14 | July | 2023 | News Corpse

As the 2024 Republican primary season unfolds, the roster of candidates reflects just how radically the party has devolved into a bastion of lies, conspiracy theories, and the autocratic aspirations of Donald Trump and his heroes, such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.

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The polls show that there hasn’t been much movement in the race in weeks. Trump remains the messiah of the MAGA GOP, with Ron DeSantis trailing by 20 or 30 points or more, and everyone else in single digits. Consequently, Trump has directed his wrath at DeSantis and allowed the rest of the pack to flounder. He knows that the more non-Trump contestants in the race, the more that support for DeSantis is diluted.

Among the Republican hopeless is Trump’s own former vice-president, Mike Pence. He is the only candidate that Trump sought to have executed by the hostile mob that tried to stage a coup on January 6th. And while Pence occasionally makes a meager effort to call out Trump for that attempted assassination, he still often behaves as if nothing untoward happened that day.

That was the situation on Friday when Pence sat down with the disgraced former Fox News propagandist, Tucker Carlson. It was one of a series of interviews that Carlson is holding with most of the Republican candidates. In a gesture of predictable cowardice, Trump has declined to participate. Just as he is expected to chicken out of the August GOP debate sponsored by Fox News.

During the Pence interview, Carlson brought up the January 6th insurrection, asking Pence what he thought the hostile unrest was all about…

Carlson: Why do you think the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6th were mad? And why haven’t we talked about that?
Pence: First off I would tell you that I think the January 6th committee was a partisan committee in the Congress of the United States. And it failed its historic mission of bringing the facts forward. And I know your commitment to bringing all the facts to the American people, Tucker. And I know we’re grateful for that.

Carlson: “Why do you think the people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were mad? And why haven’t we talked about that?”

Pence: “I would tell you that I think the Jan. 6 committee was a partisan committee…And it failed its historic mission of bringing the facts forward.” pic.twitter.com/Sesr8UGuCe

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) July 14, 2023

WHUT? Never mind that Pence utterly ignored the question, despite the answer being so simple (The rioters were mad that their cult leader lost, and that has been talked about frequently). And set aside the fact the the January 6th Committee was a thorough, bipartisan probe of the facts surrounding the insurrection and Trump’s role in inciting it.

More to the point, Pence’s up-sucking to Carlson is a pitiful display of his desperation. The bizarre assertion that Carlson had a “commitment to bringing all the facts to the American people” is belied by the evidence of his flagrant lying about the matter for the past two years.

It was Carlson who repeatedly disseminated disinformation about January 6th that characterized the insurrection as either a “false flag” operation orchestrated by the FBI, or as nothing more than ordinary tourists on a sightseeing trip at the Capitol. He got GOP House Squeaker Kevin McCarthy to give him sole access to 40,000 hours of surveillance videos, of which he aired only a few minutes, and only parts where literally nothing was happening. He left out all of the assaults on police officers, the breaking through doors and windows, the vandalizing of property, and the terrorizing of congressional representatives and staff.

Carlson and Fox News are currently being sued for defamation by Ray Epps, a Trump supporter who attended the January 6th riot, who Carlson falsely accused of being an undercover FBI agent tasked with instigating violence.

Following his outpouring of gratitude for Carlson, Pence complained that the January 6th Committee spent too much time investigating Donald Trump and his incitement of the violent insurrection, rather than the the failures of law enforcement to predict and respond to the riots. Of course, it was Trump and his administration that was responsible for the policing of the Capitol. Pence has apparently forgotten his prior acknowledgement of Trump’s culpability when he said that…

“President Trump was wrong. I had no right to overturn the election, and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day. And I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable for his actions.”

Pence has also previously condemned what took place on January 6th, and therefore, Carlson’s dishonest narratives about it. Speaking at a Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, Pence said that…

“January 6th was a tragic day. I was there at the Capitol, and let me assure you it was not, as some would have us believe, a matter of tourists peacefully enjoying our Capitol. Tourists don’t injure 140 police officers by sightseeing. Tourists don’t break down doors to get to the Speaker of the House. Or voice threats against public officials. […] Make no mistake about it — what happened that day was a disgrace and it mocks decency to portray it in any other way.”

Yet somehow, Pence is “grateful” to Carlson for “bringing the facts to the American people”? No one has lied more about January 6th than Tucker Carlson.

If Pence thinks that this is the sort of campaign message that will thrust him to the front of the pack, he must be so severely traumatized by his near death experience on January 6th – and his long proximity to Donald Trump – that he has lost any connection to reality. But then, that’s a common problem with the current batch of GOP presidential candidates, and moreover, today’s Trumpian Republican Party.

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The Internet's Chronicle of Media Decay

Day: 7/14/2023

HUH? Mike Pence Thanks Tucker Carlson for ‘Bringing Facts to the American People’ About Jan 6th

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