David Frum Responds to Tucker Carlson Attack By Denouncing Him as a ‘Bloodthirsty,’ Flip-Flopping ‘Infotainment’ TV Persona

Caleb HoweMay 5th, 2021, 5:45 pm
 

On Tuesday night, Fox host Tucker Carlson described The Atlantic‘s David Frum as “dopey” and more during remarks about a “woke” recruitment promo from the CIA.

During the commentary, Carlson started with the eminently mockable, and therefore extensively mocked video from the CIA, then moved into saying that it’s not white supremacy that’s the most dangerous enemy to the United States, as ex-CIA Director and current media pundit John Brennan claims, but instead it’s American elites.

“It’s the decadent rich people from their class at Harvard, It’s the gender studies party at Cornell. It’s the cat cafés in Austin and Asheville,” said Carlson. Then he went for the kill on Frum.

“It’s the Monday editorial meetings at The Atlantic magazine, where David Frum is treated as an important intellectual rather than some dopey, middle-aged, Canadian Twitter celebrity whose life goal is to force America into yet another unwinnable pointless war,” he said. “Those are the people who actually detest the country.”

The magazine ran an article last week exhaustively critical of Carlson, under the headline “Tucker Carlson, Unmasked“, and a quick search of the archives shows myriad instances of writers associating Carlson with White supremacy or White “nationalism.”

Those recent articles weren’t from Frum, but he did respond by Twitter on Wednesday to Carlson’s comments.

In his comments, Carlson specifically brought up Frum as a cheerleader for “unwinnable” war. A major feature of MAGA politics is railing against “endless” or unwinnable wars, in contrast to the previously hawkish point of view predominant in the GOP.

In responding to the warmonger charge, one Frum has faced from critics many times over, he pointed out that hawkish point of view was also previously predominant in Tucker Carlson’s politics.

He painted the Fox host as having been “bloodthirsty” before he was against it. And he extended that flip-flop characterization to include Carlson’s entire body of work.

“Say one thing today, the opposite tomorrow. Urge a war on national television, then disavow it afterward as if it had nothing to do with you. It’s cynical, but above all it’s cowardly,” he wrote. “We all sense that if a Murdoch ordered him, he would say the opposite of everything he says now. Last year, he flipped from “COVID is real” to “COVID is fake.” He could flip from anti-vax to pro-vax literally tomorrow.”

He said “the Carlson TV persona” is like “a one-man TV special effect, a creation of market analysis of race-baiting as a segment within an ever more fragmented infotainment industry.”

But there’s no need to over-summarize the tweet thread, read it for yourself below. First, the Carlson clip.

And now the thread it spawned.

Frum concluded that his views are “not a show or an act” and that this could be what bothers Carlson.

In the commentary clip, Carlson concludes his remarks saying “maybe the intersectional lady with the emotional problems is in fact a deep cover operative.” In other words, a show or an act.

“Think about, it makes sense,” he said.

Brennan, speaking on MSNBC, said the Biden administration is zeroing in on American extremists that are basically operating in the same way as foreign insurgency movements. He said it brings together an “unholy alliance” of “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.”

So to recap, the absurd videos in this story include John Brennan outlining an unholy libertarian-fascist-religious insurgency that is basically a terror group, a CIA recruitment video that features the line “I am intersectional” and not coincidentally a photo of the video’s subject standing beside John Brennan, a Tucker Carlson monologue that posits the recruitment video is highlighting a “deep cover’ agent, and a Frum thread that includes him saying he thinks he “owes” us all a book.

These videos all come together nicely to create some quality infotainment. I’m just glad I could be part of the machine that brings it to you.

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Caleb Howe - Contributing Editor

Caleb Howe is an editor and writer focusing on politics and media. Former managing editor at RedState. Published at USA Today, Blaze, National Review, Daily Wire, American Spectator, AOL News, Asylum, fortune cookies, manifestos, napkins, fridge drawings...