Tucker: The mainstream media's job is to defend the ruling class
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host asks what do civil rights mean when they're not enforced across the board?
We’re continuing to try to follow the bizarre and fast-changing guidance on COVID from the White House. Remember when they told you the last administration was incompetent? We’ve never seen anything like this. It’s beyond belief.
It was just about a week ago that Rochelle Walensky of the CDC did her best to terrify all of us over the new Indian strain of COVID. Walensky described the so-called "Delta Variant" as, quote, "one of the most infectious respiratory viruses we know of, and that I have seen in my 20-year career." An internal CDC document summed it up in martial terms. Quote: "The war has changed," wrote the CDC. In response to these horrifying developments, the administration immediately re-implemented indoor mask mandates, even for people who’ve been fully vaccinated. That was enough to get even the deeply-incurious American news media asking questions. Wait a second. If the vaccines work, why the masks? So, they started digging and they didn’t have to dig much.
On Friday morning, the Washington Post ran this headline: "Vaccinated people made up three-quarters of those infected in a massive Massachusetts COVID-19 outbreak, pivotal CDC study finds." The New York Times ran a similar piece -- again, based on numbers from the CDC.
And yet, just minutes after those articles appeared, the White House panicked.
A senior member of its "COVID-19 response team," a man who is not a doctor, but instead a career flack called Ben Wakana, jumped on social media to attack the media and in fact attack the administration's own scientists. Here was Wakana's message to The New York Times on Twitter over the weekend. He wrote it in all-caps as if he was shouting.
Quote: "VACCINATED PEOPLE DO NOT TRANSMIT THE VIRUS AT THE SAME RATE AS UNVACCINATED PEOPLE AND IF YOU FAIL TO INCLUDE THAT CONTEXT YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG," he barked. He went on to call The Washington Post's coverage of it "irresponsible." And he added this, quote,
"Let’s be clear. If 10 vaccinated people walk into a room full of COVID, about 9 of them would walk out of the room WITH NO COVID. Nine of them." But is that true? Ben Wakana, the one who is not a doctor but instead a flak, didn't provide a citation for that statistic.
In fact, judging by the CDC’s own numbers, it appears to be wrong – in other words, it is classic "misinformation," possibly Russian in origin. Yet strangely, Ben Wakana, who knows much less about science than, say, Alex Jones, was not banned from the internet. He kept tweeting. And then, just a few hours later, he got backup support from Rochelle Walensky herself. The vaccine works, Walensky shouted. In fact, it works so well, you may soon be forced to take it:
BRET BAIER (Friday): Are you for mandating a vaccine on a federal level.
WALENSKY: Umm, you know, that's something that I think the administration is looking into. It's something that I think we're looking to seek approval of from the vaccine, overall, I think in general, I am all for more vaccination. You know, I have nothing further to say on that except that we're looking into those policies and quite honestly, as people are doing that locally, those are individual local decisions as well.
‘So we’re looking into a federal vaccine mandate.’
But then, just minutes after she said that, Rochelle Walensky went on Twitter to take it back. Quote: "To clarify: "There will be no nationwide mandate. I was referring to mandates by private institutions and portions of the federal government."
Of course, that’s not at all what she said, she said we’re looking into a federal mandate nationwide.
Then on Sunday, the head of the N.I.H., the highly-political Francis Collins, explained that those "mandates by private institutions" might look like this:
JAKE TAPPER: Do you think as a public health measure it would be good for more businesses to require vaccine credentials in order to have vaccinated customers?
FRANCIS COLLINS: As a public health person who wants to see this pandemic end, yes. I think anything we can do to encourage reluctant folks to get vaccinated because they’ll want to be part of these public events, that’s a good thing. I’m delighted to see employers like Disney and Walmart coming out and asking their staff to be vaccinated. I’m glad to see the president has said all federal employees. I oversee NIH. With 45,000 people need to get vaccinated or if they’re not to get regular testing which is inconvenient. All of those steps, I think is in the right direction.
Who is this old fool? Employers asking their employees to get vaccinated? They’re not asking them they’re requiring them as a condition of employment – they’re forcing them.
NIH DIRECTOR COLLINS CALLS MASKS ON CHILDREN UNDER 12 ‘REALLY SMART’
"But that’s not a mandate: Just get vaccinated, or you can’t live in the United States anymore."
That's the message from the head of the NIH – who still has not explained to what extent his agency funded the development of this virus in the first place. OK.
But, Francis Collins at the same time wants you to know that even if you have been vaccinated, you can’t go back to your normal life. The vaccine is perfect – but you still have to wear a mask and can’t go outside.
Large gatherings, for example, are out of the question. Why? Because of the possibility that a handful of people aren't vaccinated may be hurt.
"If there are 100 people," Collins said recently, "how are you really going to be sure about people's vaccination status?'
On the other hand, why would you need to be sure, if vaccination is a choice.
Collins did not explain how unvaccinated people could possibly pose a threat to vaccinated people, because remember that the vaccines work so well, we have to mandate them for public health reasons. But at the same time people who have been vaccinated are threatened by those who don’t.
Are you following this? Does it make any sense to you at all? Do you need a medical degree to know it’s complete nonsense? No, you don’t.
Here’s one thing you should know -- these restrictions do not apply to everyone. Prominent Democrats have been exempted from them.
Barack Obama, for example, just announced that he's inviting 500 people to his 60th birthday party at his $12 million spread on Martha's Vineyard — the house which, despite climate change by the way, is right on the ocean.
Pearl Jam will perform and Steven Spielberg has been invited. There will be 200 staff. Why 200? Because when you’re as oppressed as Michelle Obama is, you really can’t have too many servants. And she doesn’t. 200 isn’t too many.
So it turns out Martha's Vineyard is exempt from new COVID rules. Aspen will be too for sure. Parts of Washington, D.C., have already been given a pass.
We know that because Mayor Muriel Bowser delayed the implementation of her mask mandate long enough to celebrate her own birthday party.
Dave Chappelle came and dozens of others did too.
Then, after the mask mandate went into effect, on Saturday, Muriel Bowser, who is the mayor and can do whatever she wants, officiated a wedding at a high-priced hotel in a very pale neighborhood. Not a diverse place.
You’d think all of this – the lack of equity and diversity, and the hypocrisy would bother CNN. They’re on the lookout for those things. But they didn’t. Muriel Bowser’s part of the ruling class. Their job is to defend her no matter what she does. So they did:
JOHN BERMAN: Here’s the thing right, she wasn’t actually as far as we know violating the new rules, correct?
BRIANNA KEILAR: I think that is fair to say (edit) KEILAR: I look at the photo and I see — it seems like it could be during the toast, right? Everyone’s heads are pointed in a certain direction. It seems like maybe they are listening to someone is what it appears to me.]]
Can you imagine – you’re a news network and you’re taking your airtime to defend the hypocrisy of politicians. Cause why? Are they paying you or do you feel a moral duty to do that? You’re more loyal to them than you are to your viewers or the country.
So where does this lead? What do civil rights mean when they’re not enforced across the board – when your rights are given to you based on who you vote for, they’re not civil rights are they? They’re privileges.
And that’s exactly what’s happening and in fact, it’s happening around the world. Rights that we took for granted, that we believed we were born with in the English-speaking world, have disappeared.
Australia is a former prison colony and increasingly it’s looking like it once was. The Australian military is now enforcing martial law -- people aren't allowed to leave their homes. That's because of a COVID outbreak this summer that led to a grand total – get your pencils -- of nine deaths.
Nine people died of the virus and they're shutting down Australia, and they’re using the military to do it. Police helicopters are clearing people off the beach, is there scientific justification for this? No, but they’re doing it anyway:
Australian Police Use Chopper To Clear Beach: "Will everyone congregating in Gordon’s bay move on, the local police have been notified, anyone breaking the public health order will be issued a fine."
The Anglosphere committing suicide collectively. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, Great Britain, what do they have in common? They speak the same language and have the same culture and all of them are allowing COVID to defeat them.
In Australia, people aren't allowed out on the beaches, and they're not allowed to ask why, either.
We know that because Sky News Australia -- which has the same owners as this channel -- has just been banned on YouTube in Australia. Why is that? Sky News Australia reported that outdoor mask mandates and universal lockdowns may not be necessary to defeat COVID or very effective in defeating COVID. They reported that the science is far from settled on any of those questions. And they’re right, it is far from settled.
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It's obvious to anyone who watched the Biden administration berate its own scientists on social media this weekend. The science is not settled. Science rarely is settled, in fact, it’s a process of seeking the truth – it’s not the same a political directive, just because the person in power tells you something doesn’t mean it’s ‘science’. Just because CNN defends that person exempting himself from his own rules does not make that science.
But rather than admit this obvious truth, a truth that almost all Americans understand intuitively the people running our government -- including our public health establishment which they employ -- panic. How long until they're kicking us off beaches and locking us in our homes? Will we be able to complain about it when they do?
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the August 2, 2021, edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."