It's really simple actually, if you talk to our enemies it will be picked up by our spies that monitor them.

One possible explanation for Tucker Carlson’s claim to have been spied on by NSA is that he had a back channel with Russian operatives and was trying to get ahead of allegations that he was coordinating with Russian agents.

Particularly if the communications implicating Carlson were damning and potentially illegal, leaking them to him would be an easy way to flip the story, and accuse NSA of spying rather than Carlson of coordinating with Russian agents. Again, that’s all just a hypothetical that might explain Carlson’s claims.

Overnight, Jonathan Swan — who’s a political reporter, not a surveillance reporter — described that sources claimed authorities had obtained communications from Tucker Carlson’s efforts to get an interview with Vladimir Putin. Swan describes that Tucker had two intermediaries with Russia, but they live in the US. (I had hypothesized these might be Ukrainian sources, but Swan suggests they’re Russians.)

Two sources familiar with Carlson’s communications said his two Kremlin intermediaries live in the United States, but the sources could not confirm whether both are American citizens or whether both were on U.S. soil at the time they communicated with Carlson.

Swan doesn’t note that if the surveillance happened in the US, it would have formally been an FBI intercept, not an NSA one (just as the intercepts showing Mike Flynn’s secret back channel with Russia were collected by the FBI). But he does a good job of laying out the most likely ways this happened, which is that the NSA or FBI were surveilling the kind of people they’re supposed to surveil: Russian agents, whether overt or covert.

The first — and least likely — scenario is that the U.S. government submitted a request to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor Carlson to protect national security.
A more plausible scenario is that one of the people Carlson was talking to as an intermediary to help him get the Putin interview was under surveillance as a foreign agent.
In that scenario, Carlson’s emails or text messages could have been incidentally collected as part of monitoring this person, but Carlson’s identity would have been masked in any intelligence reports.
In order to know that the texts and emails were Carlson’s, a U.S. government official would likely have to request his identity be unmasked, something that’s only permitted if the unmasking is necessary to understand the intelligence.
The import of the agency involved — FBI or NSA — is that “unmasking” works quite differently for the FBI, which has a duty to guard against spying in this country. FBI agents tracking a known Russian agent might review such communications to find out if a high profile US journalist was being recruited by a known Russia spy. And if this was the FBI, it might explain how it recently became known: because Merrick Garland’s DOJ is trying to disclose all the tracking of journalists that took place under the Trump Administration.

This entire faux scandal feels just like ones that Devin Nunes has twice sown, first when Republican members of Congress got picked up undermining US policy with Bibi Netanyahu, and then again when Trump’s Transition team set up a secret back channel meeting with UAE. Each time Nunes has done this, it was with the seeming intent of flipping the scandalous efforts of Republicans to undermine US policy.

That’s consistent with Tucker’s claim that his source is “in a position to know.”

The whistleblower, who’s in a position to know, repeated back to us information about a story we are working from that could have only come directly from my texts and emails. There’s no other possible source for that information, period. The NSA captured that information without our knowledge and did it for political reasons.

But it also means that, if true, then Tucker and his source — whom Tucker himself suggests had a need to know — just burned intercepts on legitimate surveillance targets from a hostile country.

Plus, there’s a far bigger problem with Tucker’s currently operative story. Jason Leopold liberated Tucker’s FOIA request to obtain what he claims would be proof of this spying. Whether intentionally or because of incompetence, the FOIA was written in such a way that it is guaranteed to fail to find anything, because it uses language that NSA would understand to mean communications targeting Tucker (and, specifically, communications obtained from physical possession of Tucker’s phone).

More interesting than the failure by design is the scope. Tucker believes these sensitive communications — ostensibly a recent effort to set up an interview with Vladimir Putin — extend from January 1, 2019 until June 28, 2021, the date he first revealed this.

That’s thirty months he has been working with Russian back channels, purportedly to set up a meeting with Putin.

That, by itself, may explain why the communications generated further attention (if indeed they did). Thirty months isn’t the pursuit of an interview, it’s a long term relationship. This would look like a recruitment effort, not journalism.

It also explains why, even though Tucker himself is the person who leaked these details (again, burning what by all accounts are legitimate intercept targets), he claims it was an effort to take him off the air. If the FBI believes that Tucker really was pursuing a long-term relationship with Russian agents, then even Fox News might rethink giving him a platform. But that wouldn’t be the content of the communications, per se, but the fact that they appear to have been going on for thirty months.

Ahh more youtube truth

Now, true knowledge of Saint Rampal Ji Maharaj is spreading rapidly, India is becoming a dowry free, drug-free, corruption-free and evil free.
- Earth To Heaven.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZGYY975zXI

He sounds a lot like you.

Would a "reporter" lie?

Tucker Carlson's lawyers say yes

Ms. McDougal alleges that the host of the show, Tucker Carlson, accused
her of extorting now-President Donald J. Trump out of approximately $150,000 in exchange for
her silence about an alleged affair between Ms. McDougal and President Trump. After the case
was removed from New York state court, Fox News moved to dismiss Ms. McDougal’s claim on the grounds that Mr. Carlson’s statements were not statements of fact.

Of course reporters lie. News media lies. A bunch of fake news. In it we trust.

So what’s your point
You cite Greenwald and Carlson as truthful amongst all the lying reporters.
Now tell us how Alan Dershowitz is the only honest lawyer
You’ve ingested too much bleach and been exposed to too much UV light internally
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It's no surprise you miss my point. Maybe being so deeply and continuously immersed in the importance of your horse blinders version of Trump it's tough to see anything, even if it's not about Trump, that you think might hurt it.

So what would be the right amount of bleach to ingest and the right amount of UV light to internally be exposed to?

Hey, this has nothing to do with Trump, and wouldn't hurt the Trump narrative that you expose yourself to . . . maybe too much. Give it a try, maybe you'll find some point in it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQN4c3uN_tA

The Rest of the Story

Fox hosts are relentlessly attacking the vaccination campaign against the coronavirus. Their nightly effort to delegitimize the vaccines is a big problem.
The vaccines are miraculously safe and effective against the virus and its variants. But if you watch Fox, you hear a stream of stories about how they may not work and may kill you if you take them, along with aggrieved rants about the Biden administration effort.

It didn't have to be this way. It’s easy to imagine a world in which Fox hosts relentlessly talked up how Donald Trump had made the vaccines possible and how if viewers got vaccinated, the dreaded masks and lockdowns would be gone forever.
But Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch has described the network as the “loyal opposition” to the Biden administration, and that includes the fight to vaccinate the public against the pandemic.

So now huge swaths of Republicans say they are not and will not be vaccinated. It's a culture war issue rather than a health one because that's the lens through which Fox presents the world to its viewers.
We're headed for a scenario in which Democrats are vaccinated and Republicans aren't, and a lot of Fox viewers end up dead because they listened to the network instead of getting shots.

The cumulative result will be more viral proliferation, more variants, until the vaccine's efficacy is reduced to nothing.
They are the reason we are where we are now, and the reason this is never going to end.

Your "rest of the story" is actually "part of the story." Part of the old story that Fox News is Faux News. I've been pointing out "the rest of the story" that it's not just Fox News. Nor has it been proven that Fox is the worst. Quite the contrary.

News media has to a great degree been corrupted, not just by the natural and historical tendency for news agencies to become internally politicized, but more insidiously done so by cooperation with government agencies.

BTW, your post seems to be verbatim snatches of Media Matters rhetoric, which is not unbiased nor apolitical.

Some of the least vaccinated states are the most pro-Trump. Trump won 17 of the 18 states with the lowest adult vaccination rates. Many of these states have high proportions of whites without college degrees.

The irony is that many of those who now deride the vaccines also objected to lockdowns, social distancing, and the wearing of masks. In a rational world, they would see the vaccines as a ticket back to normal life.

Instead, at this moment, they have chosen to go full anti-vax. Even with hundreds of thousands of dead, and hospitals again filling up, the lies continue; media types tell them to get clicks and likes; pols spread the lies to raise their profile and bring in cash.

And their recklessness will kill people. This is not hyperbole.

The toll of the lies —the tweets, cable hits, and performative demagoguery — can be measured in human lives. The right’s burst of dishonesty means that more fathers, mothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, even children will die.

How to describe the enormity of the malignancy here? Words like “irrational” and “insane,” don’t cover it.

In the law, however, there is category known as “depraved indifference to human life,” which “reflects a wicked, evil or inhuman state of mind, as manifested by brutal, heinous and despicable acts. It is evinced by conduct that is wanton, deficient in a moral sense of concern, and devoid of regard for the life or lives of others.”

It fits.

Biden said that " we have Covid-19 on the run" and that "his nationwide vaccination plan are working better than expected." Seems that there is some serious fake news going on here.

Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch has described the network as the “loyal opposition” to the Biden administration, and that includes the fight to vaccinate the public against the pandemic.
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"Loyal opposition. That's a bit better than the opposition that CNN, NBC, CBS, PBS and the other left leaning networks and media pounded Trump with. Good attempt at balancing the massive fake news from the left with fake news from the right.

Murdoch said "The main beneficiary of the Trump administration from a ratings point of view was MSNBC ... and that’s because they were the loyal opposition," Murdoch said of the rival cable network. That’s what our job is now with the Biden administration, and you’ll see our ratings really improve from here."

He didn't mention fighting against the vaccine. I don't watch TV. But I see a lot of videos from the major news networks. Most of the Fox videos re the vaccine were for it. Some pointed out various drawbacks. Some of the farther right ones like Dobbs (whom Fox got rid of) had more negative things to say about the lockdowns and questioned the negative views about hydroxychloroquine, et. al. But, mostly, I didn't see an effort to stop people from getting vaccines. Hey, they kept reminding us and bragging on it that Trump was responsible for getting them in such a short amount of time.

Poor victim, look around the Democrats are focusing on bread-and-butter issues while their Republican counterparts get big mad about Dr. Seuss’s self-cancellation and Caravans! All Lives Matter! CNN and Fredo! Flag Burning! Murder Antifa! Kneeling NFL Players!
And then claiming that "The tourists weren't yelling 'Hang Mike Pence,' they were yelling 'Hang My Pants'"

Republican bigwigs spent last weekend participating in an anti-vaccine, election truthing freak show in Texas that could best be described as All Culture; No Cattle. And the entire party unified last week around the fabricated and deadly culture war that vilifies public servants who are simply trying to offer people a life-saving vaccine in the comfort of their own home.

Now with Newsmax and OANN pushing the right further into lala land, never mind those lefties at Fox, you have a Newsmax host suggesting vaccines are “against nature,” and some diseases are “supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people”

Well, I mean he's right. Vaccines do "go against nature." Same for antibiotics, heart surgery, and, well, MEDICINE. They all help fight off the entropy, decay, and death of the natural world. The only thing idiotic here is that he seems to think that maybe that's a bad thing.
I'm thinking cooking food, wearing clothes, and living inside homes with air conditioning, heat, and plumbing goes against nature. We weren't meant to live like that.

You're actually worse than CNN or Rachel Maddow. That's some really foaming at the mouth loose bowels type of logorrhea. MSNBC could use you to jack their ratings back up now that Trump is gone.

If you’re hunting for conspiracy theories, how about this one:

Trump carried out a conspiracy to misinform the public about the pandemic & many people died as a result.

Sometimes you don’t even need to look in the shadows for the conspiracy when one is right out in the open.
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I think you started that conspiracy theory. At least on this forum. As far as I'm concerned, to use a phrase that you relentless ad-nauseum anti-Trumpers like to fakely throw around, it has been "debunked."

If you’re hunting for conspiracy theories, how about this one:

Trump carried out a conspiracy to misinform the public about the pandemic & many people died as a result.

Sometimes you don’t even need to look in the shadows for the conspiracy when one is right out in the open.
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I think you started that conspiracy theory. At least on this forum. As far as I'm concerned, to use a phrase that you relentless ad-nauseum anti-Trumpers like to fakely throw around, it has been "debunked."

600,000 dead Americans would disagree if they still could
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Much, much more dead were predicted in the beginning stages and your adding a hundred thousand under Biden and Trump made it possible to get the vaccines way, way sooner than what the old system would have required and the Dems, if their initial criticisms of Warp Speed are an indication, would have gone through the old system and far more deaths would be going on for a few more years and the U.S. mortality rate was lower than many of the major and more "successful" countries such as Germany. And various governors, who were responsible for carrying out pandemic procedures failed to do so and were more directly responsible for deaths in their states.

But, of course, none of that fits your conspiracy theory. Because you hate Trump so much, you prefer the rabid negative proclamations of our anti-Trump fake news agencies.

And you hate Trump so much that you give the real and obvious culprit, China, a pass.

Obviously as Candace Owen says
"COVID-19 is nothing but a big cover for communist rule hitting the shores of the West"
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Why is it that when people dig into the people you cite, they turn out to lifelong frauds?

Tucker Carlson's first grade teacher called him out for lying about her.
The Fox News broadcaster blamed the teacher, whom he identified as Mrs. Raymond, for his longtime hatred for liberals, calling the educator "a parody of earth-mother liberalism" who "wore long Indian-print skirts" and was so terrible at her job that his wealthy father was forced to hire a private tutor, but the Washington Post tracked her down for comment.
“Oh my God," said retired teacher Marianna Raymond. "That is the most embellished, crazy thing I ever heard."

Raymond, now 77 years old, denied crying at her desk, wearing Indian skirts or discussing her politics in class, but she praised her former student Carlson as "very precious and very, very polite and sweet."
She also confirmed that Carlson's father hired a tutor to help him with his school work, but Raymond told the newspaper that she was the tutor.
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It's also a cover for you to rag on Trump.

She said Tucker was "very precious and very, very polite and sweet." I doubt she would have said that about you if she had read your posts.

Maybe she's lying. Or maybe Tucker is a very, very polite and sweet liar. Maybe he misremembered and embellished her liberalism like you embellish Trump's foibles and misstatements or outright lie about what he said.

I think she might very well have said, about many of your anti-Trump posts "That is the most embellished, crazy thing I ever heard."

Silly propogandist, when you'll lie about something from the first grade, you'll lie about anything.

You consistently repeat the fable that Trump is an honest man who puts anything ahead of his own interests.

Propaganda isn't just getting people to believe lies; it's about changing the way people think about themselves and the world. Polarization is just the beginning.

Here's a lesson on use of right-wing authoritarian tactics. Polarization brings survivalism: "it's our way or the apocalypse." Stoke fear w/triggering keywords to create appetite for authoritarian rule. Make violence - say, Jan 6- into patriotic act to "save the nation."

The Oathkeepers leader schmoozing with the GOP establishment at CPAC tells everything you need to know about the state of the Republican Party today.

Yeah well the Republican Party of today is more Progressive than the Party of Reagan. And the Democrat Party is more authoritarian than the Progressive Democrats of before, certainly more so than the Party of JFK. The Democrats have their authoritarian fellow travelers, from the Progressives, to Antifa, to the socialists, to The Communist Party USA.

And it's another of your lies to say the Oathkeepers leader schmoozing with the GOP establishment at CPAC tells EVERYTHING you need to know about the state of the Republican Party today. There's a lot more going on with the G.O.P than that--whatever even that is.

You embellish, you exaggerate, you distort, you lie--good grief!! No telling what junk you must be hiding or lying about from the first grade!

Trump referred to insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt as “an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman,” and said “if that were on the other side, the person that did the shooting would be strung up and hung.” He's calling for the lynching of a Capitol police officer. And he's a traitor.
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Trump at CPAC: "If it's bad, I say it's fake. If it's good, I say, that's the most accurate poll perhaps ever."

He’s literally telling you he’s bull#^&#^&#^&#^&ting you and you still eat it up with a can of Goya beans
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There you go again. He's not calling for a "lynching" of the police officer. He's making the comparison, true or not, of the reaction of the corporate press, the Dems, the black social justice groups. the race hustlers, and leftists of various sorts to a black police officer killing an unarmed white woman vs. their reactions when white police officers kill unarmed black men.

By your standards for Trump lying, you're lying again. A sort of the fake news you consistently spew on the forum.

You are so easily led

1. In 2020, Critical Race Theory was an obscure academic theory

In 2021, a chorus of voices claims CRT an existential threat to the country

Who is financing this effort?

We've identified an obscure foundation funding at least 21 groups attacking CRT
2. Non-profits and media orgs promoting anti-CRT hysteria keep their funding SECRET

Private foundations, however, have to disclose their spending to the IRS

Looking at this data, one group kept appearing again and again: The Thomas W. Smith Foundation
3. Who is Thomas W. Smith? He runs a hedge fund out of Boca Raton Florida and keeps a low profile

His foundation has no website, but is run by James Piereson, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute

Piereson is prolific and provides insight into what motives the foundation's giving
4. Piereson opposes all efforts to address economic or racial inequality -- even those undertaken by private charities.

He wrote about this in a series of columns published in 2019.

5. Piereson also opposes classes dedicated to the study of women, Black people, or the LGBTQ community in universities, saying these topics lack "academic rigor."
6. Piereson claims that "racial bigotry and violence against women" is not a big problem on college campuses, calling concern about such issues "irrational."

This is the person who is funding a constellation of groups attacking CRT
7. It would be hard for Piereson and the Thomas W. Smith foundation to generate excitement around tired arguments opposing diversity and racial equality.

It's easier to advocate against CRT, a term that sounds scary but no one really understands.
8. A popular.info investigation found that between 2017 and 2019, the Thomas W. Smith foundation donated $12.75 million to at least 21 organizations attacking CRT.

(The foundation's 2020 spending won't be available until later this year.)
9. The top recipient of money from the Thomas W. Smith Foundation is the Manhattan Institute.

It received $4.32 million from 2017 to 2019.

It employs Chris Rufo, who is the leading source of misinfo on CRT

Smith sits on the Manhattan Institute board
10. Other major recipients of money from the Charles W. Smith Foundation include The Heritage Foundation (525K), ALEC (425K), and the State Policy Network (3.57M), three organizations behind the flood of state legislation to ban CRT
11. The Thomas W Smith Foundation is also funding numerous media orgs that are producing an avalanche of anti-CRT columns & "reporting"

@DailyCaller (100K)
@FDRLST (100K)
@NRO (45K)
@prageru (100K)
@RealClearPR (200K)
@amspectator (210K)
@amconmag (100K)
12. The actual spending by the Thomas W. Smith foundation on anti-CRT efforts is likely much higher since we don't have 2020 spending and many of the groups set up specifically to attack CRT were not created until 2020
13. Popular.info will continue to peel back the onion and keep you informed.

We always follow the money.

For updates and accountability journalism, sign up
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You keep lying. You can't stop. I don't eat Goya beans.

Are you claiming Trump did not say that, don’t believe your lying eyes and ears
It’s on tape
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The obscure "academic theory" somehow metastasized into being required to be taught or trained in Federal and other government agencies and public schools throughout the country. Did you look into who funded that? Or who funded Black Lives Matter? Or who funded Antifa? There's a lot of funding, political and otherwise, that goes into changing, or fundamentally transforming the country. If you've got a minute to spare from your insane immersion into the various leftist and anti- Trump sagas you regale us with, you might look into that. Doubt that it's any concern to you.

Curious that you didn't substantively debate the videos on CRT that I posted, but merely tried to somehow discredit them. Even in this post, you don't discuss CRT, you somehow attempt to make the anti-CRT'rs look bad. More of your deceptive sort of forum fake news?

Oh, on tape . . . did you get the rest of the transcript? Here's the context in which he said it:

"Donald Trump: (01:00:23)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. No, I said to Matt and Mercedes because I’ve done this and we’ve had… And by the way, you have a poll coming out. Unfortunately, I want to know what it is they… You know, they do that straw poll, right? Now, if it’s bad, I just say, “It’s fake.” If it’s good, I say, “That’s the most accurate poll perhaps ever.” And I know that they it. I guess it gets announced after… I want to find out, are you going to…?

Donald Trump: (01:00:55)
Oh, he won’t. He won’t tell me. I know Matt, he won’t tell me. Well, whenever the hell they get it released. I’ll tell you, here’s the story. If it’s bad, it’ll be front page news in the newspapers. If it’s great, they won’t even cover it. I hate to tell you that, Matt. And I don’t want to convince him to do a bad Poll, but you know the straw poll. So, I did this years ago and I got these great straw polls. It was the first time I ever did it. And I was a novice, but it was right here at CPAC. And I’m so proud of the jump. I mean, look at this room. Look at outside. We have thousands of people trying to come in. I mean our only thing is next time we’ll have to get a bigger place, I guess, right? Next time.

It was in the context of a forthcoming straw poll. He could tell by the success and size of his audience that the result of the straw poll would be very favorable to him. And he knew the fakery of the corporate media which would downplay the result or simply just ignore it.

But "don’t believe your lying eyes and ears." Maintain your narrative, no matter what fakery it takes.

He is a master propagandist, isn’t he.
Now spin this
“The president considers using the military to overturn an election. Any president who suggests such a thing doesn’t understand the whole point of American democratic politics. But more than that, the president doesn’t understand the American military."
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