Tucker Carlson was amazed by Obama’s confusing speech

Former President Barack Obama delivered a keynote speech at Stanford University on Thursday emphasizing the importance of fighting disinformation due to its harm to democratic institutions. The next night, naturally, conspiracy peddler Tucker Carlson was more annoyed than usual by that speech and the man who delivered it.

Obama “is a total fascist who hates you,” Carlson insisted at one point.

Several times in the two-minute period, Carlson incorrectly framed what Obama said, only to then play relevant videos of the speech, which made the disconnect quite obvious.

“Obama argues that only his political opponents lie, and they must be stopped immediately,” began Carlson. Here’s what Obama told attendees:

“Everybody likes [Vladimir] In that regard, Putin and Steve Bannon understand that people need not believe this information to undermine democratic institutions. You have to flood the public squares of a country with enough raw sewage, you have to ask enough questions, sow all sorts of dirty things, and sow conspiracy theories that make people stop believing what they say. what else. (In 2018, Bannon actually told a Bloomberg reporter about his strategy to “flood the area with bad stuff.”)

However, Carlson did not refer to Bannon’s past comments to provide useful context. Instead, he reacted this way:

“Oh, so the people who disagree with Barack Obama aren’t just saying the wrong things — they’re pouring raw sewage into our country. So this guy isn’t just a liberal. In fact, he was not generous at all. He’s a total fascist who hates you and wants to stop you from talking, or otherwise”.

That’s not all. Obama, the Fox News host added, “wanted to censor anyone who disagreed with him and now he’s just coming out and saying it.”

Carlson later played this clip of the 44th president:

“While content censorship can restrict content distribution is clearly dangerous, it doesn’t go far enough. Users who want to spread misinformation have become experts at speeding up what at least published company policies allow, and to those margins, social media platforms have the tendency to not want to do anything. Not only because they don’t want to be accused of censorship, but because they still have a financial incentive to keep as many users as possible.”

Carlson’s response was, again, exaggerated: “So me and my friends at the Aspen Institute need to have complete control over every word that’s uttered, or it’s not democracy.” That is the case he is doing. That’s the case they’re all doing.”

All of this is par for the course for Carlson, as even his attorneys have successfully argued that he should not be taken seriously due to his tendency to exaggerate and “disobey comments.” literal meaning”. However, when the topic itself is informational and how misinformation spreads, Carlson’s framework for it becomes particularly rich.