TUCKER CARLSON'S DUMBER-THAN-USUAL ARGUMENT: TRUMP WAS CHARGED WITH FELONIES BECAUSE HE'S A MAN OF PEACE

On Twitter last night, Tucker Carlson responded to the arraignment of Donald Trump with a paranoid theory that's even more credulity-straining than most of Carlson's other public pronouncements. According to Carlson, Trump was targeted for arrest and lifelong incarceration seven years ago, when he said the most unsayable thing: that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

Ep. 3 America's principles are at stake pic.twitter.com/eJNSUVvvqY

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 13, 2023

About the arraignment, Carlson said:

These were the first steps in a process that is designed to put Donald Trump behind bars for the rest of his life.

Cable news carried every moment of it live. "It's unprecedented!" they told us with what looked like shock. But they weren't shocked. They knew this was coming. Everyone who's paid attention knew it was. What just happened was always going to happen.

It's been inevitable since February 16, 2016.

... seven and a half years later, we can point to the precise moment that permanent Washington decided to send Donald Trump to prison. Here it is. It's from the Republican candidates' debate in Greenville, South Carolina:

[TRUMP:] "We should have never been in Iraq; we have destabilized the Middle East. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none and they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction."

... Can he say that? Well, he said it anyway, and by saying that, he sealed his fate. That was the one thing you were not allowed to say because it implicated too many people on both sides, which on this topic is really just one side.

No, really, that's the theory. Forget the fact that Barack Obama ran for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination and won in large part because he said he'd always opposed the Iraq War. Forget the fact that Obama won reelection in 2012, and is not in prison now. Forget the fact that Trump said he'd withdraw the last troops from Afghanistan and nearly won the Electral College a second time, while President Biden made good on Trump's promise, for which every Carlson fans hates him. Yup, Carlson wants you to believe that Trump called out the WMD lie in 2016 and "permanent Washington" responded with a vow to imprison him for that reason and that reason alone.

"Permanent Washington" declared Trump Public Enemy #1, Carlson says, yet Trump somehow thwarted the best efforts of the most powerful people on the planet by winning the presidency. Trump was impeached in 2019, but these incredibly powerful people who hated him more than anyone on earth somehow couldn't arrange a conviction in the Senate. Then, in his 2021 impeachment, once again they somehow couldn't arrange a conviction, which would have made it unlawful for him to seek the presidency a third time -- even though they agree that he's extraordinarily threatentening to them. Jailing him for life is the only solution! (Which is why Establishmentarian Nikki Haley is talking about pardoning him if he's convicted, which would free him to run for president in 2028.)

This has 435,000 likers on Twitter, in case you're wondering whether anyone could actually fall for it.

Perhaps you've already figured out why Moscow's favorite American political commentator chose this particular take on the Trump indictment. If you don't understand, Carlson essentially spells it out:

Have you seen [America]? ... How are things looking? Well, they should look great -- the federal government spent six and a half trillion dollars last year. That's more than any government has ever spent ever. So at the very least you would expect pristine public roads. Oh, no. That's not what you see when you drive around this country. There are potholes and Jersey barriers everywhere. Looks like Tegucigalpa before the Chinese decided to rebuild the infrastructure of Honduras. We don't have China buying our roads, so they're falling apart.

You'd think the people you would pass on your road trip would look happy and prosperous; again, this is a very rich country. But a lot of them don't. Quite a few appear to be strung out on drugs. You see them shuffling by shuttered storefronts in small towns. And you wonder as you see all of this: Where did all the money go? It's certainly not here?

Well, it's in Washington. It's in Fairfax and Loudoun counties, and in leafy, perfectly manicured Northwest D.C. And, of course, a huge chunk of it went to Ukraine, to Zelenskyy and his friends. Not because you voted for that -- you didn't vote to give it to them. You never would. But because Joe Biden and his many allies, from Chuck Schumer to Mitch McConnell to Paul Ryan and every single news anchor on all of television, all of them believe that Ukraine -- its borders, its future, its infrastructure -- are all more important than the town that you live in.

They sincerely think that, and it's obvious everyone in power thinks that -- except for Donald Trump.

Whatever else you say about him, Trump is the one guy with an actual shot of becoming president who dissents from Washington's long-standing pointless war agenda. And for that, that one fact, they are trying to take Trump out before you can vote for him. And that should upset you more than anything that's happened in American politics in your lifetime.

It's pro-Putin horseshoe-ism. I'm sure it will be eagerly retransmitted on Russian state television. And it's nuts.

The political establishment might not love Trump, but much of it fears him strictly because he's seen as the least electable Republican. A large portion of the Establishment would vastly prefer a second Trump term to the reelection of Joe Biden. That's the clear intent of the Establishmentarians of No Labels, who think Trump would lose to Biden one-on-one and believe he'll need a little help from a candidate meant to split the Democratic vote.

But Carlson fans presumably believe what's in this monologue. Maybe they take it "seriously but not literally." I think they believe it literally. And that's insane.