Tucker Carlson Details How GOP Changing Under Trump but ‘Not Fast Enough’

“By the way, I have a million friends at Heritage and AEI and they’re super nice people there and I agree with them on most things,” Carlson said. “I’m not saying they’re the most evil people. I’m not saying they’re the main problem. I don’t want to overstate it. But what I am saying is they’re supposed to be looking out for our interests and protecting them, and they’re not. And by the way, who is? So, if you’re a conservative right now—or a whatever, I don’t even know what the word is—maybe that’s not the word. But if you’re not ‘with the program,’ if you don’t believe ‘diversity is our strength,’ and if you don’t repeat mindlessly the catechism and nod with bovine compliance, if you’re out of step with the ‘mainstream’ in public, who’s stepping up to protect your right to say what you think and think what you think and live in this country without being hurt? Like, who’s protecting you? The answer is nobody. The president is not protecting you, that’s for sure. The Congress is not protecting you. These think tanks aren’t protecting you. Who’s protecting you? Who’s on your side? I’m serious. I’m sensitive to this because I’m serious and I live in this world and you see someone step up and say something interesting and then have their lives taken away from them. They can’t talk in public and then they can’t have a job and they’re discredited and then what?”

Compared with battles over immigration and trade policy over the past decade inside the GOP that have framed the trajectory of the party—especially including under Trump—Carlson said he thinks this battle with big tech monopolies over control of speech is perhaps even more important.

“It’s the prequel,” Carlson said. “This is like the fight we should have been having because it’s the predicate for everything. If you can’t express yourself to other people, then you’re powerless. Actually, there’s a metaphysical quality to this too. I mean, it like destroys your soul. If they can control what you say, then they can control what you think. They can control your conscience. That’s your soul. That’s who you are. Your beliefs are the sum total of you. If they have control over those, then that’s the definition of totalitarian. The stakes are really high. We act like they’re not, like this is some kind of procedural question of whether Google qualifies as a monopoly or whatever under the Sherman Antitrust Act. People like Sen. Mike Lee of Utah—who’s a handmaiden to the tech industry—will sit there with a straight face and tell you ‘this is a really important Constitutional question.’ No, the Constitution is not relevant if we can’t say what we think about the Constitution. Under the coming regime, which again is approaching at high speed, we possibly won’t be able to. We should be highly alarmed about this. We should see this as a foundational issue—and we’re not.”

Carlson added that he believes it is imperative to emphasize that dissent is important in a free society, and that these tech companies’ control over discourse—and their moves to shut down any lines of thought they disagree with—are particularly dangerous.

“I just want to say this one more time because I can’t over-emphasize it: If you are not ‘with the program,’ if you dissent even a little bit, if you’re conservative or whatever you are—especially people on the left, that’s why I’m not limiting it to conservatives,” Carlson said. “I have a lot of friends on the real left, the sincere left, not the fake lifestyle liberalism nonsense but people like Angela Nagle—actual brave people, people with real ideas. I don’t agree with all of them, but sincere people who actually care about society and where it’s going. People like that. They can’t increasingly live freely in our society, and my question again is who is standing up for them? Who is protecting them? Everything in life is modeled on the family. So, in a family there are the parents, and in the human world as in the animal kingdom they are protective of their children. That’s a prerequisite for life. You can’t actually grow into what you’re meant to grow into unless you’re protected. There’s nobody protecting dissident voices. I can’t get past it. I’m focused on it. I don’t really know what the answer is, but I’m just struck by it. It makes me very upset with the institutions that purport to be conservative in our country and consume hundreds of millions—billions, over time—in contributions, and they’re doing nothing to protect these people. In fact, they’re the first to abandon them. They’re like, oh someone liked a tweet by someone who said something naughty five years ago, therefore we have to distance ourselves. No, you’re cowards, you will be judged, and you are selling out people who actually believed in you. You’re horrible. That’s how I feel about it.”

Carlson pointed to the violence that has occurred against Trump supporters in many places across the country, too, noting that if this happened to supporters of then-President Barack Obama when Obama was in the White House, it would have been shut down.

“Ask yourself if five years ago, if anyone who wore an Obama for president shirt got punched in the face, or attacked by mobs or had the hat pulled off his head and had a milkshake poured on him, do you think Barack Obama would sit in the White House and be like ‘there’s nothing I can do about that. Anytime somebody wears some of my campaign tee-shirts into public he gets attacked, and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ Are you joking?” Carlson said. “Are you fricking kidding? No he would have marshaled like the entire Justice Department like tonight, like right now, on behalf of his people—his voters—they voted for Obama, and saying that in public is getting them hurt. No, not acceptable. Not for one second. He would have made certain that they were free to wear clothing with his name on it. That’s just one example. But, go wear a Trump hat in Brooklyn—you will get hit. How is that ok? Really? And the Justice Department is doing nothing about this because why? People are just so crazy, I just don’t understand. And I’m not, like I don’t—I’m not exactly sure whose fault it is, but Obama never would have put up with this. He was man enough to just be like ‘no, that’s not allowed.’”

Asked what the remedy is—whether it lies with President Trump or his Justice Department—Carlson replied that conservatives need to stop letting the left frame the terms of debate and discourse.

“Conservatives need to—I’ll tell you this, I’ve lived in D.C. since 1985, okay? And I’ve been a right-winger the whole time, so I know a lot about this world, okay? I’m not guessing, I have personal knowledge about it,” Carlson said. “But increasingly they [conservatives] are very good at whining about how biased everyone is against them, which is a very unattractive quality I think. When my children whine and complain about how biased people are against them, I tell them to be quiet. I don’t like that. It’s not good for you to whine and engage in self-pity. But what they [conservatives] are not good at is setting their own terms. They let the left set the terms. So some leftwing activist group will show up and say ‘you’re no longer allowed to say X.’ I don’t know what it is, just pick something. Out with ‘the Orient,’ in with ‘Asia.’ Maybe that’s okay, maybe it’s not okay. Maybe it’s a good change, or maybe it’s a bad change. But the fact is they [the left] decide unilaterally what the changes are and then everyone else kind of has to go along with it. There’s no vote. It’s like the left decides what you’re allowed to say. Conservatives, the institutions, have found themselves in this position where they’re like trustees in a prison, where they’re carrying out the orders of the warden. The warden in this case is like the institutional left. Why are we doing this? Why are we playing along? It’s especially, it’s almost like the left is trying to see how ludicrous they can make it. You send out a tweet saying ‘men can menstruate too.’ Anyone who laughs is punished. When that happens, they’re challenging us. They’re basically saying ‘we can make you,’ this is 1984, this is Winston Smith, ‘we can make you say this. And then we can make you believe it. Watch us.’ ‘Repeat after me: Men can menstruate too.’ Then after a while you’re like ‘yeah, men can menstruate too, for sure.’ That’s when you’re a zombie. That’s when your soul is gone. That’s when they’re fully in charge of you. You’re just hunk of flesh, and you’re like a ventriloquist dummy at that point. That’s what happens.”

Looking forward to 2020 to wrap the interview, Carlson concluded by saying that the country cannot continue on this trajectory—and that he expects change is coming, and hopes it is for the better.

“This can’t continue, 2019 was just completely silly as far as I’m concerned,” Carlson said. “Just completely silly. It’s not sustainable. You have a hyper partisan left, a supine conservative establishment, and an increasingly frustrated conservative and sincere left base—you know, just like normal people—this can’t continue. I would look for big changes to the status quo in 2020 and I hope that they’re positive changes, I really do.”

Story cited here.