That by itself is not surprising. Intelligence agencies should certainly be expected to be tracking communications involving foreigners linked to the Russian government, and it would not be surprising for even U.S. citizens with strong ties to Putin to be under some sort of surveillance. If you or I email with Putin’s scheduler, the odds are good that the National Security Agency will be aware of that interaction thanks to its near-certain monitoring of that person.
What the NSA is not supposed to know is who we are, assuming that you, like me, are a U.S. citizen. The identities of Americans swept up in surveillance of foreign nationals are supposed to be kept hidden (“masked,” as the vernacular has it) unless there’s an intelligence need to figure out who we are. That’s the mystery of the Tucker Carlson situation. Did someone in the government alert Carlson that his communications had been intercepted? And, if so, how and why did they know?
All of this came to light when Carlson made the extraordinary accusation on his show that the NSA was “monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.” He said he learned this from a whistleblower. Then, using his claim that the “Biden administration” was spying on him, he warned his viewers that the administration would surely not hesitate to spy on them as well.
When he made this claim (one that no one, or even at his own network, has confirmed), the spectrum of disbelief was already obvious. There is no reason to take Carlson’s claim about being spied on punitively at face value, given his track record and given the lack of evidence offered in its defense. There is every reason to assume that communications he sent had been collected, given his public outreach to foreign officials. It was that middle space that was uncertain from the outset: who knew and how.
But because Carlson is a leading figure in the right-wing media universe, his initial claim (like other unlikely initial claims in the past) was hailed by some as proof positive of President Biden’s efforts to stamp out his political opponents. However dubious Carlson’s claims might have been, they reinforced the idea that Biden wanted to punish wrongthink, and so they were embraced. That so many in the media, myself included, pointed out that the claim did not make much sense and lacked any actual evidence was all the more reason for the right to line up behind Carlson.
The Axios report detailing the specific outreach that might have triggered the collection of his electronic messages was published Wednesday night. Almost immediately, it was used to argue that Carlson had been proved right, as though the salient question was simply whether Carlson might have had communications collected by the NSA and not that he had alleged a government plot to submarine his television show. It was the villagers rising to the defense of the boy who cried wolf by pointing out that, in fact, wolves do exist. Fine, but that’s not really the point.
It’s important to note that we’ve seen this same pattern over and over and over again. We have repeatedly seen arguments that have deep emotional roots on the political right presented as proven — even when it’s obviously not the case — based on cherry-picked or otherwise limited evidence. It works both affirmatively — to prove a shaky point — and contradictorily, in seeking to dismiss someone else’s claim as disproved.
The investigation of any connection between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election, for example, was based on numerous interactions between members of that campaign and Russian actors, including one adviser being told about electronic information that was in Russia’s possession. But the inquiry was dismissed as an effort to undercut Trump’s presidency based on a handful of text messages suggesting bias against Trump (despite a later review upholding the predication for the investigation) and because of a flawed warrant obtained to surveil a former campaign official who had been previously identified as a possible recruitment target by Russian agents.
There was Trump’s assertion early in his presidency that the government had tapped phones at Trump Tower. This was disproved repeatedly, but — like the Carlson claims — the fact that some communications involving a Trump ally had been “unmasked” by the government (that is, the anonymity that’s supposed to protect U.S. citizens had been removed) was used as hand-waving evidence that Trump was right about being under surveillance. Rooting through an endless stack of material, someone finally found something that everyone agreed was sufficient proof to satisfy their gut feeling.
This is part of it, too: digging through the entire garbage dump to find the one thing that catches the light just right. Watching right-wing media test out theories is like watching a primitive artificial intelligence algorithm being chewed on by a computer. You see the false starts and the sanding off of rough edges. Trump’s insistence that the Russia investigation was a “witch hunt” was far older than news reports about those text messages or that warrant. But after holding up various ideas on Fox News and on conservative websites, it was those that eventually were agreed to provide the required proof.
The best example in recent months was Trump’s desperate effort to claim that rampant fraud had occurred in the 2020 campaign. Over and over, theories were elevated and presented as proof of that gut feeling; over and over they were revealed as hollow, misleading or wrong. It was a good example of another habit of Trump’s, throwing out as much nonsense as possible with the understanding that people need to view only one claim as credible for his point to stick. He just needs that foothold of well, it is weird that ... to have cover to push forward. So he lifts up every thing with even a tiny glint and hopes that it’s the thing that either becomes the agreed-upon proof of his point or serves to convince at least a few people that he might be right.
This is why there’s an “audit” of the vote results in Maricopa County, Ariz. It is explicitly an effort to root through cast ballots to find something that will bolster Trump’s point. There’s no other reason for it. This is why Trump allies want to see every second of footage from the Capitol on Jan. 6 and to know the name of the security officer who fatally shot Ashli Babbitt on that day. These are piles of information to root through.
Over and over, we see how this works: Using email attachment file names to accuse Anthony S. Fauci of misleading the public. Using one study (and ignoring myriad others) to claim that Trump was exonerated on his claims of the utility of hydroxychloroquine. Using the presence of one character at the Capitol to claim antifa infiltration. Or, stretching further back: using hacked emails to discredit climate science.
Any bit of nuance, real or manufactured, becomes a crack into which uncertainty can be wedged. It’s a bait-and-switch (or, for the logicians among us, a sort of motte-and-bailey): shifting what’s being asserted or defended to more favorable territory and then declaring victory.
The point here is not that the question surrounding Carlson’s NSA claims is entirely resolved against the Fox News host. Now, as at the outset, there is a question of what Carlson learned and how he learned it. The point, instead, is that the important claim made by Carlson is the one about government intent, not the one about the NSA collecting communications. Reinforcing that the latter might have occurred does little to nothing to bolster the former, much less to “prove Carlson right.”
More broadly, the point is that this keeps happening, that right-wing media personalities try to wave away real questions or real issues by elevating isolated, insufficient claims. In some cases, it’s probably a result of incuriosity or credulousness. In others, it’s explicitly dishonest.
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Analysis | Tucker Carlson's NSA claims are the latest example of the right wing's rhetorical bait-and-switch - The Washington Post
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