1/20 So here are Tucker Carlson’s 20 most egregious lies. Anyone who still insists that he is a man of principle, courage and truth is not merely gullible, but actively volunteering to be deceived. I would say I have a bridge to sell you, but let’s be honest: you would buy any bullshit he wrapped in a confident tone.
1. The 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Carlson repeatedly told viewers that serious evidence had emerged showing the election was unfair or fraudulent. After receiving January 6 footage, he still claimed that “no honest person” could deny that the election had betrayed American democracy.
In reality, Biden won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232, and recounts, audits, litigation and investigations found no fraud capable of changing the result. Court filings also showed Carlson privately describing Sidney Powell’s election allegations as reckless and unbelievable while Fox continued spreading election-fraud narratives.
2/20 Dominion voting machines helped steal the election.
Carlson’s programme gave airtime and legitimacy to claims connecting Dominion’s machines to election manipulation, despite Carlson privately doubting the allegations.
Fox eventually agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million to settle its defamation lawsuit. The case exposed the gap between what Carlson and other Fox figures privately believed and what their network permitted on air.
3/20 January 6 was essentially a peaceful sightseeing visit.
Carlson cherry-picked calm surveillance footage and described most participants as “meek” sightseers rather than insurrectionists.
The omitted reality was that approximately 140 police officers were assaulted, more than 100 defendants were accused of carrying or using weapons, and the riot caused millions of dollars in damage and security costs. Showing quiet corridors between outbreaks of violence did not make the violence disappear.
4/20 Police acted as Jacob Chansley’s “tour guides”.
Carlson claimed Capitol Police helped the “QAnon Shaman” and effectively escorted him around.
Chansley admitted in his plea agreement that he entered through a door broken by rioters and repeatedly ignored officers ordering him to leave. The footage Carlson selected showed officers following an already unlawful intruder while vastly outnumbered, not providing a sanctioned tour.
5/20 Federal agents incited or orchestrated January 6.
His documentary Patriot Purge suggested that FBI operatives entrapped Trump supporters and helped manufacture the riot.
No credible evidence supported this. A later Justice Department inspector general report found that FBI informants present in Washington were not authorized to enter restricted areas, commit crimes or provoke violence.
6/20 Nobody in the January 6 crowd carried a firearm.
Carlson stated: “Not a single person in the crowd on January 6 was found to be carrying a firearm. Not one.”
That was false. Multiple participants were prosecuted or convicted for firearm-related conduct, while many others carried knives, clubs, chemical sprays, stun guns and improvised weapons.
7/20 There was no evidence of white-supremacist involvement in January 6.
Carlson called the connection a lie.
Members and associates of extremist organisations, including the Proud Boys, were centrally involved in planning and breaching the Capitol. Several leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Carlson turned the absence of a single unified ideological label for every rioter into the false claim that no such involvement existed.
8/20 Ukraine possessed secret American biological-weapons laboratories.
Carlson presented ordinary biological research facilities as proof that Russia’s allegation of a secret US-Ukrainian weapons programme was “totally and completely true.”
The facilities were publicly documented Ukrainian health and veterinary laboratories supported by international threat-reduction programmes. No evidence showed that they were developing biological weapons.
9/20 Victoria Nuland admitted that Ukraine had biological weapons.
Carlson transformed Nuland’s acknowledgement that Ukraine had biological research facilities into an admission of a weapons programme.
Research laboratories containing pathogens are not automatically weapons laboratories. Nuland expressed concern that Russia might capture dangerous research materials, not that Ukraine was manufacturing bioweapons.
10/20 No Western journalist had attempted to interview Putin after the invasion.
Before interviewing Putin, Carlson claimed that “not a single Western journalist” had bothered to interview him.
Numerous Western journalists and organisations had requested interviews. The Kremlin had simply refused or ignored them, while also imprisoning or expelling journalists. PolitiFact rated Carlson’s assertion “Pants on Fire.”
11/20 COVID vaccines apparently killed thousands of Americans.
Carlson cited raw VAERS reports to suggest that at least 3,362 people had died because of vaccination.
VAERS accepts unverified reports of events occurring after vaccination, regardless of whether the vaccine caused them. Carlson presented a surveillance database designed to generate safety signals as though it were a medically verified list of vaccine deaths.
12/20 COVID vaccines might simply not work
He claimed that continuing mask recommendations suggested authorities were concealing the vaccines’ ineffectiveness.
Vaccines substantially reduced severe disease, hospitalisation and death, although they never provided absolute protection against infection. Continued precautions for vulnerable people did not prove the vaccines were useless.
13/20 COVID vaccines killed 17 million people worldwide.
Carlson broadcast Bret Weinstein’s claim that vaccines had caused approximately 17 million deaths, without meaningful correction.
That figure came from an invalid method that treated excess deaths after vaccine rollouts as vaccine-caused deaths, ignoring COVID waves, delayed healthcare and other causes. Available safety evidence does not remotely support the claim.
14/20 A CDC report proved masks did not work.
Carlson portrayed a CDC study as showing that mask wearers caught COVID at virtually the same rate as non-mask wearers.
The study was not designed to establish that masks were ineffective, relied on participants’ recollections and did not measure the quality or consistency of mask use. Carlson stripped away those limitations and presented a distorted conclusion.
15/20 15. Lyme disease became endemic because of a US bioweapons programme.
Carlson promoted the story that Lyme disease originated from, or was spread by, American military experimentation.
Genetic and historical evidence shows that the bacterium responsible for Lyme disease existed in North America long before modern US biological-weapons research. PolitiFact rated the claim “Pants on Fire.”
16/20 Texas became dependent on wind power, causing the 2021 blackout.
Carlson blamed the deadly Texas grid failure on wind turbines and claimed the state had effectively adopted the Green New Deal.
Texas had not implemented the Green New Deal. Failures affected natural-gas infrastructure, coal, nuclear and wind generation, with frozen gas supplies and poorly winterised equipment playing major roles.
17/20 Texas utilities secretly changed customers’ thermostats without permission.
Carlson claimed energy companies automatically raised temperatures in homes during a heatwave without customer consent.
The affected customers had voluntarily enrolled in demand-response programmes that explicitly allowed remote adjustments in exchange for rewards or discounted equipment. Calling an agreed contractual feature a secret seizure of household thermostats was false.
18/20 Brazil’s 2022 presidential election was “very clearly rigged”.
Carlson declared Lula’s victory over Bolsonaro fraudulent without presenting evidence capable of demonstrating manipulation.
Brazilian election authorities, independent observers and military examinations found no evidence that the electronic voting system had altered the result. PolitiFact rated Carlson’s claim false.
19/20 America was about to run out of diesel by Thanksgiving 2022.
Carlson interpreted the statistical measure of approximately 25 days of diesel inventories as a countdown to national exhaustion.
The figure represented stock relative to current demand, not the disappearance of future production and imports. Refineries were continuing to produce diesel every day. The United States did not run out.
20/20 Democrats are deliberately importing immigrants to “replace” existing voters.
Carlson repeatedly advanced a version of “replacement theory,” claiming elites were intentionally changing the electorate by importing more obedient voters.
Demographic change and immigration are real, but Carlson supplied no evidence of a coordinated programme to replace citizens. Noncitizens cannot lawfully vote in federal elections, naturalisation takes years, and immigrant communities do not vote as a single bloc. The narrative converts ordinary political disputes over immigration into an invented racial-demographic conspiracy.
@threadreaderapp unroll please. Danke.
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