Politics

Talking Points, Assemble! — CNN Hosts Launch Scripted ‘You Are White Rage’ Attack Against Tucker Carlson

Tucker and Stelter

Screenshot/YouTube

Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
Font Size:

CNN anchors Brian Stelter and Brianna Keilar put up a united front as they attacked Fox News host and Daily Caller co-founder, Tucker Carlson.

Both Stelter and Keilar lashed out at Carlson after he ridiculed Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley’s claim that, in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, he wanted to better understand “white rage.” (RELATED: Tucker Torches Milley Over Focus On ‘White Rage’: ‘Have You Read Anything Recently About Winning Wars?’)

“You are white rage, Tucker. You are. And you know it,” Stelter tweeted in response to Carlson, who had noted that even as Milley argued that he and everyone else in the U.S. military should strive to better understand “white rage,” he had failed to define it.

Just hours later, Keilar used the exact same words to attack Carlson on “New Day.”

“Milley got the job because he is obsequious. He knows who to suck up to and he is more than happy to do it. Feed him a script, and he will read it. Hard to believe that man wears a uniform. He’s that un-impressive. He is not just a pig, he’s stupid,” Carlson said on his Thursday evening broadcast.

“Unimpressive, he calls him. What does he mean? Milley is not immune from criticism but look at the stripes on his sleeve. Ten of them, we counted. Each one of those overseas service bars is six months deployed. That is five years. That is more time than Tucker Carlson spent at his probably-third-choice boarding school,” Keilar responded. “Tucker Carlson didn’t serve. His biggest achievement is having nine lives in the world of cable news. Making a bowtie famous, and getting away with promoting conspiracy theories, night after night after night.”

Keilar then played a clip of Tucker’s conclusion on the topic:

“The question is, and this is the question that we should be meditating on, day in and day out. Is how do we get out of this vortex, this cycle, before it’s too late? How do we save this country, before we become Rwanda?” Carlson asked.

“That isn’t just a dog whistle. It’s a white whistle,” Keilar objected, cutting away from the second part of Carlson’s question: “What should we be teaching our children so they can live in the country that you want to live in, a country full of many different kinds of people, many different, but who actually like each other? Who are happy to work together, who are united ultimately by the core fact which is they are all Americans?”

Keilar also left out Carlson’s main point: “You cannot maintain a multiracial democracy unless people of every color have exactly the same rights and responsibilities under the law and are considered of precisely same moral value under God.”

Instead, Keilar skipped to another hand-selected clip:

“So, he reads about white rage as if it’s totally real. It’s a medical condition. And by the way, since it’s a medical condition, at what age can you catch white rage, by the way? Most of us assume that our 2-year-olds were just teething. Now, we know it’s their whiteness that’s making them so angry,” Carlson said.

“He pretends white rage doesn’t exist. He is white rage,” Keilar ended with the same conclusion her colleague Stelter had reached. “Don’t sell yourself short, pal.”

WATCH:

Later in the show she spoke with former Green Beret and Republican Florida Rep. Michael Waltz, repeatedly pressuring him to use the term “white rage” to describe rioters at the Capitol.

WATCH:

Waltz had objected to a West Point seminar — which was not a required course, but he claimed it had raised some concerns — where cadets were taught that “white rage” was a reactionary response to black advancement and progress.

Keilar pivoted to footage from the Capitol riot and pressed Waltz to agree that it demonstrated “white rage.” “What do you call that, if you don’t call it white rage?” she asked, then later: “Is that white rage? Look at the people in that crowd!”

Tom Elliott, founder of Grabien media, ran the numbers on the catchphrase “white rage” — he determined that the talking points had indeed been disseminated.