Tucker Carlson went to bat for Kellyanne Conway and the Trump administration on Fox News Tuesday night.

During an interview with Elite Daily’s John Haltiwanger — who believes the press should “shun” Kellyanne Conway over alleged lies she has fed them — The Daily Caller founder argued that lying is typical of presidential administrations, and it is the duty of journalists to discern the falsehoods from truths.

WATCH:

“Let me ask you the obvious question,” the Fox News host posed to Haltiwanger. ” I think there have been some falsehoods coming out of this administration. I’m not here to defend them, but it’s not unique to them.”

“We just had eight years of an administration where they said things like, ‘if you want to keep your plan you can keep you plan.’ Not true. I’ve got a whole list of untrue things that the president has said — and not about  dumb things like attendance at a rally but things about, I don’t know the steel industry or Benghazi or the war in Iraq — I mean real things, and like past presidents he lied, but you don’t seem in the mood to shun him or his spokesman. Why is that?”

“Because he’s no longer president,”Haltiwanger responded. “Sure, he did a lot of things wrong.”

“You’re saying that lying is the red line for you, and I’m not disagreeing it’s very offensive when people lie to you, sure,” Carlson pressed onward. “But the last president lied a lot. your outrage seems selective.”

“You’re obviously more in tune with their politics, but can you be objective enough to acknowledge that maybe if you’re going to mad about it in one case, you should be made about it in all cases?”

“Sure I do agree with that,” Haltiwanger conceded. “But the amount of lying that is occurring within the trump administration is unprecedented.”

You can watch the entire interview below.

WATCH:

UPDATE (11:00am EST): an earlier version of this piece mistakenly identified Haltiwanger as NYU professor Jay Rosen. 

Follow Datoc on Twitter and Facebook