CNN Comparison, Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones
CNN reporters Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy analyze the rhetorical similarities between Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones. The segment highlights Carlson's claims regarding NSA surveillance and federal involvement in the January 6th Capitol riots, suggesting that Jones's fringe theories have moved into the Republican mainstream. CNN ratings are noted to have hit a significant low during this period.
cnn· tucker carlson· alex jones· oliver darcy· brian stelter· nsa· january 6th
00:00 I'm not Nostradamus when I tell you what they're going to do. It's just when I tell you at the time, it sounds crazy because we all have a normalcy bias of living in a free country when we don't now. And they're in the process of destroying what freedoms are left. So let me tell you what's coming up today. And let me explain what's going to come next, because I could sit there and play the clips of me predicting it all and then show it come true. But wouldn't you rather just skip right ahead to the end? so that people get horrified and say no to this, and we stop this total nightmare? Could we please maybe just maybe do that? Okay? That'd be nice. Because that's where we are. This is an exact plan, like Biden got up and he said, if I get elected, surge the border.
00:48 then he acts like he doesn't know what's going on. This is all premeditated and they're going to destabilize the country till it economically and culturally collapses and use that as the cover as the global world reset where you get a global ID and a global cell phone and a global chip in your body And again, how do I know that's going to happen? It's in all the Davos Group and UN announcements. I can play videos of them saying it. They're not playing games. From the front lines of the information war, it's Alex Jones.
01:37 InfoWars, the most banned network in the world. Choose your own reality culture is pervading every corner of American life. Choose your own reality. If you want to believe that the pro-Trump riots of January 6th were instigated by the feds, you can choose a show that claims that is true. You can choose a TV star who claims it's real. Carlson is a conspiracy monger, but he's far from the first. As my colleague Oliver Darcy pointed out this week, Carlson is sounding more and more like
02:14 InfoWars host and notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. You can hear the similarities. The NSA has been reading our emails. It's not that I think the government spies on me, it's admitted that they do. It is a lie to say there are no risks. There are risks in everything, including in getting a vaccine. Everybody's got family that got killed or got sick from a vaccine. So FBI operatives were organizing the attack on the Capitol. on January 6th according to government documents. It is overwhelming the evidence that criminal elements of the federal government provocateured and staged January 6th. All right, Oliver Darcy is back with me. I think the sound speaks for itself. Is it a stretch to say that Tucker Carlson is the new Alex Jones?
03:06 It's not a stretch, Brian. Tucker Carlson is the new Alex Jones. If you watch Tucker Carlson's program and you watch Alex Jones's program, they might differ a little bit in antics and the way they deliver their message, but that message to viewers is consistent and it's pretty identical, whether it's talking about vaccine conspiracy theories, false flag conspiracy theories, deep state conspiracy theories. The messages that Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones are sending are the same. They seem to see eye to eye on the biggest issues that they talk about every single night. Don't even blink. Do we know anything about their relationship or whether they have one? Because we played two back-to-back sound bites. One is of Tucker sympathizing with Jones, but the other one has Alex Jones basically saying, hey, I'm gonna let Tucker present this January 6th conspiracy theory first. I'm gonna let Tucker present the inside job theory, because he's gonna do a great job with it. And when I heard that, I thought, are these two guys in cahoots? Like, are they friends? Do they communicate? Let's listen to these two sound bites and then we'll talk about it.
04:10 I made the decision not to get into this until it broke on Tucker because I thought he'd do a better job than I did. He did, he did a great job in 15 minutes. Why do we laugh at Alex Jones again? Sincere question. Are they bros? What do we know about the relationship? It does sound like they're talking to each other, right Brian? Look, you don't have to take it from us. Just listen to that clip you played of Tucker Carlson. He's basically saying that he doesn't think that Tucker Carlson, or that Alex Jones's views are out there, that they're crazy. Evidently he thinks that they're legitimate and should be debated and he's bringing them up on his own show. And Brian, this matters because these far right conspiracy theories, they used to be confined to the info war section on the internet. You have to seek them out. I'm not that old, but I remember when the Republican Party and Fox News mocked Alex Jones and said, that guy is crazy, we're not gonna touch that sort of stuff. But now,
05:05 Fox's face is effectively Alex Jones. The de facto leader of the Republican Party is touting the same stuff that Jones touts on his show. And Fox remains silent about what if, what would be if true, an abuse of power. If the NSA is actually reading Tucker's emails, then that's really disturbing. But for some reason Fox hasn't condemned the NSA, they haven't demanded an investigation, they haven't called for congressional inquiry. Like, Fox hasn't said anything. It's like they don't believe him. CNN ratings hit a low watermark this week. On Monday, not a single show cracked one million viewers.
