Does power call for silence? Truth and justice become rebels.
What Tucker Carlson said to MAGA
At a recent conservative Turning Point-US event, right-wing journalist Tucker Carlson began his presentation by laying the basic premises for the criticisms he was going to launch at the MAGA movement and in some ways, Donald Trump himself: "I am not a slave or an animal. I am a U.S. citizen. I am a grown man who pays his taxes," he clarified.
You can read the full transcript at: https://www.rev.com/transcripts/carlson-at-turning-point-usa
Tucker Carlson has been a "luxury" figure for the political-social sect embedded within the Republican Party and for the Trump administration, perhaps as much as Elon Musk was in his time and sector. For Trump, Carlson is an important acquisition in terms of media dynamics.
But it turns out that if you emotionally turn to the right and keep turning more to the right and turn more and more, you'll suddenly realize that you're agreeing on some issues with the left you were running away from. And that seems to be the case with Tucker Carlson, who critiques certain strategic points related to the economy, national security, foreign policy, and, naturally, the supposed ethical and moral principles of this new right in the United States.
As a precedent to these withering statements by Carlson in Turning Point-US, Donald Trump on his social network Truth, had taken care in a lengthy message on July 12, to call on the MAGA rank and file not to heed the questions about what the Epstein case hides, emphasizing that "I don't like what's happening" with those "selfish people" who are trying to harm his government. "for a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. For years, it's been Epstein, over and over again," Trump complains, annoyed.
In that message, Trump makes one of his typical conspiracy statements: the Epstein files would have been written "by Obama, Corrupt Hillary, Comey, Brennan and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration," adding: "and now my so-called 'friends' are playing into their hands."
And he closed by stating: "A year ago our country was DEAD, now it is the "hottest" country in the world. Let's keep it that way, and not waste time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein, someone nobody cares about."
Trump's message is a clear ordinance to impose silence and suspend in the MAGA ranks, all questioning of the Epstein case. What's behind it?
CARLSON vs. SILENCE OF THE GOVERNMENT
Leaving aside Carlson's conspiracy tendencies, we must pay attention to his points:
1. "It's not just sexual depravity, but political"
Carlson argues that the EPSTEIN case is not simply that of a "strange sex fanatic who was abusing girls" and that declaring (as Trump did) that the guy is already dead and that digging around in that case "offends the victims of depredations" is unacceptable to the citizenry, who must demand the right to transparency in the investigation and disclosure of these facts. And even more so because of the very serious political machinery that, in Carlson's approach, seems to emerge from the case.
2. "There has been a cover-up"
Carlson claims that the Justice Department "didn't release a lot of incriminating sex videos featuring Epstein and his billionaire friends because they don't have them," because "the search warrant was drafted in such a way that it made sure the feds never got their hands on the incriminating evidence”. What was the reason?
3. The US is spied on and blackmailed… by Israel
According to Carlson: "The real question is, why was (Epstein's group) doing this, on whose behalf, and where did the money come from? On whose behalf was he working? How does a man go from being a math teacher at the Dalton School in the late '70s with no college degree to having several planes, a private island, and the largest residential house in Manhattan? Where did all the money come from?
Carlson answers: "No one has ever gotten to the bottom of it because no one has tried. And besides, it's extremely obvious to anyone who sees it that this guy had direct connections to a foreign government. Now, no one is allowed to say that this foreign government is Israel."
4. What the hell is this?" Israel vs. EEUU?
Carlson: “You have the former Israeli Prime Minister living in your house.1 You have had all this contact with a foreign government. Were you working on behalf of Mossad? Were you running a blackmail operation on behalf of a foreign government?
IN SHORT
Indirectly protesting against the obscurantism of the Trump administration on the Epstein case, Carlson criticizes the economic approach that is making the rich richer and the others poorer, stating that there is no future in the style of the American dream, so that young people can get married, buy a house and have their children without surprises. He criticizes the fact that the administration and the now Republican power system sell the narrative that the greatest danger to the U.S. is Iran (when no Iranian has so far committed direct terrorism in the U.S.) and does not address domestic problems, including growing drug use. And he insinuates in his exposition that in the Epstein case, it is not just a moral scandal of a person or a group of people, but an architecture of power, manipulation, and transnational blackmail, in this case, an aggressive interventionism of the state of Israel. And it makes it clear that official silence protects interests that should be under citizen scrutiny, emphasizing the rights of citizens to investigate, demand transparency, accountability, and express themselves freely.
Even coming from his recalcitrant conservative camp, these calls from Carlson are legitimate, as they defend the broadest democratic rights in any democracy that doesn't want to commit suicide, as often happens. These calls don't yet constitute an open break with Trump, but they already signal a differentiation in styles and methods, at least within the US conservative camp.
He is referring to Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel from 1999 to 2001, Minister of Defense of Israel from 2007 to 2013, and co-investor with Epstein in the emergency security company CARBYNE.