The Highwire with Del Bigtree - TUCKER, PUTIN, AND LEGACY’S WAR ON JOURNALISM

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

In light of the firestorm Tucker Carlson’s historic interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin has created, Del reflects on the danger of the mainstream media’s overwhelming success spinning news stories and why this may signal the end of freedom of the press.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

I'm going to predict that this evening we may have one of the biggest internet sensations of all times. Tonight, Tucker Carlson is going to release his interview of Vladimir Putin. I think it may just break the internet. This is him talking about that feat. Take a look at this. We're in Moscow tonight. We're here to interview the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. Since the day the war in Ukraine began, American media outlets have spoken to scores of people from Ukraine.

and they have done scores of interviews with Ukrainian President Zelensky. We ourselves have put in a request for an interview with Zelensky, we hope he accepts. But the interviews he's already done in the United States are not traditional interviews. They are fawning pep sessions, specifically designed to amplify

Zelensky's demand that the U.S. enter more deeply into a war in Eastern Europe and pay for it. That is not journalism. It is government propaganda. Propaganda of the ugliest kind, the kind that kills people. people. At the same time, our politicians and media outlets have been doing this, promoting

a foreign leader like he's a new consumer brand. Not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview the president of the other country involved in this conflict, Vladimir Putin. Most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine or what his goals are now. They've never heard his voice. That's wrong. Americans have a right to know all they can about a war they're implicated in. And we have the right to tell them about it because they're not. because we are Americans too. Freedom of speech is our birthright. We are not here because we love Vladimir Putin. We are here because we love the United States. We are not encouraging you to agree with what Putin may say in this interview, but we are urging you to watch it. You should know as much as you

can. And then, like a free citizen and not a slave, you can decide for yourself. Thanks. Well, we all watched just a few months ago when Tucker Carlson lost his job, was fired from Fox for not really towing the corporate line and running a story he didn't believe in. Well, now he's out on his own. He's using Twitter as a platform. I think it's fascinating. But there's a lot of people that are really hating on this idea. Why would he possibly think it was a good idea to interview Vladimir Putin? Shame on you, Tucker Carlson, seems to be the battle cry. Watch this. is trying to court the MAGA GOP in the United States. In fact, one of the leaders of the MAGA GOP is in Moscow tonight. It's the man you see here with the MAGA leader Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson.

I think what's really shocking about this is it was the way he kind of just walks right into Moscow and presents himself on a silver platter to the Kremlin doing the Kremlin's job of misinforming, disinforming the American population. This was Putin's mouthpiece in the United States. Somebody who had turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by Putin because they were happening far away. Tucker Carlson is in Moscow and just confirmed that he's going to be interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin. He argues that Americans have a right to know all they can about a war they're implicated in.

Do you have a comment on either of the interview or that allegation? Absolutely not. Absolutely not a comment or absolutely not that didn't happen? Absolutely not a comment to be more clear, period. Carlson is now just another far-right conspiracy peddler with a show on the internet. Well, there it is. He's obviously doing something incredibly wrong. This is not what the news is supposed to do. There are people calling for sanctions.

Some saying he shouldn't be allowed in the country. Exclusive, Tucker Carlson could face sanctions over Putin interview. I believe it's Bill Crystal had this to say. Perhaps we need a total and complete shutdown of Tucker Carlson, re-entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out, what is going on. Really? Is it that hard to figure out what's going on? A curious journalist is interviewing someone he's curious about. I mean, this is really, really out of hand. And I think that it smacks of destruction of journalism. So let me just remind everybody in case you were only

born yesterday. It used to be that we'd go out of our way, even to interview Putin. Here's all the people that have interviewed Putin before. They weren't called treasonous. you can see almost every major news outlet in the world tried to get that interview, wanted that interview, because it used to be we wanted to know him. And by the way, there was never a moment in there where Putin was ever considered our ally. He was always considered to be against America. But why did all of those people want to interview him so that we would know who he was? So we would know what his thoughts were.

So that maybe if he's lying, that maybe we could sense that. But should we really live in a bubble where we do not hear anything from the other side? where we're only allowed to hear from those that completely agree with us? I mean, I grew up believing that journalism was a space where we could interview anybody we wanted to, especially the worst among us. This is Barbara Walters with Fidel Castro. And then Dan Rather, who did he interview? Saddam Hussein.

Diane Sawyer, Charles Manson. I mean, why give that guy any time on screen? Larry King with Muammar Gaddafi. and then Peter Arnett with Asama bin Laden. That used to be what journalism looked like in the free country known as the United States of America. But now what we believe journalists should be doing is telling us what they believe

and only interviewing what they think is right. And in most cases now, it's exactly what our government wants them to say, you know, I dealt with this a little bit, just on a totally, on the little level I'm at, when I decided to interview Alex Jones. I got so much hate mail and emails from many of you that, you know, watch this show. I was quite shocked, actually, that you would be surprised that I would interview anybody. I hope that you're never surprised again, but here's just one of the emails to give you a sense.

I'm heartbroken, not just by the interview, but by the idea that Del Beatrice is aligned with all that Alex is spouting. I have many thoughts on this, but feel that articulating those thoughts here is not necessary, as undoubtedly others have expressed concerns than they had and have been ignored. They were. Del read one of those letters before the interview. His judgment could very well be the most damaging thing that has ever happened to the high wire. Well, if his ideas are damaging, don't you want to know why? Don't you don't want to know why he made those statements?

Don't you want to know what happened? I mean, it's incredible to me that we now live in a space of journalism where if you're interviewing somebody, you agree with them. I mean, do you realize how dangerous that is that we are now in a place where we are absolutely terrified of hearing from the other side? And when you ask is the public for us to think that way, what you're saying is, I don't trust my own mind. I don't trust my own ability to turn the television off if I don't want to listen to it or to listen to it with a critical mind and get my own understanding out of it. That's okay. It's a free country.

If you decide you don't want to listen to certain perspectives, that's you're right. But as journalists, we should not be keeping you pigeonholed only listening to one perspective, or we no longer live in a free country. We no longer have a First Amendment. We are in serious trouble. Let me remind you what John F. Kennedy said about this subject. We are not afraid to entrust the American people with the unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. for a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market

is a nation that is afraid of its people. He said that February 26, 1962. Well, we have a government now that is clearly afraid of its people. We've talked about the Twitter files. I'm not sure if you're aware that the Amazon files have now just dropped. Jim Jordan has been bringing a lot of attention to this during the congressional hearings. He tweeted this about the Amazon files. feeling pressure from the White House.

Internal docs subpoenaed by at Judiciary, GOP, and at weaponization indicate that at Amazon bowed down to Biden White House pressure to censor books. He has some examples. After the White House spent a week berating Amazon, what did the online bookstore do? Starting on March 9th, the same day as it's meeting with the White House, Amazon enabled do not promote for books that express the view that vaccines were not effective.

How did the Biden White House conclude that there was propaganda, and misinformation and books sold in Amazon's bookstore. The White House ran keyword searches for controversies, topics such as vaccine, and emailed Amazon when it didn't like how the search results appeared. In fact, this is the same guy that ran the Twitter files, ran these exact, you know, sort of siops, if you will, against Amazon, Andy Slavitt.

He was interacting. And they're incredible to watch these email exchanges because at first Amazon saying, I don't understand. What are you asking us to do? Are you asking us to like get rid of books that are on our website? Like what exactly? And he starts laying out a plan that when he does these searches that the books that are coming up,

obviously the most popular ones, the ones that everybody are reading, are not the ones our government agrees with. And you need to change that. You need to change that right away. And particularly they didn't like books talking about the fact that the COVID vaccine might not stop transmission. You do realize now, I hope, especially if you're watching this show,

that the vaccine doesn't stop transmission. And shows like mine got censored for telling you that from the very beginning. How did we have proof? We had FDA writing exactly that. But if you brought that truth, our government was afraid. They were afraid of people hearing that truth,

unable to handle that truth. And so instead, they won on television and said, if you question me, as in Fauci, you're questioning science. only two years later having to admit in a congressional hearing, yeah, that social distancing thing that destroyed your economy, locked you out of your jobs, yeah, that kind of just appeared out of nowhere, had no basis in science.

And that vaccine, I told you would definitely stop transmission. If you get it, if you get the vaccine, you'll catch it, you won't hold on to it, you won't get infected, and you will not transmit it. Everyone's protected. Total freaking lie. A little bit later, I'm going to be talking to Robert Roos, because he was master exposing that when he was. he got Janine Smalls to admit, well, we were just moving at the speed of science we never actually

tested to see if it stopped transmission. He's coming up later in the show. But what happens in a world where we only hear what the government allows us to hear, where we can only read what the government allows us to read? What happens is you are now living in a dystopian nightmare, or maybe it's something like China or North Korea or how about Russia? Is that what we want for ourselves in a world where the media is a propaganda machine for the government. I'll tell you what that looks like. You know how that works? You end up seeing stories that don't make any sense outside. Like if you're not in the bubble, you step outside, like, wait a minute, I'm not sure how that was a story. Recently, there's a headline and a photo that blew up, bombed that threat disrupts New York

court where Trump case is being heard. There's a huge protest outside. People had anti-Trump banners. No one is above the law. Trump is over. And believe me, this isn't. going to be a story about Trump. This is just about this massive protest, so big, in fact, that it appears that every news agency in the world covered it. We went online to just see how important was this story to mainstream media and all the newspaper outlets. And when we did a search and scroll down, look how many people carried that photo. Look how many, you know, headlines there were. I mean, it's like almost every newspaper in the world thought, oh my God, this protest has to be covered. This is amazing. This is news. This is

massive. Everyone needs to know about this. Well, how massive was it? Somebody decided to share a video from this massive protest against Donald Trump and bomb threat. There they are. Two guys. It appears four signs, I think, in general between the two of them. But all the press was there. Folks, I have news for you. When the press outnumbers the protest, you know you are part of watching propaganda. That's what that is. So we decide. We're going to be talking about this today. What world do we want to live in? If you're here in the United States of America, do you want to just give up being a beacon of light and hope for the world? A world where a journalist can interview whoever they want, whenever they want, however they want, even if the

person across them is lying through their teeth. We're going to allow you to decide by seeing that. Allow a journalist to have their opinion take it or leave it. It's called. It's called the freedom of speech. And it's called freedom of the press. When all of the press show the same stupid photo that is clearly

a manufactured lie, you have a problem. When all the press sound exactly the same, that is a sign that your freedom of the press is over, that you are now living in a dystopian nightmare that looks a little bit like this.

Hi, I'm Fox and Antonio's Jessica Headley and I'm Ryan Wolf our greatest responsibility is to serve our Treasure Valley communities the El Paso-Luss-Cruces communities eastern Iowa communities mid-Michigan communities we're extremely proud of the quality balanced journalism that CBS 4 news produces but we are concerned about the trouble and trying to be responsible one-sided news stories plaguing our country the sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media more alarming some media outlets publish these same fake stories without checking facts first.

The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media. More alarming some media that's policy that we are true without checking facts first. Unfortunately, some members of media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think. And this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy. It sure is. Folks, please tell everyone you know it's time to wake up. Those lone voices that are out there that seem like, you know, they're being said that their liars are spreading propaganda.

Those are the ones that maybe you want to listen a little bit closer to.