Leading off his eponymous Fox News Channel show on Thursday, Tucker Carlson began with what seemed like a relatively innocuous open, reiterating that the government shutdown was “enter[ing] its fourth contentious week” with talks at “a stalemate.”
From there, Carlson launched into a sarcastic monologue that demolished CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta for his pathetically stupid self-own in a series of videos at the U.S.-Mexico border that inadvertently bolstered the case for a wall.
“In fact, this debate is over. We're not getting a barrier along our southern border. We can't, not now, not ever. That possibility was permanently destroyed today by a fact-seeking missile of truth launched by one of our country's premier cable news outlets in a single devastating act of journalism, CNN killed the wall. Took their biggest guns to do it.” Carlson explained.
Below him in the lower third, this chyron appeared: “Tucker: CNN Killed the Wall.” Oh boy.
Carlson then teed up highlights from one of Acosta’s widely-mocked videos (which our P.J. Gladnick wrote about earlier Thursday):
The network dispatched its chief White House correspondent/moral philosopher/Renaissance poet Jim Acosta to the U.S.-Mexico border, specifically to the town of McAllen, Texas. Once on the ground in McAllen, Acosta wasted no time in proving once and for all that walls don't work. Watch the standup that changed history.
After the video, Carlson continued to unfurl his comedic act, telling border wall supporters: “You see that? Take that, you nativist bigot freaks, you creepy wall obsessives. Jim Acosta just spanked you. He was there, not in some cushy, air-conditioned studio in Washington with the rest of the talking heads.”
He then joked that Acosta was out there “in the field...doing the kind of hard-boiled shoe-leather reporting that has made Jim Acosta a household name” and found that the very thing that he had found “immoral and has often argued against at press conferences” was, well, the opposite.
“Not a single illegal alien was anywhere near that wall. There was no tent city. There were no predatory gang members or coyotes. MS-13? Not there. There was no sad suffering caravan. Everything was just fine or as Jim Acosta so memorably put it, the area around that steel barrier was pretty tranquil,” Carlson added.
Carlson continued for a brief while longer before dropping the act in the monologue’s last sentence:
See, that's what you get when you build walls, America, tranquility. And that's the last thing we need more of in this country more peaceful scenes like that. Wait, that couldn't have been CNN's point, could it? Now it's getting confusing. We’ll have to call Jim Acosta once he gets back from latest mission and clear this up. In the meantime, though, we just want to give you some idea how stupid and buffoonish the wall coverage has been recently in case you missed it.
Moments after Carlson’s Hall-of-Fame-worthy tomfoolery, the President hit send on perhaps one of his trollish tweets of all-time, quote tweeting one of Acosta’s Twitter videos with the caption: “Dear Diary...”
Go ahead and frame this one, folks. It won’t be surprising if this one ends up in a future Trump presidential library.
To see the relevant transcript from FNC’s Tucker Carlson Tonight on January 10, click “expand.”
FNC’s Tucker Carlson Tonight
January 10, 2019
8:00 p.m. Eastern[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Trump Goes to Border Amid Shutdown]
TUCKER CARLSON: The government shutdown continues at this hour as the debate over a border wall enters its fourth contentious week. Neither side in this has shown any sign of willingness to compromise. This remains a stalemate as of now. The very definition of it. At least that's what it seems like from the outside. In fact, this debate is over. We're not getting a barrier along our southern border. We can't, not now, not ever.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Tucker: CNN Killed the Wall]
That possibility was permanently destroyed today by a fact-seeking missile of truth launched by one of our country's premier cable news outlets in a single devastating act of journalism, CNN killed the wall. Took their biggest guns to do it. The network dispatched its chief White House correspondent/moral philosopher/Renaissance poet Jim Acosta to the U.S.-Mexico border, specifically to the town of McAllen, Texas. Once on the ground in McAllen, Acosta wasted no time in proving once and for all that walls don't work. Watch the standup that changed history.
JIM ACOSTA: Here are some of the steel slats that the president has been talking about. [SCREEN WIPE] But as we are walking along here, we are not seeing any kind of eminent danger. There are no migrants trying to rush toward this fence here in the McAllen, Texas area. [SCREEN WIPE] No sign of the national emergency that the president has been talking about. As a matter of fact, it's pretty tranquil down here.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Acosta Finds All Is Tranquil at Wall]
CARLSON: You see that? Take that, you nativist bigot freaks, you creepy wall obsessives. Jim Acosta just spanked you. He was there, not in some cushy, air-conditioned studio in Washington with the rest of the talking heads, but in the field, on the scene, doing the kind of hard boiled shoe leather reporting that has made Jim Acosta a household name. Acosta went right to the wall itself. The very wall he finds immoral and has often argued against at press conferences and what Jim Acosta found there will shock you: Not a single illegal alien was anywhere near that wall. There was no tent city. There were no predatory gang members or coyotes. MS-13? Not there. There was no sad suffering caravan. Everything was just fine or as Jim Acosta so memorably put it, the area around that steel barrier was pretty tranquil. See, that's what you get when you build walls, America, tranquility. And that's the last thing we need more of in this country more peaceful scenes like that. Wait, that couldn't have been CNN's point, could it? Now it's getting confusing. We’ll have to call Jim Acosta once he gets back from latest mission and clear this up. In the meantime, though, we just want to give you some idea how stupid and buffoonish the wall coverage has been recently in case you missed it.
