remember that tape was leaked by NBC to David Fahrenthold at the Washington Post, who was a college friend of NBC news chief Noah Oppenheim. The goal in that leak was to help Hillary Clinton just two days before a presidential debate, and it helped. NBC later promised to reveal how that tape was leaked, But of course we haven't heard because they never told us. They lied instead, and they're still lying about that.
NBC also lied when it ran interference for sex attacker Harvey Weinstein — which it did, repeatedly, over a long period. You'll remember that network killed Ronan Farrow's investigation into Harvey Weinstein. He had the goods, and yet NBC claimed that Farrow hadn't nailed down the story. He went and sold the story the next day to The New Yorker, but NBC said it just wasn't ready yet. Another lie. Now NBC is helping Joy read lie once again — and almost nobody else in the media is saying anything about it.
One media person who recognized the controversy was David Bauder at the Associated Press, who handled it in predictably weaselly fashion Wednesday afternoon:
MSNBC's Joy Reid insists that homophobic language in one of her old blog posts is the work of a computer hacker and her security expert said Wednesday they have a strong suspicion of who did it, although he would not name the suspect.
The bizarre tale involving the news network's rising star is a technical who-dun-it that not everyone believes ...
As John Sexton at Hot Air noted on 'Wednesday, multiple blog posts are involved, not just "one," and almost no one believes Reid.
Two other scandals Carlson didn't address appeared on the chyron during his monologue:
The additional references are to:
- Brian Williams, the serial fabulist who lost his perch as NBC's Nightly News anchor after a series of over 30 on-air lies and exaggerations told over a decade-long period were exposed. Williams, after a six-month suspension, resumed his career at MSNBC, and continues to "earn" millions annually.
- Matt Lauer, the Today Show co-host whose long-term record of sexual impropriety was an open secret in the entertainment industry almost a decade ago.
Some blowback has since ensued, as Joe Concha reported at The Hill Thursday morning:
The Daily Beast is "going to hit pause" on Joy Reid's columns while its reporters investigate the MSNBC host's claims around hacking of her old blog, which included homophobic comments that she says were "fabricated." Buzzfeed also reported on Wednesday that Reid backed out of a scheduled panel discussion event in New York organized by former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's media venture CAFE. Reid was set to moderate a panel with several political participants, including Pete Buttigieg (D), the openly gay mayor of South Bend, Ind. who was elected in 2012.
Before Carlson's Wednesday rant, the New York Times acknowledged in a Tuesday item which did not make the print edition that "Questions Mount" over Reid's defense, but failed to mention the archived items at the Library of Congress from 2006 the Fox host cited.
Carlson's first guest Wednesday evening, Boston Herald columnist Michael Graham, contended that if Reid survives this episode without serious discipline, it will prove that "If you hate (Donald) Trump enough, you can do whatever you want and all sins will be forgiven."
Evidence that Graham's assessment may ultimately end up being correct was reported at Politico on Thursday:
Popular MSNBC host Joy Reid will remain on the air amid a controversy over what appear to be old posts expressing anti-gay views on her now-defunct personal blog, an NBC spokesperson said.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
