It’s not often that I have anything nice to say about Fox News, but the video clip above is just glorious.
There’s a longstanding myth that anti-Trump protesters are largely paid professionals doing it for the money rather than from sincere belief. Like most such myths, there has never been any evidence for it, but that doesn’t stop people from believing.
A few days ago, on January 17, Fox’s Tucker Carlson interviewed a man who claims to run a group called Demand Protest, which supposedly pays people to go to rallies and demonstrations. Carlson delivers possibly the best opening I’ve heard for any interview, ever:
So, um, this is a sham. Your company isn’t real. Your website is fake. The claims you have made are lies. This is a hoax.
And that’s just in the first 60 seconds.
The Demand Protest guy makes a show of defending himself against these accusations, but as the interview goes on, it becomes obvious he’s just messing around. He says he was inspired by people like Julian Assange “and Peyton Manning,” which took my brain a second to process because he says it so casually.
Eventually the hoaxer explains:
It’s pretty darn easy these days to just say whatever the heck you want on national TV and have it passed off as truth. It’s pretty incredible to me how easy it was to get the coverage we got.
Indeed it is.
Two and a half hours till Inauguration. Now more than ever, let’s keep our eyes open for the truth.
Brian D. Buckley 