Dick Morris has been notoriously wrong about many things, but his stopped-clock example of hammering Tucker Carlson and Fox News for effectively supporting Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine has been surprisingly persistent and on point. He served up even more in an April 17 article:
Russia’s Vladimir Putin has snagged Fox News and host Tucker Carlson hook, line, and sinker by his propaganda machine, sharing an “anti-American” narrative to conservatives, according to political strategist Dick Morris on Newsmax.
“Putin’s strategy is, essentially what the Russians have always done, which is when they do something wrong: They take the copy and they turn it around on its head and blame us for it, even though it’s something that they, and not we, have done,” Morris, a former adviser to both former President Bill Clinton and President Donald Trump, told Saturday’s “The Count.”
“It’s shocking to see Tucker Carlson doing this, and it’s outrageous to see Fox News going along. This is not just pro-Russia, this is not anti-Ukraine, this anti-American.”
[…]Russia is even using Fox News and Carlson clips to justify Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and continued escalations, Morris lamented.
“To see the Russian state media, the propaganda machine, quoting the leading talk television host in the United States is outrageous,” he added.
Siding with Russia as it invades Ukraine is not only a bad look, but it is spreading disinformation to Americans, according to Morris.
“I think it’s absurd and really shocking that Tucker Carlson in particular and Fox News in general really appear to be siding with Russia in this war,” he said. “We have Tucker’s overt statements saying, ‘I side with Russia or I prefer Russia.'”
“And every night Tucker spews a monologue that basically says that the United States and our allies caused this invasion by provoking it by flirting with the idea of Ukraine joining NATO.”
Morris said he spent a night this week watching Fox News and “found absolutely no coverage of what’s really happening in Ukraine.”
“No coverage of Putin’s war crimes; no coverage of the atrocities – sometimes they pass it off with, ‘We all know that Putin’s not a great guy, but,’ and then you go on,” Morris noted.
[…]Fox News is just not sharing the total truth, Morris concluded.
“Every night we see real images, not phony ones, of unbelievable havoc and hell being wrought upon the people of Ukraine by Russia – and yet we turn to Fox News and we see this stuff denied, downplayed,” Morris said.
Morris used a May 17 column to lash out at Republican Sen. Rand Paul for obstructing U.S. aid to Ukraine, taking another shot at Carlson and Fox News in the process:
Rand Paul and a small band of Republican congressmen are using the same arguments and the same phony construct to oppose aid to Ukraine.
It is a message that Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has been pushing for weeks: Why are we spending money on Ukraine when we need money for cancer research, roads and bridges, border security — and as we struggle to keep gas prices down and fight inflation.
Carlson has long been a Kremlin apologist. And Fox News has been abetting his position with little or no coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine during its prime-time hours.
Fox’s audience is becoming increasingly blind to the reality of this war, opening the door for Rand Paul and others.
Thankfully most Americans see the real danger Vladimir Putin poses to all of us.
Morris isn’t the only person at Newsmax serving up stopped-clock takes, however. The hard-right David Horowitz and Daniel Greenfield took their own shots at Carlson and Fox News in a May 19 column, though he did make sure to blame Democrats for doing things that led up to this and President Biden for not doing anything effective:
Tucker and the conservative patriots who have joined him are wrong — wrong in their analyses, wrong in their priorities, and wrong in their opposition to a war that the West (led by the United States) must win.
Tucker has argued that Ukraine is a remote European country, and the U.S. has no security interest there that is worth the cost or the risks involved in defending it.
But in today’s world there are no remote countries.
[…]What is happening in Ukraine is like 40 Guernicas or Coventrys rolled into one; it is also a spectacle of inspiring human heroism and courage with few parallels in our time or any other.
America can not turn our backs on the ordinary Ukrainian people who have risen so nobly to defend their homes.
[…]Under President Trump, this crisis would not have occurred. There’s a reason that both of Putin’s invasions of Ukraine took place under White House Democrats.
That’s also why Russia’s Alaska incursions flared up under Obama and Biden.
Weakness is much more likely to bring on a war.
Abandoning the Ukrainians would be a sign of crippling weakness.
Biden badly mishandled the Ukraine crisis.
But we should not let the corruption in the White House or other political institutions, here and abroad, blind us to the human suffering or the bigger issues at stake for our national security.
If Russia’s efforts in Ukraine fall apart, it will not be due to Biden or the European Union, but the resilience of ordinary people in the face of war.
Horowitz and Greenfield can’t quite concede that the billions in aid and weapons the U.S. and Europe are sending to Ukraine might be playing a major role, presumably because Democrats and liberals are behind them.