Tucker Carlson fabricated claims about protest outside his home. 11NOV18

WHAT a little girly man tucker is! Hey tucker, what would you do with balls if you had any????

 Tucker Carlson fabricated claims about protest outside his home.

Tucker Carlson is a white supremacist troll with a platform on Fox News.

It’s no surprise that he would fabricate elements of a peaceful protest that occurred outside his house, in an effort to gaslight us. What is surprising, and destructive, is that so many fell for Tucker’s lies and took the bait, cementing his false narrative of the protest.

Here’s how journalist Alan Pyke described the protest:

About a dozen protesters visited Tucker Carlson’s home Wednesday evening with signs, a megaphone, and a tambourine. The incident, video of which was taken offline shortly after being posted, has prompted an aisle-crossing outcry – fueled in part by Carlson’s own significant embellishments of what occurred while he wasn’t home. I was there for the entirety of the 10-minute demonstration, and can report in detail what actually happened.

A group numbering 13 or 14 protesters trailed by four protest observers, some in the bright green hats often worn by trained First Amendment legal observers when monitoring police-protester interactions, walked up Carlson’s street just after dark on Wednesday.

One of the protesters knocked firmly on Carlson’s front door three times then trotted back down the steps to join the rest of the group in the street. This person did not throw their body against the door, as Carlson has claimed to newspapers. A police report on the incident makes no mention of damage to the Carlsons’ front door from the three stiff knocks, contradicting Carlson’s claim that the demonstrators had cracked the door. — thinkprogress.org/...

That’s what it was, a bunch of people singing a few chants aided by a tambourine.

In Tucker’s telling, they “cracked” his door and threatened to bomb his house. In actual fact, one protestor knocked on his door, and others justifiably held Tucker accountable for inciting violence and white supremacist terror in the form of pipe bombs that were mailed to several Democrats two weeks ago.

The police laughed off Tucker’s claim that his door had been “cracked”.

Before breathlessly condemning protesters, we expect public and media figures to investigate Tucker’s claims about the protest. They did not. Instead, senior editors and commentators used their platforms to apologize to Tucker and burnish their both-sides credentials. They did this without taking a moment to fact-check Tucker’s claims. They commiserated with Tucker over his fabricated claims, forgetting that a few days prior, Tucker was on national TV, laughing about pipe bombs sent to several Democrats in a mass assassination attempt.

Here’s a tip for anyone who wants to rush to defend right-wing provocateurs like Tucker Carlson or Sarah Huckabee when their comfortable dinners are interrupted, or when they have to listen to chants outside their door.

First, resist your urge to empathize with fellow DC mandarins. Instead, focus mindfully on the hateful comments and policies these people direct at immigrants and brown/black people. If you need some motivation, remember that people like Tucker, McConnell and Huckabee have spent their entire careers playing footsie with violent fascists who target the weak. Imagine your own family were brown/black/immigrant being harassed by someone emboldened or egged on by them.

Then and only then, consider what to do. Perhaps before you rush to their defense, demand that they apologize to all the poor, vulnerable families who have been subject to dangerous harassment by their followers.