This is Where the Truth Goes to Die

How Ben Smith got played by Tucker Carlson at the Semafor-Knight event this morning

“This is why you are considered correctly a propagandist and not a journalist.” No, that wasn’t Ben Smith, the co-founder of Semafor, a new global news site, admonishing Tucker Carlson, the lead anchor for Fox News, during a “pre-launch” event held in Washington, DC this morning to explore the future of news. It was Carlson, who is a much more practiced cable pugilist than Smith, putting him down midway through their conversation. Sadly, and exactly as many of us expected, Carlson used the platform offered him by Semafor and its co-sponsor, the Knight Foundation, to do what he does every night: twist facts and arguments to make his brand of American white nationalism seem like common sense against the deplorable efforts of the liberal media and the Democratic party.

For just over 20 minutes Carlson got to parade a series of self-aggrandizing statements with barely any contradiction or successful interjection from Smith. To wit, he told the audience such chestnuts as “the fact that there’s only one TV channel in the entire country, a country of 350 million people that allows actual free speech,” “the center of the Democratic electoral strategy going forward” is to replace “legacy Americans” with more “obedient”…