WND's Tucker Carlson Conspiracies

WorldNetDaily used Fox News' firing of Tucker Carlson to promote its own victimhood -- and it wants him to take his politics even further right.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 9/11/2023

Tucker Carlson

• An April 25 article by Bob Unruh hyped that for a short time, he posted on his website an ad offering those who sign up on his site to be given details about 'what Tucker's up to next.'"
• An April 26 article by Peter LaBarbera claimed that Carlson's firing "has drawn renewed attention to one of his detractors, the self-proclaimed 'Never Again Trumper' and former Republican House Speaker, Paul Ryan, who sits on the Fox Corporation's Board of Directors."
• Later that day, Joe Kovacs promoted a video Carlson post teasing his future plans.
• An April 28 article by Peter LaBarbera touted how "Tucker Carlson is viewed much more favorably than Fox News, the cable network that just let him go, among middle-aged and older voters, Republicans and conservatives, according to a new survey by Rasmussen Reports, a favorite polling firm on the right."
• A May 1 article by Kovacs focused on Tucker's continued status as a Fox News employee.

Meanwhile, editor Joseph Farah -- who was one of those suggesting Epps got Carlson fired -- continued to be a total Tucker stan. He was spewing conspiracy theories and going Godwin about the firing in his April 25 column:

Call it for what it is – election interference, Biden protection, next year's version of the laptop from hell.

I speak of the firing of Tucker Carlson, the bravest, most fearless man on television. No one else came close – not in a million years. Connect the dots.

You had Chuckie Schumer's spleen-felt televised message to Rupert Murdoch, directing him to fire Carlson or, at least, censor his promised multi-part series on the Jan. 6 hoax. It was effective. It turned it into a one-part series. Then there were Tucker's gutsy references to the fraudulent elections of 2020. That must have stuck in Murdoch's craw. Then came Sunday night's "60 Minutes" ode to Ray Epps, the one man safe from the Liz Cheney's House Unselect Committee of Jan. 6 – and CBS predictably blamed Tucker again. One would have to be blind or a Democrat not to see the fix was in.

America is in deep, deep trouble.

First they came for Andrew Breitbart, in 2012. Then they came for Matt Drudge, in 2018. Then they came with COVID-19 just in time for the election of 2020. Then, in 2022, they came for WND and some other defiant ones in the internet (via demonetization). Then they came for Tucker Carlson.

Am I being overly dramatic by drawing parallels to the era of Nazis? Not on your life! Figure out what I am saying. The Deep State plays for keeps.

And being utterly shameless, he managed to turn this pro-Tucker rant into self-victimhood and a money beg:

Will he be back on television, ever? Why not? Ask yourself that question. He had the ratings – even for Fox. But it was not enough. That's the way the media work now. It happened years ago for WND, too. We were the first. We were popular. We stood here for 25 years. But Google took away the money. Facebook took away the money. Amazon took away the money. All we have left is your support.

Don't let the woke mob and the ruling elite take it away.

Please consider helping us continue to expose the Deep State that has canceled Tucker by making a generous tax-deductible donation to the nonprofit 501(c)(3) WND News Center. You can designate a one-time gift or a repeating monthly donation, using credit/debit card or PayPal.

Farah spent the first half of his April 26 column taking credit for building Newsmax leader Christopher Ruddy's success in right-wing media, whining at one point:

His idea was always to start a TV station – which he finally achieved in 2014. I was not impressed and have not become a fan. It was not ever very conservative, and lately, one of his ex-hosts, Grant Stinchfield, told me a story of how Newsmax advised him to "attack" Tucker Carlson. In fact, in this news report and video Stinchfield claims his refusal to attack Tucker was the reason he was fired from Newsmax. So, not a chance Tucker will ever work there.

Actually, Newsmax wants you to forget it ever criticized Carlson for being a pro-Russia shill -- which seems like as good a reason as any to criticize him -- because it's trying to woo him to Newsmax. Farah, however, wants Carlson to go even further right:

How about Tucker joining Glenn Beck and Blaze Media? He likes Glenn Beck and so do I. But it's not TV. So, I don't think so.

That leaves MSNBC and CNN. Incredibly bad blood there for Tucker.

So that about does it. Where else can Tucker Carlson go?

I would cajole Tucker to consider a quiet, up-and-coming new TV network, Real America's Voice. It may soon supplant Fox because it lives up to its name. They have some stars in their constellation – Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, the aforementioned Grant Stinchfield, Dr. Gina Loudon, who once worked at WND, and Fox's super-talented Ed Henry, not to mention John Solomon – a real journalist. There are others worth mentioning, but you can do a little research on the next great network in America.

[...]

But former President Donald Trump is very aware of Real America's Voice. It broadcasts every Trump event, every rally, every speech. He loves it. And so do his fans. You've probably seen many of them televised on WND via Real America's Voice.

I would say it's the only game in town.

It's the kind of career move Tucker would consider – unless he wants to run on Trump's ticket. That's another possibility – but I would love to see Tucker back on TV.

You might remember that Loudon wrote a WND column defending her teenage daughter's relationship with a 57-year-old man, which WND quietly disappeared a few years later as she tried to boost her standing in pro-Trump circles.

For his May 1 column, Farah was angry to learn that people outside his right-wing bubble hate Carlson:

For most of us, the firing of Tucker Carlson by Fox News left us with a hole in our heart and our lives – much like the untimely death of Rush Limbaugh. The only difference was one hour a day versus three hours a day to look forward to.

But for the fake media and Big Tech, the censorious class, they were beside themselves; they got what they wanted. In their eyes, it was like a dream-come-true, what they had been hoping for, longing for, yearning for.

How else can you characterize the hateful reviews of what he said day after day as the only Big League journalist and commentator walking out of step with the crowd? Honestly, they will soon have nothing else talk about and write about – nothing left about which their spleens could hope to ooze more toxic bile. They're like the walking dead. They got their victim – but there's nothing left to eat.

Who am I talking about?

Well, most of you probably didn't have time to keep up with all of Tucker's detractors. They were legion.

[...]

Wow! The jealously and hatred of these impostor journalists is palpable, isn't it? There's no shortage of them. They're just everywhere. From the New York Times to the truthfully named Daily Beast, they are all obsessed with Tucker. Why? Because he has a different point of view and articulates it clearly and accurately. That's his "sin." His only one apparently.

It can't possibly have anything to do with Carlson's history of lies and eagerness to use lies and conspiracy theories to destroy the lives of innocent people like Epps.

In addition to publishing articles it took from the right-wing Western Journal, WND published its own articles as well to continue to serve as Carlson's PR division:

• An anonymously written May 4 article hyped that Carlson "has considered running his own GOP candidate forum for the 2024 presidential election."
• A May 9 article by Joe Kovacs touted Carlson's decision to post videos to Twitter. Since then, WND has linked to nearly every Carlson video posted since they began appearing in early June.
• A May 11 article by Kovacs cheered that Carlson "did, in fact, tell a reporter this week that he would be running for president and announcing his candidacy this week. But then, within moments, Carlson admitted he was just joking." Kovacs attacked the reporter Carlson pranked as having a "leftist ideological slant" for no actual reason beyond that he accurately reported on leaked internal text messages showing Carlson to be the jerk we all knew him to be.
• An article it stole from right-wing site Just the News hyped that Carlson's first video "had more than 100 million views in less than two days since its launch." In fact, Twitter's "tweet view" counter is so broad that it counts merely scrolling past a tweet as a "view," making it utterly unreliable as a viewing metric.
• A May 16 article by Bob Unruh touted: "An undercover video obtained by OMG News, run by James O'Keefe, shows a Fox insider revealing that Tucker Carlson's dismissal was part of the settlement with Dominion Voting Systems."
• A June 8 artlcle by Unruh noted the legal wrangling between Carlson and Fox News, followed by a June 12 article complaining about a cease-and-desist letter Fox sent to Carlson.

Then there was a May 25 article by LaBarbera carrying the declarative statement "Tucker is Americans' most trusted news source." But the poll LaBarbera said nothing about "trust," as he seemed to concede in his opening paragraph: "A new survey by Gallup and the Knight Foundation reveals that Tucker Carlson, recently ousted by Fox News despite being their top show host, is the 'most followed or watched public figure in the United States for information,' dominating legacy media news names like NBC's Lester Holt and ABC's David Muir." Being "followed or watched" does not equal trust. LaBarbera went on to botch his version of the list, getting a couple numbers wrong and list NBC's Lester Holt twice. (Apparently, having a competent copy editor is an expense WND can no longer handle.)

Meanwhile, Farah wasn't the only WND columnist to weigh in on Carlson's firing. Jim Darlington's April 28 column was "An open letter to Tucker haters about the truth he taught us" in which he repeated not "truth" but Carlson's misinformation and propaganda:

You know the election of 2020 was an exercise in treason. You were there. You saw what was done. We all did. You can say there is no God, but He will disagree. You can say the election was fair and honest. Or you can say the vaccines were safe and effective.

You know that Joe Biden is a corrupt and thoroughly compromised puppet, who was selected as our presidential figurehead solely by virtue of his willing ascent to every lie placed before him and his unique and in-your-face talent for delusional embellishment. You know his presence in the White House is a purposeful mockery, telling us of our impotence to even know who is truly governing us.

You know that it is impossible for us to avoid the most obvious. That every policy of this administration has been directed at our destruction and that every implausible justification is pure rot.

[...]

We didn't need to gift the Taliban with $80,000,000,000-plus worth of U.S. military equipment. We didn't need to gift the Chinese the biggest military airbase in the region, fully equipped. We didn't need to move the military out before securing the evacuation of American civilians and the Afghans who had been our allies.

[...]

You know Ukraine was one of the prime troughs of corruption, at which the Biden crime family fed. You know that the U.S. State Department squashed efforts, early in the war, for a cease-fire, then amenable to both sides in the conflict. You can't pretend to be ignorant of the unbeatable odds that millions, if not billions of the U.S. "aid" going to Ukraine are finding their way back into the coffers of the American left, for the purposes of buying additional elections.

We didn't need to become a nation confused over what a man is and what a woman is, or whether 7-year-olds need an insane rationale for choosing which sex to be, training manual to follow.

[...]

We didn't need the House speaker's refusal to honor the president's request for the National Guard to control the expected protests January 6. We didn't need the incitement of the Capitol Police lobbing stun grenades into peaceful crowds. We didn't need for a host of coordinated operatives to lead the breach of the Capitol. We didn't need the unanswered killing of U.S. citizens, by those same police. We have not needed the attribution of "white supremacy" to a racially mixed crowd of protesters, for whom the Capitol Police opened doors. We didn't need two and a half years of political persecution and unlawful imprisonment of those who stood in the gap against the coup that has taken us to the brink of chaos.

To correct just a couple of Darlington's falsehoods: Her U.S. didn't leave $80 billion in military equipment to the Taliban, Trump made no request to Pelosi to activate the National Guard the day of the Capitol riot (and it was not in her power to activate them even if he had), and Ashli Babbitt was committing an act of domestic terrorism when she was killed by law enforcement inside the Capitol.

WND also posted a May 3 video by messianic Jew and onetime WND gravy train maintainer Jonathan Cahn titled "Was Tucker Carlson actually removed by the spirits?" After a lot of gobbledygook about spirits and "demonic powers" and transphobic ranting, he declared that Carlson "stood in [the spirits'] way" and, thus, was targeted, citing Carlson's anti-abortion rantings likening abortion to "child sacrifice" and alleged exposure of the "dark trinity." Cahn also shoehorned in lots of promotion for his latest book.

Wayne Allyn Root spent his April 29 WND column having a fit over Carlson's firing, beginning it this way:

Did you hear about the new Fox News TV series? "Two spoiled brats and a clueless RINO." It's the tragic story of Rupert Murdoch's two spoiled-brat sons from liberal, woke Europe, and the quarterback running their Fox News playbook: hapless, clueless, bitter Paul Ryan.

Fox News in a matter of days ended relationships with the No. 1 host on cable TV (Tucker Carlson) and the No. 1 host of weekend cable TV (Dan Bongino).

Great moves, if you want to be the new Bed Bath & Beyond.

[...]

Think of what destroyed Bed Bath & Beyond. The company made one fatal decision: to fire Mike Lindell and stop selling "My Pillow" products. What a terrible miscalculation. Their audience was middle-class America: the Silent Majority. That audience is overwhelmingly conservative. From the moment they fired "My Pillow," their sales imploded. Bed, Bath & Beyond committed economic suicide by offending their own base of customers.

Root then moved on to insulting the Murdoch family that runs Fox News, sneering that "Rupert Murdoch is a very old, out-of-touch billionaire who is now semi-retired and busy trying to marry gals 30 years younger" and that his children "are kids that were born on third base and think they hit a triple." He also lashed out at Fox News board member Paul Ryan: "Paul Ryan is a clueless deep state RINO (Republican in Name Only) who has no idea how real conservative patriots think. His life is dedicated to destroying former President Donald Trump – because Paul Ryan is blind with rage and envy at how conservatives hate him, but love and adore Trump. Paul Ryan is "The Grinch" of GOP politics. His heart is filled with rage and envy."

Because Root is a salesman at heart (albeit one that believes in crazy conspiracy theories), Root plugged his own book in the middle of all this:

I just wrote a No. 1 bestselling book, "The Great Patriot BUY-cott Book." It's about the huge divide in America. I believe conservative patriots need to start building a parallel conservative economy. We need to separate from the extreme, radical, madness and destruction of the Left. We need to spend our money only with companies led by conservatives. We need to punish and defund the Left.

Root also asserted: 'Keep in mind James O'Keefe of Project Veritas exposed and humiliated scores of liberals with his undercover videos for many years – and he never faced any repercussions. But as soon as his undercover videos exposed the alleged corruption and deception of Pfizer and the COVID-19 vaccine, his own board fired him within days. Just like Tucker." In fact, O'Keefe was fired because of financial improprieties, including spending company money on himself. But why let the facts interfere with a pet conspiracy theory?

Root ended with another conspiracy-related comment: "I believe Fox News is finished. The question is, what's their next move? Maybe Fox News is about to sell the network to Pfizer. Maybe Pfizer plans to convert Fox News to a 24/7 vaccine propaganda network."

WND uses Tucker to push own victimhood

The May issue of WND's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine carried the theme "The Elites' All-Out War On Free Speech" -- ironic, since WND has abused its free-speech rights by publishing fake news and bogus conspiracy theories. Still, WND made sure to milk things for full victimhood, to the point that it put Carlson on the cover. So important was this issue considered to be that Farah devoted his May 24 column to plugging it:

Are you sick and tired of being called an election denier, a science denier, a climate-change denier, a conspiracy theorist, accused of using hated speech, a purveyor of hate speech, a follower of fake news, a practitioner of disinformation, misinformation and malinformation?

It comes from the very top – conjured up by America's elites. That's right. The conspiracy mongers are right in front of us all. The result is censorship, like our country has never before seen or known – in the greatest nation founded by mortal men, great men and women, under the influence of God Almighty.

Now, in a 48-page color magazine, unusual these days as they dwindle among the fast-moving controlled media, WND brings you a historic special edition of Whistleblower magazine that blows the cover off this story of the most important kind – one that could never be brought to you any other way.

Farah promoted his own pet conspiracy theories, as well as lionizing Tucker Carlson:

Sometimes, as with many of the approximately 1,000 Americans arrested after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, decent people are unjustly incarcerated as in brutal Third World dictatorships, simply for holding – and expressing – political views condemned by the ruling elites.

This issue of Whistleblower focuses on Tucker Carlson, hands-down the most popular commentator in America, ousted by Fox News Channel's ruling Murdoch family on Monday, April 24, with no prior notice nor reason given. The cable news giant has been seriously hemorrhaging viewers ever since. Recently, insider reports have claimed that despite official denials from all sides, Carlson's expulsion was part of Fox's $787.5 million out-of-court settlement of the Dominion voting machine lawsuit.

Tucker freely expressed the still-forbidden, though wildly obvious, truth that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. After all, totally aside from the mountain of proven election "irregularities" (the last-minute unconstitutional rule changes, the unsavory "ballot harvesting," the double-counted ballots and so much more), Elon Musk's public release of the previously suppressed "Twitter files" prove conclusively that the "Deep State" colluded with Big Tech to alter the outcome of the 2020 election. Period. Just weeks prior to the election, the guardians of the internet knowingly suppressed overwhelming evidence of rampant corruption and criminality on the part of the Biden family, very much including "the big guy." Post-election polling revealed that Biden would have lost and Trump would now be president had Americans simply been allowed to hear the truth about Joe Biden before they cast their ballots.

Carlson also exposed the Biden administration's supremely reckless Ukraine policy of sending gargantuan amounts of taxpayer money and advanced weaponry to the epically corrupt eastern European country with no accounting required, while secretly pursuing the overthrow of Russian President Vladimir Putin – that is, a war of regime change in Moscow – thereby risking all-out global nuclear war.

[...]

He likewise exposed some of the many outrageous lies and injustices associated with the January 6 Capitol riot, dramatically airing for the first time long-suppressed surveillance video from that fateful day, the aftermath of which saw thousands of essentially innocent people accused of being terrorists, insurrectionists, white supremacists and Nazis.

The multifaceted and entirely unprecedented attacks on Americans' most cherished First Amendment freedoms – and how best to fight back – are illuminated as never before in the May issue of WND's critically acclaimed Whistleblower magazine, titled "THE ELITES' ALL-OUT WAR ON FREE SPEECH."

Managing editor David Kupelian ramped up the victimhood in a May 29 column that serves as the issue's lead essay:

These malevolent yet essentially meaningless expressions, such as “election denier,” “science denier,” “climate-change denier” and “conspiracy theorist,” are accompanied by open attacks on everything conservative and Christian as “hate speech,” “disinformation” and “misinformation.” There’s even a newly manufactured subvariant no one ever heard of before: “malinformation.”

And of course, there’s the favorite, back-of-the-hand catchall insult of the elites: “fake news.”

For example, Wikipedia lists WND as a "far-right fake news website ... known for promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories." That's from a website that daily publishes actual “fake news,” “falsehoods” and “conspiracy theories” on every major political and cultural topic affecting America’s future. In fact, Wikipedia’s massive 29,000-word article on Joe Biden includes only two sentences on Hunter Biden and the massive and overwhelmingly documented level of Biden family corruption and criminality. Here they are: “During the 2020 presidential campaign, Trump and his allies falsely alleged Biden had engaged in corrupt activities in Ukraine related to his son, Hunter. A joint investigation by two Republican Senate committees released in September 2020 found no wrongdoing, nor did a Republican House Oversight committee investigation by May 2023.”

But WND does, in fact, publish fake news and misinformation. ConWebWatch has meticulously documented it, and WND has never disputed any of our documentation. Kupelian also complained about Carlson's firing:

Take Tucker Carlson, the most trusted news personality in America according to a recent poll, yet ousted by Fox News Channel’s ruling Murdoch family on Monday, April 24 with no prior notice nor reason given. The cable news giant has been seriously hemorrhaging viewers ever since. Multiple insider reports have claimed that despite official denials from all sides, Carlson’s expulsion was part of Fox’s $787.5 million out-of-court settlement of the Dominion voting machine lawsuit.

Regardless, many of America’s elites were delighted to see Fox News kill off its top show, since in their minds, the host was a purveyor of extreme rightwing conspiracy theories, an “election denier,” an ally of Vladimir Putin, and – of course – a racist.

Kupelian tried to conclude on a rah-rah note:

In the end, the elites’ obsession with “election denialism,” “pro-Putin disinformation,” “white supremacist MAGA conspiracy theories” and other cruel absurdities is really just the playing out of their ongoing internal war with reality. Truth is virtually the only speech the “rulers of this world” cannot endure, since it tends to cause them unbearable conflict, seeing as it fans the flame of their conscience – the truth of God’s moral laws “written in their minds and hearts” – but with which they are at war.

Fortunately, there are still many millions of good, decent Americans – truly the best people on earth. Hundreds of thousands fought to protect this nation and many were wounded in battle – and of course many families have members who paid the ultimate price to defend this nation. They’re horrified at what is being described here. But they still love their country – and they want it back.

A good start in that effort is to speak the truth – boldly, kindly, clearly, joyfully, and without rancor or hate. It’s therapeutic to speak the truth with love. After all, you’re not insane, deplorable, irredeemable or racist, as they insist. You’re an American, with a God-given and constitutionally guaranteed right to speak your mind, come what may.

Kupelian's problem is that WND doesn't speak the truth -- its track record is one of spreading lies and disinformation. Lies and misinformation are not protected by the First Amendment, and the "constitutionally guaranteed right to speak your mind" doesn't keep you from facing the consequences of doing so, especially if you spread lies and misinformation. And, really, that's what's been happening to WND over the past few years -- people are tired of reading an untrustworthy website and businesses are tired of supporting one, so its finances have suffered accordingly. Yet WND sees no reason to change things, and it's continuing to publish the same old stuff that has brought it to the brink of non-existence.

WND has not been victimized by "elites" -- Farah, Kupelian and Co. have brought all this on themselves. And trying to turn their self-made issues into yet another conspiracy theory is more evidence that they have aggressively refused to learn from their mistakes. And given Carlson's own record of misinformation, linking WND to his victimhood wagon is not the win Farah and Kupelian seem to think it is.