Political strategist and former Trump staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin said she believes Tucker Carlson‘s latest shocking text revelation shows someone who’s “deeply grappling with both racism and an internal battle for his soul.”
Griffin served as White House Director of Strategic Communications and Assistant to President Donald Trump in 2020, and is now a co-host on ABC’s The View.
“So, there was always this idea among Republicans that Tucker was maybe playing a character on TV. The rage-filled, you know, kind of race — I mean, quite racist — angry, angry White man act,” Griffin said on Wednesday’s The View. “I knew him for maybe 10 years, and there was a time he was fairly normal, and not a hate-filled person. But the texts that have come out — and people are saying these newest texts are why Fox ultimately parted with him — is it shows that that’s who he privately was.”
Griffin recounted Carlson’s text that was unveiled by The New York Times, describing his thoughts as a mob of people beat a young man who may have been with Antifa, the anti-fascist organization that has clashed with Trump supporters.
The text message was time stamped on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington,” Carlson wrote.
A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it.
Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?
“He admits that he’s rooting for this person to be harmed solely because he disagrees with his political views,” Griffin said. “He uses an outright racist remark up front —
Co-host Sunny Hostin interrupted to add, “He said, White men don’t fight like that.”
“Yeah, ‘White men don’t fight like that,’” Griffin added.
Griffin said the end of the text showed a glimmer of Carlson’s moral sense beginning to show through.
“And then at the end he’s like, ‘but why do I reduce people to politics?’ You see his conscience barely kicking in,” Griffin said. “And I think it just reveals that the most powerful man in cable news for the last, however many years, is someone who’s deeply grappling with both racism and an internal battle for his soul.”
Griffin continued, “And how many people he was able to influence and radicalize is scary.”
“Fox knew this about him. When people show you who they are, you believe them the first time,” Hostin said.
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