Glenn Greenwald
Politics • Culture • Writing
Fox Launches Massive Character Assassination Campaign Against Tucker Plus: Drone Hits Kremlin Renewing Fears of Escalation
Video Transcript
May 09, 2023
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Good evening. It's Wednesday, May 3rd. Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. eastern. Exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.

 Tonight, it was shocking enough when Fox News, with no warning whatsoever, unceremoniously announced last Monday that its top-rated host, Tucker Carlson, would no longer appear on the network, despite the fact that Carlson had cultivated millions of fans over the six years he hosted the 8 p.m. show and despite the fact that Carlson led them to six consecutive years of ratings win, Fox made no effort to explain to his loyal viewers why the show's last day was to be the Friday night show before the announcement was made, just no effort at all to accommodate or express the slightest interest in the anger and confusion of their loyal audience. But Fox's strange behavior has now become contemptible. While Tucker released a two-minute video last week that contained not a single word of criticism for Fox or his colleagues or any of its executives, Fox has been launching a vicious, one-sided, and seemingly still escalating war, with the apparent goal of permanently destroying Tucker Carlson's character and reputation. 

Just today, The New York Times published an article that purported to describe the thought process of Fox's board of directors, which includes, among others, former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan and it also contained a leaked text that was designed, obviously, to make Tucker look like a racist – a narrative that the Fox leakers aggressively cultivated, using The New York Times as their partners, as one of the reasons why they decided to fire him. What is Fox's goal in this one-sided war of character destruction, and why are they seemingly indifferent, even eager to permanently alienate Carlson's most loyal viewers, especially as they watch their prime time ratings decline rapidly since Carlson's unexplained departure, especially among younger viewers? We’ll examine this strange and increasingly disturbing episode. 

Then, a drone attack last night appears to have targeted the Kremlin, where video footage captured explosions near the government buildings in Moscow, including the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin was unhurt in the attack, but Russia is unsurprisingly vowing aggressive and escalatory retaliation against Ukraine, whom they naturally blame for the attack. While Kyiv denies any involvement, Ukrainian elements, including their postal service, were seen officially celebrating the attack. And as is true for the U.S. and NATO regarding the explosion of the Nord Stream pipeline, Ukraine is obviously going to be the most likely suspect in the eyes of the Russians. All of this once again raises the question, why is the United States so eager, so willing to incur the vastly increasing risks of this extremely dangerous war? For what interests and for whose? 

As a reminder, System Update is available in podcast form. We are available on Spotify, Apple, and all other major podcasting platforms. We post the episodes 12 hours after they are first broadcast here, live, on Rumble. You can follow us there. Find us,  rate us, and review us, that helps the visibility of the show.

For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now. 


 

One of the most unexplained, bizarre and unexpected developments in cable news took place last week when Fox, in a very cursory statement, unceremoniously announced that the Tucker Carlson program, which was not only the highest-rated program currently on Fox but the highest-rated program in the history of cable news – the history of the medium – as of Friday night before, would no longer appear on the program. It was terminated. Fox was done with Tucker Carlson and his program. They added insult to injury by issuing the most stinting and ungenerous statement possible, the stingiest words imaginable, essentially saying we thank Tucker for his service to our network and wish him luck in his future endeavors. No attempt at all to explain to the millions of people that Fox has spent tons of money cultivating over the years to watch Tucker’s show. Why it is that their favorite host, the person whom they most trust, has just simply disappeared from the Fox airwaves? No respect for the viewers, nothing but contempt for them – actually, just announced in a short note that he was gone and then asked Brian Kilmeade, the host of “Fox & Friends”, who was in a very difficult position, to guest-host the show Monday evening. And they gave him about 12 seconds at the start of the show for him to say, essentially, “You probably heard Fox and Tucker have parted ways and Tucker's a friend of mine and always will be. And now on to the news.” 

So, the entire episode has been shrouded in mystery because Fox has said nothing about why this has happened and Tucker issued a two-minute video in which he essentially vowed that he will continue to always tell the truth. He said that if you do tell the truth, you pay a price, you will end up suffering, which is absolutely true. But there wasn't a single hint of criticism of any Fox executive or Fox News itself in that video. Almost immediately following that video, Fox began leaking to the media that it had compiled a dossier on Tucker that it was prepared to unleash a nuclear war arsenal against him if Tucker goes nuclear on Fox. And that makes sense. 

When I left The Intercept, I not only announced I was leaving, but I condemned them in very vehement terms because I felt an obligation to my readers not just to announce in a cursory note that I was leaving but, given the media outlet was founded on my name and I had been defending it since 2013, I felt an obligation to explain what I thought had gone so wrong inside that institution that I felt compelled to leave. And as a result, The Intercept then turned around and attacked me and my character and made allegations against me, which I completely expected and thought was fair – if I was going to attack them, I thought it was totally expected that they would attack me back. And they did. And I never minded and I thought that was fine. But in this case, Tucker left or was fired and didn't utter a word of criticism. He didn't tell his audience not to watch Fox. He didn't tell his audience or anybody else that this was Fox selling out or trying to appease liberal public opinion. He just issued a two-minute video after three days of silence, basically saying, I'm not going anywhere, I'll let you know what it is that I'm doing. That was it. And ever since, there has been an avalanche of leaks clearly coming from the highest levels of Fox News that are not designed to shed light on why Fox fired Tucker. They're designed to destroy Tucker Carlson's character and reputation forever by branding him a white supremacist, a racist, a misogynist, and a liar. And to do so, they are partnering with the very liberal media outlets that have been most bent on Fox's destruction for years, starting with The New York Times. 

So, let's look today at this incredibly new escalation, this significant escalation, and Fox's attack on the person who until about two weeks ago, by all appearances, has been somebody beloved by the Murdoch family, because he made them so much money and because Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch's son who runs Fox, believed that Tucker was a very respectable face for the network. I have tried doing a lot of reporting on finding out the real reason why Fox fired Tucker. I obviously know a lot of people at Fox. I know Tucker well. He's become a friend of mine over the years. I know other people at Fox who are at Fox, who have been at Fox. Nobody knows the real reason. People can speculate, there are little clues here and there but the real story of why Fox decided to fire its top-rated host and risk what has happened and what everyone knew happened, which is a radical decline in their ratings and prime time – maybe they'll recover, maybe they won't – is a story that no one seems to know. And it is amazing to watch this war now being waged on Tucker's character by the people for whom he has loyally worked for the last six years. So, let's look at what they did today. 

Here is The New York Times article. The headline is “Carlson's Text That Alarmed Fox Leaders: It's Not How White Men Fight.”  You can tell from the headline that The New York Times is reporting not to have gotten a hold of attacks that makes Tucker look bad, although they did. That could have come from anywhere. That could have come from a lower-level Fox person. It could have come from someone inside Dominion's law firm or Fox's law firm or – who knows – when there's litigation of this kind between Dominion and Fox and emails are flying around, anyone can get access to emails and link them. It's impossible to say for sure who did it. What is so amazing about this New York Times article is it is purporting to describe insight into how the Fox board of directors viewed this text and the thought process that led them to fire Tucker, which could have only come from the board of directors itself. No one else will have the ability to convince The New York Times to publish claims about what the Fox board of directors is thinking other than people on the board of directors of Fox or at the highest levels of Fox News – Fox Management Suzanne Scott or Lachlan Murdoch himself, or someone on the board. That is where this story came from. That is what is so amazing about it. It is confirmation that Fox is on this warpath against him. There is the subheading “The discovery of the text message contributed to a chain of events that ultimately led to Tucker Carlson's firing.” It's a story by three different New York Times reporters – Jeremy Peters, Michael Schmidt, and Jim Rutenberg. Let's take a look at what it says. 

A text message sent by Tucker Carlson that set off a panic at the highest levels of Fox on the eve of its billion-dollar defamation trial showed its most popular host sharing his private, inflammatory views about violence and race. 

The discovery of the message contributed to a chain of events that ultimately led to Mr. Carlson's firing. The text alarmed the Fox board […] (The New York Times. May 2, 2023).

 

How would they know that that text alarmed the Fox board unless someone on the Fox board told The New York Times? This is what alarmed us. 

 

The text alarmed the Fox board, which saw the message a day before Fox was set to defend itself against Dominion before a jury. The board grew concerned that the message could become public at trial when Mr. Carlson was on the stand, creating a sensational and damaging moment that would raise broader questions about the company […] (The New York Times. May 2, 2023).



Let me just stop here and explain why this makes no sense to me. So first of all, it is far from clear why a private text that we're about to show you that Tucker Carlson wrote, that was intended to be private, where he actually talks about him watching a video of three white Trump supporters ganging up on an Antifa protester and beating him to a pulp and the feelings that he had watching that, including the fact that he was at first biting himself, rooting for the Antifa person to have the crap kicked out of him. And then he realizes that's not how he wants to go through life, feeling that that's not a humanitarian sensation, that even this Antifa person, despite hating his politics and maybe even him, has a family, has a mother, has a father, has siblings who all of whom would be in deep mourning and grief if he were actually killed. And he said to himself by succumbing to these temptations, I will be as bad as him. He also said in there that ganging up on people this way is a dishonorable thing to do. It's not how white people fight. That's what made the text so inflammatory. Why would this text possibly be admissible in a lawsuit that Dominion brought against Fox claiming defamation regarding Fox allegations by some host or the airing of some claims that Dominion voting machines were used to defraud the election? It's extremely unlikely that this text would be admissible. The idea that they fear that this text would emerge as part of the trial is extremely unbelievable to me. But even if it were the case that they feared that this email might emerge during the trial, they settled the lawsuit with Dominion. There was no trial and they fired him after that. So, when they fired him, there was no concern that this would emerge as part of the trial. This version makes no sense. Maybe they feared this would come out in some other way but, ironically, it came out because someone at Fox clearly gave it to The New York Times. And why would you do that? Again, you can only get that if the board went to the New York Times and said, “Let us tell you why we decided to fire Tucker because we discovered he's an unreconstructed racist. We didn't know that before. We only learned it in the past couple of weeks. When we learned it, we decided to fire him.” That's what Fox is saying to the public about Tucker Carlson through The New York Times. 

 

The day after the discovery, the board told Fox executives it was bringing in an outside law firm to conduct an investigation into Mr. Carlson's conduct. The text message added to a growing number of internal issues involving Mr. Carlson that led the company's leadership to conclude he was more of a problem than an asset and had to go, according to several people with knowledge of the decision […] (The New York Times. May 2, 2023).

 

Again, those are people inside Fox at high levels of Fox News. This leak would not be happening without the authorization of Lachlan Murdoch and Suzanne Scott and the highest levels of Fox. Why – If you're going to leak this – do you go to the New York Times to do it? 

 

In other messages, [Tucker] had referred to women – including a senior Fox executive – in crude and misogynistic terms. The message about the fight also played a role in the company's decision to settle with Dominion for $787.5 million, the highest known payout in a defamation case. 

The text message came to the attention of Fox's board of directors and even some senior executives only last month, on the Sunday before the trial was set to begin, according to two people with knowledge of Fox's internal deliberations. At the time, Fox negotiators were entering discussions about an out-of-court settlement ahead of the swearing-in of what was shaping up to be a diverse jury. 

The next day, the board told Fox's leadership about its plan to have the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz to investigate Mr. Carlson. That disclosure set up the possibility that there could be a continuing investigation into what was behind Mr. Carlson's messages at the same time as a trial, and as he was serving as its top host in prime time. 

Fox has not commented about Mr. Carlson's ouster last week beyond an initial statement announcing that they agreed to “part ways” and thanking “him for his service.” It did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday on the contents of Mr. Carlson's redacted message. (The New York Times. May 2, 2023).

 

Look at this lie. This is the game they play. “Fox has not commented about Mr. Carlson's ouster last week beyond that initial statement.” Everything I just read you was Fox commenting, just doing it, in the slimiest way possible, anonymously, into the New York Times but, of course, everything that I just read to you came from Fox. It's borderline lying to say that ‘Fox hasn't commented on this’, ‘Fox wouldn't comment when asked’ when they know that all of this came from Fox. 

 

It remains unclear how the text escaped more notice earlier, given that the Fox legal team was aware of it and other offensive text written by Mr. Carlson. Fox's lawyers had produced attacks as part of the discovery process and were involved in the redactions. Mr. Carlson had even been asked about it during a deposition, according to several people who have read the unredacted transcripts of his deposition. (The New York Times. May 2, 2023).

 

So, the whole timeline doesn't make sense either. This text was produced as part of the litigation many, many, many months ago. The way that documents get produced in litigation is that the principles – people like Tucker Carlson, or anyone involved in the lawsuit who are required to turn over information, go through their emails, and turn them over to Fox's lawyers; Fox's lawyers go through them, read through them carefully, decide which are privileged, which ones are it, and which ones need to be turned over and then turn them over – so, of course, Fox News's lawyers have seen this. And if it's true that it was going to be used by Dominion and, again, according to the New York Times article, Dominion's lawyers asked Tucker about it in his deposition many months ago, it strains credulity beyond all breaking points that Fox only learned about this within the last ten days, and that was the reason for his firing. It makes absolutely no sense – beyond the fact that how long now have people like The New York Times and liberal media outlets been accusing every Fox News personality of being a racist and a white supremacist, going back to Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck or Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity. Everyone who works at Fox is instantly and inherently referred to as a white supremacist. Now, suddenly, they're so worried about that. I believe we have the text itself, which we need to show you. It's pretty much what I described, but I nonetheless want to go over and read it to you. It's the text that just became public today. It's the reason Fox is saying – or a major reason Fox is saying – why they fired Tucker Carlson. It seems like Fox not only talked to The New York Times, but also The Washington Post. They have an article as well. There you see the headlines. “Tucker Carlson's Text on How “White Men Fight” Alarmed Fox Board Members. The lawsuit, a countermove against John Paul Mac Isaac escalates the legal battle.” And here again, you see: 

 

But in the most startling passage, Carlson asserted flatly that” jumping a guy like that is obvious is dishonorable. It's not how white men fight. 

After seeing the message, the board alerted Fox executives that it planned to retain a law firm to investigate Carlson's behavior, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions. (The Washington Post. May 2, 2023).

 

People inside Fox – of the highest levels – also spoke to The Washington Post to give them the same story about how this email or how this text played a crucial role in the decision-making process. Now, listen to the other reason The Washington Post says Fox fired Tucker. 

The Washington Post reported last week that network co-founder Rupert Murdoch had also grown concerned about Carlson's increasingly far-right commentary, including his disparagement of U.S. support for Ukraine, and that executives had noted that his harsh critiques of Fox management and his private communications, including some sexist and vulgar language aimed at a female executive. (The Washington Post. May 2, 2023).

 

Is opposing U.S. proxy wars fought through the CIA and Raytheon now a “far-right” position? And if it is true that part of the reason Rupert Murdoch wanted Tucker Carlson off the air was that he was one of the only people in media with a show vocally opposing the war in Ukraine – Laura Ingraham has put guests on and questioned it and so did Jesse Watters, but nowhere near, with the level of vitriol and devotion that Tucker has. It's been a crusade of his, from the start, to keep the U.S. out of this war. So first of all, when did it become right-wing to oppose U.S. proxy wars? There are left-wing leaders all over the world, like here in Brazil, Lula da Silva, and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, who also oppose what the U.S. is doing in Ukraine, and many others. How is that a far-right position? And beyond that, even if it were, since when does Rupert Murdoch care about having his media outlets air far-right views? That's what they do. That's what they're for – from the New York Post to the Daily Mail to every other right-wing tabloid. 

I do believe – and there was a report from the new start-up Semafor that I believe we showed you, or maybe we didn’t, so I'll tell you about it. It's a new start-up by Ben Smith, who is the former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed and used to work at Politico, then he became the media columnist for The New York Times. He now has a startup journalistic outlet called Semafor, it has people like Dave Weigel, who was The Washington Post’s political reporter, and many other experienced reporters. And several days ago, they reported that, shortly before Fox and the Murdochs fired Tucker, they had a call with President Zelenskyy that included Zelenskyy's concerns or anger about Tucker's views on the war in Ukraine and Semafor strongly implied that there was a causal connection between the Murdochs calling Zelenskyy on the one hand and the decision to fire Tucker on the other. They didn't really have the reporting to prove that connection or to assert it explicitly but they clearly implied it. And here's The Washington Post strongly suggesting the same: part of why Rupert Murdoch wanted Tucker off the air was because of his opposition to the U.S. role in Ukraine. 

So, even if you're somebody who's in doubt about the role of the U.S. in the war in Ukraine or even if you're somebody who supports the U.S. role, isn’t this extremely disturbing? There was one person in all of the media, corporate media, who was a vocal, continuous, devoted critic of the Biden administration's war policy. That person is now off the air. That show no longer exists and, according to reporting from The Washington Post and Semafor, especially The Washington Post, at least in part, his opposition to Biden's war policies in Ukraine is part of why he got fired. Is it not incredibly concerning that we cannot, in our corporate media, accommodate dissent to U.S. foreign policy, especially when it comes to a war that Joe Biden himself has said has brought the world closer to nuclear annihilation than at any point since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962? 

Many of you probably don't remember this, but in 2002 and 2003, when there was a very repressive atmosphere for dissent over the War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq, there was only one person on all of cable news who had a show who was vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq, the invasion of Iraq. The Fox hosts were in favor. People on CNN were in favor. There was one person, on MSNBC, who was as adamantly opposed to the invasion of Iraq in 2002, as Tucker Carlson has been to the U.S. role in Ukraine. His name was Phil Donahue, the longtime daytime talk show host who was known as kind of a left-liberal. He was given his own MSNBC show. It was the beginning of MSNBC's growth. He didn't have a very big audience, but it was bigger than everybody else's on MSNBC, it was the highest-rated MSNBC host, and he was fired in the middle of 2002, or early 2003. And a memo surfaced very shortly after saying the reason he got fired was because MSNBC did not want to be associated with his opposition to the war. It was too inflammatory at the time, and I remember very well I was reading blogs at this point, getting ready to start writing myself, this was a cause of extreme outrage among American progressives and liberals, and the left, that we can't have one host of one TV show who's opposed to this war. We need a 24-hour drumbeat in favor of the invasion of Iraq. No debate or dissent can be permitted? That is the same as what happened here. Where are those voices angrily objecting? Even if you hate Tucker Carlson and everything else he stands for that. What Fox really seems to have done, at least in part, is remove Tucker Carlson from the air because of his heterodox view that conflicts with the majority of Republican establishment lawmakers who support Joe Biden's war policy, including Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, the two Republican leaders of the House and Senate. At least in part, that seems to have been the motive for Rupert Murdoch removing Tucker from the air. That is incredibly disturbing for anyone who values dissent and free media. 

Let me put Tucker's text on the air. I'm going to read the whole thing to you. I think if we're going to talk about it, we should see it. So, this is from January 7, 2021. Here's the text printed by The New York Times. There's no text before it. There's no indication to whom he's speaking or to what he's responding. It says, 

 

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching a video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It's not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they'd hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn't good for me. I'm becoming something I don't want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I'm sure I'd hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn't gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don't care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is? (Tucker Carlson. Jan 7, 2021).

 

Overall, this is a very kind of thoughtful, contemplative, humanistic pondering on his part. That's the sort of thing we want people to do. We have these human impulses – part of it is our instinct, part of it is our primitive I.D. – and we expect people to evaluate what's taking place inside of our brains and decide whether or not those are positive impulses and to restrain them and we decide that they're not as he did. Obviously, the problematic part of this post is when he says that ganging up three against one or four against one is not how white people fight. Presumably, it's how other racial groups fight – Latinos, Black people or Muslims, or whoever – but it's not how white people fight. 

If you ask me, looking at this text in isolation, what I think of that sentence, I will tell you without the slightest hesitation that I find it problematic in the extreme. One of the reasons I've always defended Tucker – and one of the reasons I will still always defend Tucker – is that I do believe that his prism is free of racial analysis. He judges people by individuals and not by their race. And obviously, this is inconsistent with that. He's making a statement about how white people fight versus how black people and Latinos fight. So, do I like this comment? I do not like this comment. What I will, though, say is that I believe that you can go through everybody's private text – these are private texts – where people are speaking freely to friends or colleagues in a rushed way, not being the slightest bit careful, and you can find problematic things in what everybody has said in private, at some point, if you go through enough of their texts for enough time – and even worse when you decontextualized a passage. So, you have no idea what the tenor of this conversation was, whether there was humor involved, what he was responding to whom, what the subtext was – it's very difficult to evaluate on its own. Evaluating on its own makes it problematic. There is no doubt about it. That's why Fox gave it to The New York Times because they knew how this would make Tucker look. But to take the facts that Tucker provided to Fox's lawyers, assuming that they were his lawyers, too, and to now start leaking them selectively as part of a war to destroy Tucker Carlson is despicable. I assume Tucker will answer this and explain what he meant in due course – I have no doubt that he will – but to start leaking things like this, torn out of their context, without any opportunity for him to explain himself – because he's constrained in all sorts of ways as he negotiates how he's leaving – I find it reprehensible what Fox is doing to Tucker. 

The consequences of all of this are predictable, and I want to show them to you. Tucker was not just the most-watched host on cable news, but the highest-rated host among even young Democrats who watch cable. He had a much younger and more diverse audience than almost anyone in cable – and the largest audience. The cable news audience itself is very old, its audience. If you look at, for example, MSNBC or CNN's ratings, their overall audiences might be 800,000 or 900,000 for a show on MSNBC, and 400,000 - 500,000 for CNN. But if you look at the only people who matter in cable news economics, which is what's called the demo, people who are between 25 and 54 are the ones who are most desired by advertisers because they're the ones who are consumers. Maybe 10% of the overall audience is under 55. So, Anderson Cooper will have 500,000-600,000 people watching, but he'll have 80,000 people under the age of 55. Chris Hayes will have an audience of a million people, but barely 100,000 of them – 10% – will be under 55. They're all old. Cable news is dying as a medium. Tucker was one of the few, the only one really keeping it afloat with his extremely large and loyal audience that was far younger and more diverse than almost any other show on cable in history. And yet here is the ratings for Friday night, April 28. 

Friday night is always a little bit aberrational because people watch less, but it's comparative. So here you see someone on Twitter analyzing the ratings that came out that Friday night. So, four or five days after Tucker’s show is off the air and he says:

 

Holy Christ, young people have abandoned Fox News in prime time with Hannity now below 100,000 in the demo. And Tucker's all-time slot losing more than 70% of its young audience. Catastrophic.(@a_newsman May 1, 2023).

 

And he's absolutely right. So here you look at the cable ratings for people who are 25 to 54, which is the demographic that matters the most. The number one show is “The Five”, which is on at 5 p.m. That is not a prime time. A show that had 240,000 people under the age of 54. The next show is “Gutfeld!”. It's on at 11 p.m. That is also not prime time. He had 154,000 people watching under the age of 54. That was followed by a “Special Report with Brett Bayer”, also not a prime time show, at 6 p.m., 150,000. “America's Newsroom” with Dana Perino and Bill Hemmer. He's been on Fox forever. He used to be on CNN. That's a 9 a.m. show. That's also not a prime time show. Then, “America Reports” with Smith and Roberts at 2 p.m. Do you see? There are no prime time shows in the top five or six outnumbered at noon. “The Faulkner Focus” at 11 a.m., “Fox and Friends” at 8 a.m., “America's Newsroom” with Perino and Hemmer at 10 a.m. MSNBC is a 4:00 p.m. show with Nicolle Wallace beating every Fox prime-time show in the demo since Tucker left. Then there's Neil Cavuto, “Fox and Friend,” and only at number 13 you finally get to Jesse Watters, at 7 p.m. He had 116,000 people under the age of 54 watching. Then you have to go down to... it was a disaster for Fox! America Reports with Smith and Roberts. That's Tucker's old slot. It comes in at number 16 with 111,000 people, barely ahead of “Erin Burnett.” And then afternoon MSNBC shows including Joy Reid, Chris Hayes, “Morning Joe” and only then, it’s number 26, you get Sean Hannity who has under 100,000 people watching, under the age of 54, and the “Laura Ingraham Show”, at 28, at 10 p.m., also at 91,000.  

Again, Fox has slightly recovered from these ratings in the last week, but it is hard to overstate what a huge collapse this is for the demo. Almost always Tucker would be number one, followed by Hannity, “The Five”, “Gutfeld!”, Laura Ingraham, all occupying the top four or five. It seems like a huge portion of Fox's young audience departed when they realized the Tucker show was no longer on the air. So, what is the strategy here? Attacking the person whom these people obviously trust so much that they won't watch Fox without him, perhaps they want to destroy his reputation so that he can't ever again host a show that will compete with Fox? Perhaps it's that they want to win back his audience by making Tucker so radioactive that no one wants to have anything to do with him anymore. They'll pry away his loyal fans from him by convincing everyone he's an unreconstructed racist and a misogynist that, even to Fox, it's a bridge too far. Maybe they want to destroy his credibility so that if he does criticize Fox, the criticisms will be less significant. Whatever it is, they are out to destroy his reputation. And there's only so long Tucker is going to sit by silently and allow them to do that. They seem to be provoking on purpose some kind of a response, which I presume will be forthcoming, but this is despicable behavior by Fox. It just is. To have someone who works for you for six years with great success, who was a loyal employee by every report and the minute he’s out the door because you fired him under very bizarre circumstances, you not only try to destroy his reputation, but you go to The New York Times to do it.  

Somebody has also been leaking to Media Matters videos of Tucker that they think are embarrassing. I'll just show you a couple of these. These may not even be high-level Fox people doing it, but you can see a couple of these that Media Matters got a hold of and is now reveling in. Here's one. 

 

Tucker Carlson (on the phone): Nobody is going to watch it on Fox Nation. Nobody watches Fox Nation because the site sucks. I’d really like to just dump the whole thing on YouTube. […] Anyway, that’s just my view. I’m just frustrated with…it’s hard to use that site. I don’t know why they are not fixing it. It’s driving me insane. They are making like lifetime movies but they don’t work on the infrastructure of the site? Like WHAT? It’s crazy and it’s driving me crazy. We’re doing all this extra work and no one can find it? It’s unbelievable, actually. I don’t know who runs that site […] (Video. Leaked audios of T. Carlson. Media Matters. May 3, 2023)

 

Well, I hope Media Matters has cleared a space on the shelf for the Pulitzer they're going to win for obtaining this incriminating footage. 

There's another one of somebody inside Fox. Obviously, this one is a tape from Fox News when he's in front of the camera when the show isn’t on but the cameras are rolling – leaking to Media Matters of all people, not The New York Times and The Washington Post, this time to Media Matters. 

Inappropriate Tucker Comments (BTS) - Media Matters

So, I have to say, I mean, I am incredibly disturbed by this. I think this is really despicable behavior. There are people who host Fox shows whom I respect. I've been on a lot of those shows many times. I've been on Laura Ingraham many times, I've been on Jesse Watters not quite as many, but a lot. I've been on Howie Kurtz’s Sunday show quite a bit. Several others as well. I've never been on Sean Hannity’s show. He invited me on a couple of times, maybe five years ago, but never again. That's not a show that really aligns with what I do. I don't want to revel in Fox's demise. I don't want to hope for them to fail. I think they serve an important function of airing at least some dissent within the corporate media to what is otherwise a lockstep neoliberal consensus on economic policy, foreign policy, the culture war, and everything else. But I don't know whether I would accept an invitation to go on Fox right now, given their corporate behavior concerning the person who has done more to build up Fox and I think has performed a more important function in media than almost anybody else on television if not anybody else on television over the last six years. The space that he's created for dissent, for a different kind of way of looking at politics, for critiquing the GOP establishment from within and the Democratic establishment, in showing how they're a uniparty, for reporting on the abuses of the U.S. security state in a way that has almost never been done before in corporate television – to take this person who has built a huge audience of people who previously were not open to those ideas, an opening to them, and not just trying to justify why they fired him, but trying to destroy him permanently, forever using all the standard tropes that the liberal media typically uses against Fox and everybody else that they dislike is the behavior I find unforgivable. Unforgivable. And whether that means I'll go on Fox at some point or not, I don't know. But this has left a disgusting taste in my mouth. I think they ought to stop this immediately, and I think they're going to jeopardize their audience that is going to watch them do this. They're going to keep the 75 and 80 and 85-year-old hardcore Republicans who have been watching Fox for 30 years and always will. They're going to have that. I just showed you how small that audience can be. But I don't think they're going to be able to recover the audience that Tucker brought in when people see what it is that they do to those who are most loyal to them.

 

 

We'll see what Tucker does. I have high hopes that his next step will fortify the part of the media I think is most important, the part where I am currently, the independent part, the part where there are no corporate constraints, where there is no Rupert Murdoch to pull the plug if you get too critical of Joe Biden's war policy. I hope – I have very high hopes – that Tucker will come to a place like this – if not this place. But I do believe that Fox needed Tucker more than Tucker needed Fox and that whatever he does, he will thrive. But he will forever have this cloud hanging over his head. And I don't think this is anywhere near the end of what they intend to unleash on him. And I can't think of a justifiable reason for doing this. Not even one that is remotely within the realm of what is ethically justifiable. It is despicable what Fox has done to Tucker and the people with whom they've chosen to do it. And I guess that's all I have to say about that, other than I hope to see Tucker back on the air. I hope to see him defending himself from these attacks, explaining things like that text. And I expect we'll be hearing from him shortly because it's unsustainable to sit by while you get pummeled by your old employer through The New York Times and every other media outlet that has long hated you and remain silent. They've kind of forced his hand into not only responding, but I think responding in kind. And we'll see where that leads. My guess is the audience will end up siding with Tucker and not with Fox. That's certainly where my loyalties would lie.


 

So, we're going to move now to a second story, which is the latest developments in the increasingly dangerous war in Ukraine.

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Listen to this Article: Reflecting New U.S. Control of TikTok's Censorship, Our Report Criticizing Zelensky Was Deleted

For years, U.S. officials and their media allies accused Russia, China and Iran of tyranny for demanding censorship as a condition for Big Tech access. Now, the U.S. is doing the same to TikTok. Listen below.

Listen to this Article: Reflecting New U.S. Control of TikTok's Censorship, Our Report Criticizing Zelensky Was Deleted

Glenn, will you please break down the functional ways that public dissent has brought about real change in the US? When people are upset about a given issue, and there is strong resistance inside the government to changing the issue, what are the effective methods that have brought positive meaningful change? This is something not only applicable to Epstein but to every major issue where the public is left wondering "What can be done?". Voting and "calling your rep" doesn't solve these problems. So what has historically worked? What are comparable issues to the ones we are facing today? What are similar examples where bringing change failed, and why?

RIP Ozzie!

Will be reading your System Update transcripts in Locals for a while. Although I love listening to your commentary on Rumble's System Update, I'll say until later for now...but glad I subscribed to your Locals platform and will be reading transcripts there.
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Congress Again Dictates Curriculum & Faculty at Private Universities; How UnitedHealth Group Silences its Critics: With NYT Reporter David Enrich
System Update #488

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

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The desire to micromanage universities does not extend to all issues but seemingly just to one, namely, what can and cannot be said about Israel and about Jewish individuals in particular. As they have done countless times over the past 18 months, the House yesterday held a hearing on antisemitism in America's universities, hauling three more college presidents before them to interrogate them on why they allow certain people to teach or certain opinions about Israel or American foreign policy to be expressed. This is all accompanied by a growing trend, a rapidly growing trend of forcing these universities to implement radically expanded "hate speech" codes with the purpose of outlawing what can and cannot be said about Israel. We'll report on the latest House hearing and how it is directly assaulting the free speech and academic freedom rights of Americans. 

 Our guest was reporter David Enrich, who published an extremely well-reported and important article last week detailing the means that UnitedHealth Care is using to silence critics.

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Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene are two members of the House, both Republicans, who have often noted how often the House meets in order to discuss matters pertaining not to the lives of the American people, but to Israel or to combating criticism of Israel or to investigating the alleged epidemic of bigotry not against every minority group, but against only American Jews, notoriously, excluded from centers of power in the United States. It's like an obsession. They do it all the time. Every time I turn around, there's another hearing about antisemitism or about criticism of Israel being organized by the Republican-led House and Senate.

 Yesterday was no exception. The Committee on Education and Workforce, which is chaired by House member Virginia Foxx, a Republican of South Carolina who oftentimes has no idea where she is, it was entitled – and it sounds like a kind of woke thesis from one of these universities that they're so interested in:

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Trump Promises More Weapons for Ukraine; Trump Again Accuses Dems of Fabricating Epstein Files
System Update #487

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

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Tonight, President Trump campaigned repeatedly on denouncing Joe Biden's policy of arming Ukraine in its war with Russia and vowing to end the war as soon as he got into office. Like so many of his promises, none of this happened, and now Trump, rather than ending Biden's war policy, is doubling down on it. With the NATO chief in the White House today, the supreme militarist Mark Rutte, Trump announced a new plan to arm Ukraine by sending the weapons through NATO, which he claims will pay for them. We'll see. A report in the Financial Times today also says Trump told Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy to try to use missiles to strike the key Russian cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Imagine if Russia had told a proxy of theirs, “We'll give you weapons, and we want you to strike New York, Los Angeles, and Washington.” This came after Joe Biden and his transition out of the White House for the first time authorized Ukrainian strikes inside Russia. Trump's policies are wrong and dangerous for the exact same reasons Biden's policy was in Ukraine, as we went over many times when he was president, and it's crucial to examine why that is and what Trump is doing. 

Also, when Trump first addressed the anger among his own supporters for having announced that he was closing the Epstein investigation with zero disclosures forthcoming, he did so by waving his hand and instructing everyone that this topic was far too trivial and insignificant to merit any attention, and he thus directed everyone to move on and simply stop talking about it. Some obeyed Trump, of course, but many did not, and he was thus compelled to return several times to address the obvious 180 his administration has done with regard to whether the various issues in this case would be investigated and whether the documents suitable for publication would be disclosed. 

But each time Trump has tried to calm his angry base with additional statements, he has only made things worse. How long can this charade go on? We'll examine the latest. 

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One of the most significant policies of the Biden administration was the decision unanimously supported by every single member of the Democratic Congress, but also a majority of members of the establishment Republicans as well, to arm and fund the war in Ukraine. There were a lot of reasons why people objected to that, especially people on the right-wing populist faction who were supporting Trump. One of them was a cost issue, but another was just how dangerous it was. 

Why was Russia our enemy? Why are we making them our enemy? Why are they claiming that the war in Ukraine, which is about who governs the various provinces in the east of Ukraine, has anything to do with the lives of American citizens? And also, Russia is a nuclear power, which has made clear that they regard this war as existential to their national security. Something that the CIA has long said all the way back to the Bush administration, when Victoria Nuland and Condoleezza Rice wanted to put Ukraine in NATO. The head of the CIA under Obama, Bill Burns, who was in the Bush administration as well, wrote a memo that ended up being leaked by WikiLeaks, which basically said, Ukraine and NATO is a red line for Russia, not just for Putin and his supporters, but for even liberal anti-Putin critics, everyone in the entire political spectrum in Russia regards any NATO influence or presence in this country on the other side of its border – that was twice used to invade Russia in the 20th century, killing tens of millions of Russians in two world wars – obviously a very sensitive part of their border that they consider it existential, whereas the West does not. 

Putin was asking that the U.S. and NATO agree that Ukraine will never be a NATO member and the U.S. under Biden refused. And that was at least part of the reason why Putin then went into Ukraine. There were others. We've been over these many times, but Donald Trump had been steadfast in his opposition to Biden's policy of arming the war in Ukraine and promising repeatedly that as soon as he got into office, he would just tell each of them to cut it out, would threaten each or hold sanctions over their heads or whatever he had to do and the war would end very, very quickly. None of that has happened. Trump has increasingly come to blame Vladimir Putin principally for that, despite the flamboyant conflict he had in the White House with Zelenskyy. 

He's now done a 180 on the question of Ukraine as well. He is now announcing a massive influx of weapons from the United States to Ukraine that he intends to put through NATO, claiming that NATO countries are going to buy it from the U.S. through some unknown mechanism. NATO countries are already saying, “We're not going to wait for these weapons to get here. We're just going to send them to Ukraine, knowing that the U.S. is going to replenish our stockpile.” 

For all the talk about how Trump was splitting with Western Europe and questioning the value of NATO, here is the NATO chief, Mark Rutte, in the White House today. He's one of those EU maniacs who just want war in every way. When Trump went to the NATO summit a couple of weeks ago, Mark Rutte was so grateful that Trump had signaled that he was going to start funding and arming Ukraine again that he actually sat there and flattered Trump in the way that Trump loves them most. He actually called him daddy – you're kind of like a daddy. Sometimes, if the two sides aren't doing what you want, the daddy has to come and impose discipline, calling Trump daddy in front of the cameras. But of course, knowing that, although pretty embarrassing, that's how you can flatter and ingratiate yourself and then start influencing Trump. 

Today, the NATO chief was at the White House next to Trump and that's when Trump announced this new policy. Here it is. 

Video. Donald Trump, Mark Rutte, White House. July 14, 2025.

This claim that NATO agreed to 5% is through accounting smoke and mirrors. All they did was expand the definition of what “defense spending” includes. So it includes, in large part, the amount of money they've been pouring into the war in Russia, that they've been sending to Ukraine, but it also includes things like they can build infrastructure and, as long as they can demonstrate it has some connection to the military, that gets counted as military spending. 

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Is There Evidence of Epstein's Ties to Israel? Yes: Ample. Brazil's Chief Censor Orders Rumble to Ban US Citizen and Turn Over Data
System Update #486

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

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President Trump last week reacted with anger and dismissiveness when a reporter asked his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, at the White House, whether Jeffrey Epstein had connections with a foreign or domestic intelligence agency: “That's too trivial to even discuss,” Trump decreed. For her part, AG Bondi said she had no idea whether Epstein had any such ties, as if it were the first time she ever heard of that or considered it, and said she'd get back to us with the answer. Do not hold your breath. 

Then, after Tucker Carlson over the weekend said, at Charlie Kirk's Turning Points U.S.A. Conference, that he believes Epstein has ties to Israeli intelligence – something he said everyone in Washington knows – the attacks on Carlson were as intense and unified as anything I've ever seen. Former Israeli Prime Minister, Neftali Bennett, issued a carefully worded but enraged denial toward Carlson, vowing that he "won't take it anymore." 

Is there evidence that the serial pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein had ties to the Israeli government and its intelligence agencies, such as the Mossad? In a word: yes. Note that I did not say there was ‘proof’ – that's different – because only the U.S. government can show us the definitive evidence about this question, one way or the other, something that bizarrely they simply refused to do. We'll review all that evidence linking Epstein to the Israelis, not so much to prove that Epstein was an Israeli agent since we can't do that, but to demonstrate that there is very ample ground for asking that question and demanding the Trump administration show us what they have on this topic and all topics related to Jeffrey Epstein. 

Then: Just last week, President Trump imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian products, in part, he said, because Brazil's Supreme Court and its chief censorship judge, Alexandre de Moraes, have been attacking the free speech rights of American citizens and American companies. Note, Trump said he was attacking the free speech rights of American citizens and American companies. Trump was referring at least in large part, if not exclusively, to Rumble, which was blocked from all of Brazil by Moraes for failure to obey his censorship orders. Now, as if to prove Trump's point, Moraes issued one of the most draconian orders yet, clearly defying Trump and provoking him into further action. We'll cover all that.

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There are a lot of issues swirling around the Epstein case, and there have been for quite a long time, but I have always said, going back years – and this year leading up to the expectation that the Trump administration would finally give us the answers that its key officials had long been promising – that the most significant unanswered question, at least one of them, was whether Jeffrey Epstein had ties with or worked with or for an intelligence agency, foreign or domestic. 

The reason that's an important question is an obvious one. Namely, that intelligence agencies want as much dirt on people as they can get. That's why they spy on people. It's why they invent invasive surveillance technologies. The Israelis are masters of this. Most of the most pernicious spying programs, like Pegasus, emanate from Israel. The Israelis are notorious for using intelligence against “their allies,” like the United States, spying in person and spying digitally. 

Jeffrey Epstein was obviously somebody who had access to the most elite circles of the most powerful people who spent a great deal of time with him, consorting with him, staying with him, visiting him, flying with him, going to his island, even after he was convicted of soliciting minors for prostitution and having sex with minors. 

How is that even possible? You know somebody has been convicted or pled guilty to using minors as prostitutes, minors who can't consent, who are basically raped if you have sex with them, which is what Jeffrey Epstein did, and then you say, come to my house, I'm going to fly with you on your plane, I'm going to be your friend, I'm to spend a lot of time with you. Of course, all of that finally came to a head in 2018 when the evidence became overwhelming of all he had gotten away with and all the questions swirling around him, the U.S. government indicted him and then he allegedly committed suicide in prison. 

So, there have been a lot of questions, but, to me, the biggest one has always been if he was working with or for any foreign intelligence in part because his wealth was massive, clearly that of a multibillionaire. No one knows where his wealth came from. He was working as a teacher at a private high school, the Dalton School, even though he had no college degree, and then suddenly appeared out of nowhere as one of the world's richest people and couldn't explain to anybody what was the source of his vast wealth. He had cameras in all of these homes where all of this sex with underage people was taking place. It's exactly the kind of thing that any intelligence agency would die to get their hands on, especially if they have leverage over him; that's the one thing you would want from him, that kind of information. 

When Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino and the Trump administration announced they were closing this case because they found nothing incriminating, they ran to Axios, of all places, and leaked a memo on Sunday night announcing to the public that they found nothing incriminating. There was no blackmail. He definitely killed himself. No, there was no client list, even though they repeatedly said there was. But one thing they did not say is whether he was working with or for foreign intelligence agencies or domestic intelligence agencies, which is something that people have been asking for a long time. They didn't even address it. That's not one of the things they denied. They didn't even bother to address it, and so a very conscientious reporter, who I believe works for the New York Post, went to the White House during one of President Trump's press briefings, where his cabinet was, including Pam Bondi, and he asked Pam Bondi exactly that question. This is where Trump erupted with anger and said, "Move on, this is not even worth talking about.' And Pam Bondi basically said, "I don't know, never thought of it.". 

Here's just a reminder of what happened.

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