 What role does Tucker Carlson play in American politics here on American Issues Take Two on a given Thursday? We have John Wahey. He is a special guest. We have my co-host, Tim Aviccela, and our regular contributor, Stephanie Stolldahlton. Welcome to the show, all you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have to make a disclosure, a full disclosure. I don't know that much, actually, about Fox News, because I have a rule that if I'm watching Fox News, I can only watch until the first lie. And at the first lie, I turn it off, and I have never gotten, you know, more than like three or four minutes in, so I don't know what happens after that. Hey, Jake, can I put in a friendly amendment on this? Yeah. I don't call it Fox News. I call it Fox Entertainment for the very reason you just mentioned. Well, entertainment, in this case, is untruth. Anyway, so we've had Roe v. Wade, and very clear from a number of articles and opinion pieces and editorial pieces, that our civil liberties beyond Roe v. Wade are at risk. And this very special Supreme Court puts them at risk, and you name any number of them, whether they are written into the Constitution or not, they're at risk. And the First Amendment is therefore also at risk. So we should discuss today what Tucker Carlson and Fox News mean. And let's start with you, Tim, who is Tucker Carlson, and does he have some magic, cult-like qualities that make him more powerful than ordinary people who put their trousers on one leg at a time? Well, Tucker Carlson is a provocateur, as was Father Coglin, and even Patrick Buchanan. Their media, you know, darlings, and they become as popular as they become, thanks to stoking grievance, and specifically white fear. And to further the point about white fear is the new term replacement, white replacement. And that is striking a chord and a note within many Americans who feel that they're over a certain age, and they're white, and they feel like they're being diminished, their power is being usurped, use an experienced term, and they're running scared. And like Trump, he plays to that very well, and it has put him on the top of cable news as far as popularity ratings, and he's quite good at it. And it's easy, it's easy to bring an audience when you're stoking those fears. And then the more you stoke it, the more popularity you get, the more viewers you get, and of course the more advertisers that say, I'm only going to put my dollars with this popular show. Let's compare though, let's compare what happens on Fox with Tucker Carlson, and what happens in the other, you know, national networks, call it the liberal national networks, MSNBC and CNN. I have gotten, by the way, more to watch Shepard Smith and the BBC, because that's the old-fashioned style, you know, old-fashioned American news, you know, you just, you gave the news, and it was a lot of news, but you didn't spend the whole day, for example, talking about one story. In the case of Roe v. Wade, we spent the last week talking about one story, and that changes the priorities for everything else. So my question to you, John, John Wahey, is, you know, comparing Fox news, comparing Tucker Carlson and his friends, how do you think the liberal press does better? Or are they also behind the eight ball in terms of delivering old-fashioned classical American news? Well, well, first of all, I think the liberal, liberal in general, are, you know, are too, they're too careful where they step. I don't know how to explain this anymore. They want to be, they don't have the same passion that someone on the right, well, on the right may have for their issue. I mean, and this is going to sound kind of wild, but, you know, it makes sense. I mean, watch Roe v. Wade and how the populace works out. I think that you're going to find that the people who think they're saving baby are a little bit more self-righteous and determined to win at any cost. And the people who want to save the climate or trees or something else. I mean, they're incompatible kind of passion. And so I think what that means is that on the left, first of all, you start with a disadvantage because you don't necessarily have the same kind of a base that gets excited. I think some people on the left are trying to do that. And secondly, I think you always feel guilty when you're too partisan. I mean, you know, we call the liberal press. The CNN is a liberal press. I mean, maybe they're trying to report something as the truth, but they go over backwards to make sure that they also say something a little bit on the right. NSNBC tried to be the liberal press, but they don't have the same killer instinct that a tucker calls it might have. Not, you know. And so what you got is you got, I think the American media now, you have an acknowledgement of that in order to exist as a business, you need to be in the entertainment business. So they have started to become entertainment as well. They're just not as good at it. You know, period. I mean, they're not as good at it. The Democratic Party has never been as good at fighting in the trenches, political trenches as the problem, isn't it? I mean, I was going to ask you, you know, what effect does Fox and Carlson have on public opinion? And of course, we know the base will, the base will follow them inevitably anyway, but it's the moderates, the middle, middle of the rotors. What effect does Fox and Carlson have on them? Are they gaining ground these days? Because of the techniques, the passion and what, you know, the irrational fear, whatever it is that they use, are they gaining ground? I mean, not in Hawaii so much, although I think it happens here too. And I will ask you that in a moment. But what about the country in general? Well, I think that first of all, they're doing it in federal ground, even in Hawaii, even in Hawaii, because anybody upset with government kind of likes that stuff. I mean, you know, and not necessarily everybody listens to Dr. Carlson, but there's, last night I had a meeting with a friend of mine, very good doctor, very good doctor. And when he's talking medicine, he's a known, I mean, he's known as being a very good doctor. And right in the middle of all of that, he tells me, you know, I don't listen to the news anymore. And I said, really? And he said, why? Why don't you, you know, he says, well, they're all buying, you know, both sides. I'm not even far, not even far. I won't even, so I said, what do you do? He says, I go to the internet. And then I find the truth and I said, you got to be joking. And this guy's not talking about, you know, replacement theories or white supremacy and all that. What he's saying is I watched the news about Ukraine. And do you really know that the Russians are there to liberate the people? And I looked at him and I said, you know, in this age of disinformation, when people who it's gotten so pervasive, you see, I think Tucker Carlson is a symptom in a sense. I mean, you know, disinformation has gotten so pervasive in our society that somebody as smart as this guy had to be in order to even get his first degree. He's telling me that he's listening to going to the internet and seeing these programs with people with Russians helping the Ukrainian. Well, I think I think you I think you've touched on something very important. And that is there are people right here in Hawaii. We always make this broad assumption that people in Hawaii are liberal and they're, you know, they they're not misinformed. But I think there are a fair number of people in Hawaii who are misinformed. They may not be all that vociferous about it, but they're out there on a one-on-one basis. And you're not the first person who's mentioned this kind of conversation to me about people who, you know, will say to them, hey, I can't talk about this in public, but I'll tell you, you know, the Tucker Carlson, he's right. That kind of thing. It's here. It's here in Hawaii. Stephanie, I want to ask you a question. Why does Fox carry Trump's message? Why why did Tucker Carlson have all these telephone calls with the White House on, on in the middle of January 6th? What is this the special connection between Fox News and its quote, newscasters that Tim would agree disagree with the term newscaster, entertainment casters, right? Why why did they have this special relationship with Trump and the White House, and especially on Insurrection Day? What allows them? What makes it possible? What encourages them? What encourages Trump to deal with them in the way they connect? Well, I think there are a couple of factors here, as in anything. First of all, recall that Rush Limbaugh is gone. All right, Bill O'Reilly is gone and Meg and Kelly, wherever she was a major of show host, she's gone. So where where where's all that all those that listening audience might be a part of the burgeoning audience of Tucker Carlson since 2020 when he was the most watched show before Hannity. But yeah, it is such it's such a question, but he is in position because Fox obviously wants him in position and Fox has defended him in court with making statements about what it is that Tucker says is non-liberal commentary. They accept that that's what it is. They accept that and they label it as exaggeration and they also talk about it being not stating actual facts. So Tucker has pulled in this huge listening audience and with all of these other people gone and he in 2020 became the math piece for that very extreme right side to people who were already true believers. And there he is. So I wanted to also mention that in his history, I mean, it's kind of like Fox is desperate for this guy for some reason, because, you know, he was fired from CNN. He was fired because of a dressing down by John Stewart that ended up cancelling the firing line show. He's been fired from PBS. And and and and so he's he's got very, very low ratings at this pre 2020 Donald Trump affiliation. And he is the most Trumper of the group of them, according to the to Fox News, you know, Stephanie, you make it sound like Fox News is has an equivalency to Russian state TV. What I mean is that Fox News is joined, at least when Trump is in office, with the White House. It's joined with government. It speaks the government line, however right or wrong that is. Would you would you agree with that comparison, with that equivalency, that that connection? It's similar. Is it with the with Russian state TV? I certainly agree with that. I think that's a very good insight and an important statement that that is fact. And I think that all of these techniques, all of this disinformation, all of this propaganda and all of the misinformation and the perseveration and the repetition of all of it is coming right out of the playbook of the Russians and whoever that is, the Communist Party, the, you know, the the Nazis, whatever, they know how to ramp up these influence levers on people very powerful. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I just want to jump onto this this point, Stephanie, you are making and that is, you know, we have to remember the Murdoch family. They put Fox News on for a reason and it wasn't for media purposes. It was for political persuasion. So semantics is everything when it comes to how we define what we're watching on Fox. And I'll say it again, entertainment versus Fox News. And when we use polite words of what we see, for example, when we say disinformation, don't we really mean propaganda? And that's the point that we're Fox is getting ahead on on other talk shows is because they're using quite effective propaganda techniques. But we're we're failing to recognize it. Well, certainly they're they're they're using strategies to gain to our emotions and particularly white fear emotions. Don, you had something. Yeah, I don't know whether Fox News is doing it over for a political persuasion as much as for money. I mean, in fact, Murdoch's son contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Biden campaign and was on the other side of Trump. And he has said that my dad can't stand Trump. But the reason why we're doing this is because it brings in books. Wow. So, you know, and this they're doing. I think what the background to some of that that may have been different is even Riley, you know, the earlier Fox type commentators was trying we're trying to be a news people. You know, they may have been a little bit slanted, white or left or whatever, but they were trying. I don't think there's any pretense in any more. And, you know, what I worry about where I think there's been a shift is that at one time, if people heard, you know, 20 years, 25 years ago, we were in the situation where Russia had just invaded Ukraine. And people listen to some of the stuff Tucker Carlson says, like just to find the invasion because Americans have, you know, what do you call that? These laboratories, bio labs, you know, which is an obvious lie. I mean, we were there to take down the Russian bio labs. But he says this. I mean, at one time, people would have been howling trader. You know, this guy is attacking America. In nowadays, we listen to it and we say, oh, that's freedom of speech, which it might be. But it's never the less as a public figure and you carry Russian propaganda on your show. Does it work? Is he reaching? Because he hasn't been taken off the air. But I mean, and who condemns him? And I think behind Tucker Carlson and the money and all of this stuff is the existence of Trump. And everybody's so afraid that if they did something and he returns into office. That things might get even worse. So, you know, I think. Tucker Carlson is the symptom of our own sickness. Yeah, I wonder if Tucker Carlson is going to run for office one of these days and get Trump's endorsement. Huh. How about that? OK, Stephanie, I want to ask you a question, you know, lately in the past week or two, for some reason, maybe it's just slow, slow news or maybe too much news or, you know, shifting priorities, if you will, in the media. There's been a lot of coverage of this very topic of, you know, of Tucker Carlson and Fox News examining what Tucker Carlson says, bringing on clips of the things he says now that he said before. And, you know, generally kind of an expose, if you will, of what's been going on with Fox News. Now, sometimes when people lie and they do things that are destructive to our society, your your first reaction is not to listen, not to talk like me. I'm not going to listen to a lie. I turn it off. And so my question to you is, is it healthy for the I know it's not the right term, the liberal media to spend so much time covering the right wing media or should they rather just ignore them? Like they should be ignoring Trump, for example, like Twitter ignores Trump for now. I certainly agree with that, Jay. I think that that's real good advice for the for the media, not not repeat one single word of it, but only use paraphrase or something that, you know, might even be a quote of them, but to run their words and to put them up on the screen and give them that credit. It's just to say that policy that we use for serial killers, right, once they're caught, no picture, no no documentation, no manifestos on the front page of the New York Times. So, yeah, I think that's a really important to do that because there's only a few I mean, there's means of influence for for making people change the way they think and value and and play by the norms. I think that John Wahey's comment about the the people used to be seeing something like this and call it maybe treason or something of that sort. But the people who are watching Fox now, according to what I've seen lately is they're eighty percent white and they're all, you know, fifty two years older or more. So I'm fifty five fifty five plus group. So these are the people that used to call it treason. And so that's the question. Yeah, John. So what? And so all of this has done something to them and they've been warmed up by, of course, Rush, who's gone and Bill O'Reilly and other shows like that that no longer play. But they were prepared for this over decades to be captured by the the hit of a Trump man. And Tim, we go to you on the fact that this doesn't happen in a vacuum. We have Tucker Carlson. We have Fox News, which is, you know, tremendously influential. Somebody told me they went into, you know, a small town and, you know, call it the the town of the last picture show like in Texas or any of those red states in there. And they saw everybody sitting around in the barbershop or in the cafe watching Fox News all day long, nothing else. Just Fox News, sort of intravenous Fox News. And I guess the question is, what about radio, Tim? We have Sinclair Radio, no relation to Cynthia Sinclair all over the country with virtually hundreds of stations. And they are repeating the same kinds of misinformation. What is the interaction? What is the collective effect of having all this stuff in the barbershop and in the cafe where people are mainlining on not only Fox News, not only Carlson, but on the same kind of information or disinformation in other broadcast media at the same time? Um, my first reaction to your question is Sinclair Media is the grass roots. It's the local town media, if you will. Whereas Fox Entertainment is your national. So you get disinformation coming from top to middle and from bottom to middle. And then, of course, let's not forget the cultural the cultural flavor that Fox Entertainment brings to his listening audience. There's a cultural appeal. It's not just information and the, you know, disinformation or or or opinions that are steeped in misinformation. There's a cultural appeal of lifestyle. You know, the pill, my pillow guy, Lindale, whatever his name is, and you have all these wackadoodles that actually are appealing to them on a cultural cultural sense. And that's also part of the attraction. Yeah, I'm going to add to that. I think part of the cultural appeal and maybe one of them. To me, anyway, one of the dangerous aspects of where we find ourselves is the unification of misinformation and religion. I mean, you know, there's a there's a kind of of a revival of Christian of Christian. I guess you would call it Christian. Christianity that ties itself to a lot of these things. And it's justified biblically, in some cases, that what they're, you know, I mean, they are the apocalyptic aspects of some of the, you know, some religious denominations that are coming. What was his name? I'm trying to remember was that Pat Paul somebody just came out and predicted that all of this was has been biblically foretold and it's all going to all going to happen. But the cultural the cultural values which we call cultural in the sense, I think, to avoid calling it what it is, just some religious base, like abortion, like the reaction against gays marrying the idea that a Western civilization, i.e. Anglo-Saxon Western civilization brought Christianity and the rest to the world and all of these things have a base that that maybe none of us, if we thought about it with best self-agreement, but it is passionately involved with people. And one of the most interesting things with the fact that people hide their religion to some of their politics. But if you ask them, have you ever actually read the Bible? No, I mean, this is what we believe. John, while you're while you're on the witness stand, I would like to ask you about the First Amendment, because if I if I give you if I give you one voice in the conversation telling the truth, and I give you another that is distracting a soul with disinformation and misinformation and the government supports that and it has under Trump, it did. Then I'm effectively depriving you, depriving the press of a free and fair information of accurate information. If I lie or encourage other if I am the government, then I lie and I encourage other people to lie. Am I not depriving you of First Amendment rights? Yeah, I think you can look at it that way. But, you know, the traditional the traditional way of looking at the First Amendment was that it was unless you're a guy standing on a on a ladder in the middle of a town square, shouting out whatever you believe, there was there's never been a situation where the First Amendment was absolute. I mean, you get a government license to operate a business and you're supposed to operate within certain types of parameters. And that's what I think we have drifted away from legally. I mean, I hear people claim, well, you know, it's a it's not an incitement to riot. It's a First Amendment right. It never it's never what but under the new situation, the new Supreme Court, it might become so this disinformation sponsored by government, which is what you're pointing out because every one of these TV stations have gotten licenses from the government, they've gotten all kinds of support in directly. And they never and in the past, in order to avoid regulation, these institutions would let themselves to have some kind of code of honor. And they would try their best to be, you know, be more moderate. Now, what is the First Amendment? And how does it play? Can I have do I have the right to tell a lie if it makes money to me, even if it hurts my country? I mean, that's the question that we need regulations on. Well, I think you need something. I don't know if you need regulation, but I think you need something. On the other hand, you know, um, it's like, okay, let's let's think it's like gay marriage, for example. Right? I mean, this is where it gets because the other part of the First Amendment is also the right to practice your religious beliefs. And so you would, I mean, I would be absolutely in favor of a religious denomination saying that I won't marry anybody that of the same sex in my in my church. And that's, to me, that's fine. That's religious freedom. I don't like it, but that's religious freedom. On the other hand, I think you draw the line where you say, I don't want anybody to marry anybody in any church. And you see, that's what we're getting into. I think in this day and age, and that's the shift, because all of a sudden stopping anybody from doing something becomes religious, because my particular belief is a religious one. Yeah. So the same thing happens with when you're with speech. My particular speech is my speech. I ought to be free. You're not to be so so it's possible for president of the United States, who took an oath of office to uphold an institution to say, I can say what I like. No, you can't. Well, you know, definitely, let me put this to you. If I if I if I find my media is loaded with lies, and it confuses and distract and misinforms the public, don't I need to regulate that? And if I do, you know, obviously, that is that is changing the depth and breadth of the First Amendment. So lying actually has an effect of calling for regulation. And that regulation would be a limitation of the First Amendment. Isn't that where we're going? Well, aren't we sort of there? I mean, isn't it? Isn't there a regulation or a law about if you're in the theater, and you scream fire just for the fun of it? And everybody goes nuts and gets killed and all of that. So I mean, I think that was an opinion of the Supreme Court by Justice Black. There you go. Okay, so so so what are we going to have to do more of that? Then doesn't that erode the notions of of America and its free speech? So I mean, I thought it was not to hurt some if it doesn't hurt someone else. But is that relying on norms that you would know better than to shout that in a situation or, you know, put people in jeopardy for fun by saying something that would cause them to hurt themselves. I mean, there must be case law on that. But I don't know, Jay, it's a really good question. I think the limits are being tested by these people like Trump and Carlson and Fox. Yeah, well, Tim, let me ask you, you know, you don't call it news, you call it entertainment. And I and you've opined in the past that we really do need regulation. What what's your view of whether we need regulation, the extent of the regulation, who does the regulation and what effect that will have on the First Amendment? Well, you have the FCC that's been doing it since the invention of television. The reason we don't have it for cable and social media is because they're outside the boundaries of those licenses. But they're still affecting the public is still an issue of presenting information for the public good. So they ought to be regulated. And again, I've said it 100 times and in 100 different ways is that we need a firewall between the news reporting and commentary. And I don't care if it's a separate desk, I don't care if it's a label above the head, and below the chin, saying editorial commentary, like we used to do back in the 60s when Walter Cronkite would go from the news desk, literally went to a different desk and it said editorial. Yeah. You know, those were the days of the 60s where the FCC said, you're no longer reporting news. You're you're you're you're committing commentary. We've come a long way, baby. That's right. Now you and now people can't distinguish between the two. But let me take a little 20,000 foot view of how we got to this place. You know, if you really think about it was Ronald Reagan in 1980 that embraced Jerry Faldwell and the moral majority and how that he let the you know that the the nose of the camel in the tent to say, let's let's mix government with religion. And let's you know, let me number one get voters my way, but to let that influence policy and politics. And 40 years later, here we are where, you know, half our Supreme Court probably had to pass pass a religious litmus test before they were nominated or selected to be nominated. So you know, I think we're moving towards a theocracy which we discussed yesterday, and that certainly has an influence on how SCOTUS is reviewing the reversal of Roe v. Roe v. Wade. And we keep moving to a theocracy versus our Republic. Yeah, you remember, for example, in the way that tax law is structured, is that churches get a complete exemption from real property tax and income tax and everything. And the deal is, or at least it was, is that they stay out of politics, give you the tax break just stay out of politics. And now they get the tax break, but they don't stay out of politics. They're completely invested in politics, and they have a huge effect. We're almost out of time. And I want to go around Robin. And let me let me start with you, you know, Stephanie, what effect is all this going to happen? Have on the elections that are coming. We have an election that's already started in terms of some states and primaries that we have one in Hawaii, although I don't think it affects Hawaii very much. But, you know, we worry about the elections this fall. How worried are you that Tucker Carlson and the conservative media are going to disinform people or misinform them to the point where they can't be, you know, do critical thinking for for to perform their obligations as citizen voters. Yes, I'm pessimistic. I also wanted to point out that almost all of our top leaders are Catholic. Okay, with the exception of a Jewish person on the Supreme Court. I think that almost all of them that's Pelosi and the rest. Okay, so that's an important point. And when it gets down to the row V Wade, it is the fact that there is this what collect call intersection of religion and government always because abortion is with within the religious tenants in the Bible. It's not something that came out of civil society. Anyway, the point is that there's so many of these influences moving in a direction away from what I think am I normal or what the norms and values are for being an American, you know, out of the 20th century of, you know, educated out of through that. But I those norms and values are shifting so far that it's hard to to have faith that we're going to get things to happen in the way we can reasonably expect them to be. John, why? Hey, let me ask you the same question. You follow politics, you follow politics here, obviously, but you also follow national politics. I know that. And I'm very interested to know how you feel about the effect of this, you know, conservative press, Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Sinclair radio and the like, pumping out disinformation, pumping out conspiracy lies. What effects are going to have on the election? Well, I think they'll have an effect and they'll have an effect even in Hawaii, but not necessarily the way people might see it. I mean, I don't think people in Hawaii are going to suddenly become patriots or whatever those organizations are called. But on the other hand, you know, people's behavior is dictated, in my opinion, by permission. And when people behave as badly as they feel that they get permission for their action. And so when you see all of this stuff happening on the mainland, then you can see seem to feel that you got permission to act similarly, although with maybe different issues or sound or different kinds of kinds of tactics. But you got the permission. So all of a sudden, I think you're going to see people here thinking that telling lies, for example, or doing things that are tainted is is okay. And I think you see that happening now in the normal course of government. I mean, our government today does things that would have been unthinkable prior to Trump. I mean, look at, you know, there's a certain kind of arrogance that came with Trump that I don't think only stayed on the continent. Yeah, I think that I think that what this all of this does is when is we you may not find somebody doing really a right wing thing, but you can find somebody on the internet, doing things that are just as bad, because they think they now have permission and it also seems to pay off. Yeah. I mean, my doctor wasn't listening to Tyler. I mean, to Carlson, what he was doing was demonstrating to me that he's very fertile ground for that kind of stuff. Yeah. And he's an intelligent guy. I mean, I trust it with my life. And here it is. That's scary. Tim, you're the last, the last man, the last co host, the last speaker on this, and it's your job to summarize our entire discussion and give us a profound takeaway from everything that has been mentioned in this very diverse set of set of points today. Hey, no pressure. Thanks, Jay. I'm not going to summarize everything we discussed about. I'm going to I'm going to tag on to what John just said. And it's a critical point. And that is people act badly when they're given permission. And that's why it's absolutely paramount that we select leaders of this country that are both ethical and moral in their in their character and their behavior and then their personal life. And you look at the difference between Obama and Biden versus Trump. We have ethical leaders versus horrible non ethical leader. And that gave people permission to act badly and then copycat those behaviors. Let's go back to looking at the the ethical litmus test before we we nominate a president for a particular party and elect them our leader moving forward. So John, thank you for that that point about permission because it's it's a critical point. Okay, and I'll I'll say this. What we what we discussed and learned today is the system she is broken. We have we have a media that does actively misinform and disinform us. We have a government that does not stop them from doing that. We have a Supreme Court that we cannot rely on. We cannot trust to do the right thing, whether it's on one side or the other. No further trust because they've been politicized. And it's the only thing we can do, ladies and gentlemen, is we can keep on broadcasting our thoughts, our conversations here on American issues. Take one and take two every Wednesday and Thursday. That is our duty, our obligation and our privilege. Thank you so much, John, why? Hey, Stephanie Stolt-Alton and my cohost Tim Epichela. Thank you very much. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.