Politics

TheDC’s Tucker Carlson takes on 9/11 ‘truthers’ [AUDIO]

David Martosko Executive Editor
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Daily Caller editor-in-chief Tucker Carlson’s Monday interview with radio host Scott Ledger has been burning up Twitter. The hour-long conversation about the “Truther” movement pitted Ledger, a believer in conspiracy theories about 9/11, against Carlson, a no-nonsense journalist who doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

“I deal in facts,” Carlson told Ledger, “and you don’t have any.”

Truthers, he said, “tend to give off this feeling of, like, great frustration. Like ‘I see the truth, no one else gets this. Everyone should see this but I’m the only one who does.’ … It makes me sad that otherwise smart people could fall for nonsense like that.”

Through the courtesy of Bubba Army Radio, the syndication network that carries “Dangerous Conversation with Scott Ledger” and “The Bubba The Love Sponge® Show,” we’re proud to share the audio.

“I’m not defending the U.S. government,” Carlson explained. “I’ve lived in Washington for 27 years. My dad worked for the U.S. government. I hate the U.S. government in a lot of ways. … I’m merely saying a single thing, which is there is no evidence that the U.S. government, its employees, Americans of any kind had anything to do with 9/11 other than responding to it.”

“Nineteen hijackers did this,” he said, “al Qaida has taken credit for it, Osama bin Laden has said ‘I did this,’ [and] we have a pretty clear understanding of where the money came from. We know a lot about this, right?”

Pressed by a conspiracy-minded Ledger to account for the claims of assorted self-described experts and self-anointed eyewitnesses, Carlson won the day.

“What do you make of the fact that a number — close to ten different people — received messages or calls from the airplanes, from the hijacked airplanes that flew into the Pentagon, and the Trade Center buildings, and into Shanksville, Penn., from passengers saying ‘we’ve been hijacked by Arab men’?

“Is that all made up? Were those people part of the conspiracy too? What do you make of that?”

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