Justin Trudeau Says Under Oath That Russia Funds Tucker Carlson

Two days ago, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau testified under oath at a public inquiry into foreign interference that right-wing media stars Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson are both financed by the Russians, saying “we’ve recently seen that RT (Russia Today) is currently funding bloggers and other YouTube personalities of the right, such as Jordan Peterson. Other names that are well known, Tucker Carlson as well, in order to amplify messages that are destabilizing democracies.”

Trudeau produced no concrete evidence of his allegation, and of course many on the right jumped on this fact to call him a liar, but the idea that the Russians are funding right-wingers in the West is not a novel one. Just read the United States Department of Justice’s recent indictment of right-wing YouTube dipshits like Tim Pool and Benny Johnson where the DOJ alleges that their company, Tenet Media, took nearly $10 million in payments from “investors” who were actually very poorly concealed Russian intelligence agents. This indictment comes as part of a larger operation by the Biden administration to tackle Russian efforts to influence the 2024 election.

The Russiagate stuff during the Trump administration was utterly insane, but lefties’ general dismissal of it as a nothingburger was extremely wrong. It was understandable to reflexively oppose the sheer madness of MSNBC and other liberal programming writing their own fictional John Grisham novel around Vladimir Putin and Trump’s bromance, but Trump “wrote” in The Art of the Deal that he wanted to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. His interest in doing business there is not exactly new.

And neither is Russian interference in Western domestic squabbles. As Peniel Joseph aptly titled his article for CNN, “America’s racism has long been Russia’s secret weapon.” When nine black teenagers were falsely accused and convicted of rape in Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931, Dmitry Moor, a Soviet propaganda artist, created the famed poster, Freedom to the prisoners of Scottsboro! The U.S.S.R. exploited this injustice for all it was worth, using the major issue of the day to drive a wedge between Americans on each side of our eternal racial divide. The notion of them still doing this kind of stuff in 2016 or 2024 is a dog bites man story.

Except in 2024 there’s more division to be fostered on the other side of America’s racial coin, as the fractured and unhinged right-wing has fully detached itself from reality, enabling itself to swallow any kind of lie hook, line, and sinker, so long as it aligns with their lizard-brained prejudices. Ever since the “Freedom Convoy” in 2022, Justin Trudeau has been warning that the Canadian right-wing is becoming like their southern neighbors, and apparently, he meant this allegation in more ways than one.

If Tucker Carlson is being funded by RT, it would hardly be surprising. Losing a power struggle at Fox News isn’t likely to make you many well-financed friends looking to compete with Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. The fact that Carlson’s show landed at fucking Twitter of all places should give you an idea of what the demand for his programming looked like. It’s a similar situation to Trump going bankrupt six times running a rigged business. At a certain point of failure, the big money in America dries up. Where else are you gonna go?

This is absolutely the kind of explosive allegation that Trudeau must eventually provide some evidence for, and it is imperative that our media hold this powerful man to account. Now to take a big sip of coffee and read coverage from people who for four years loved nothing more than to tell us dramatic tales of Russian meddling in Western affairs.

Not a single thing from Canada’s Globe and Mail, National Post, nor the Toronto Star. Nothing in the New York Times or Washington Post either. As far as I can tell researching it this morning, the only major North American outlet covering Trudeau’s testimony under oath is zombie Newsweek. I completely agree with not printing allegations you have no evidence of, but these are not coming from some random schmuck yammering to strangers on the corner of the street. How hard is it to write “Prime Minister of Canada says under oath, without evidence, that the Russians fund Tucker Carlson”? Are Carlson’s lawyers really that scary?

I swear half of my media critiques never start out as one. I’m just trying to gather as much info as I can on a subject to try to write something of value, and when the outlets who have branded themselves as The Truth™ fail at this simple task, it makes me mad. If Trudeau’s allegation is correct, this is huge news, and it does support the Biden administration’s assertion that there is a sprawling Russian operation to spread lies through a lot of right-wing media organs well trained in the practice. This operation is so extensive that is allegedly includes a man who not that long ago was hosting America’s highest-rated cable news show, and we’re less than three weeks out from the election. If people are getting “information” from Russian intelligence agents, which the DOJ produced some pretty compelling evidence in their indictment that they are indeed, they need to know while that information can still have an impact.

If Trudeau is lying, then that’s also a huge story because then this trends towards the darker part of this subject, where there is a clear and concerted effort by some powerful individuals to cheerlead us into war with Russia, and a lie like this could absolutely be viewed as another plank set down in that march to hell.

It’s a delicate balance, trying to stem the tidal wave of disinformation in the West while trying to parse which lies are sourced domestically or at the Kremlin, all while ensuring that we don’t overreact and start World War III over what ultimately amounts to some high-grade shitposting that’s only effective because Western societies are so fundamentally broken. But the media staying silent in the face of one of the most powerful men in the West making wild allegations will not help make people more informed. Let’s hope we see some follow-up reporting done on Trudeau’s assertion next week, because enough allegations from credible individuals and institutions are out there at this point that there must be some kind of meat on this bone.