Fox News host Tucker Carlson kicked off his Thursday night program by blasting the media for supposedly allowing a “news blackout” on President-elect Joe Biden, seemingly ignoring the fact that President Donald Trump has not made any public remarks and has barely been seen in a full week.
In recent days, despite the president refusing to accept the results of the election while leaning on long-shot lawsuits he hopes will overturn Biden’s victories in several key states, Biden has begun the process of picking his White House staff, starting with longtime aide Ron Klain as White House chief of staff.
While the president-elect has made a handful of speeches over the past few days and held a press conference, he has faced some criticism—largely from conservative media—over his lack of public accessibility. Additionally, Fox News hosts have complained that the media hasn’t pressed Biden during his press availabilities on his transition plans and Cabinet picks.
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“So what has Joe Biden been up to lately?” Carlson asked on Thursday night. “We are told that Joe Biden is our president-elect. Supposedly he’s going to shuffle into the White House in January along with something called a mandate. If that’s true, what exactly is he going to do with this mandate? That’s an interesting question. It might be worth asking, but almost no one is asking.”
After complaining that the “news media is busy swarming Rudy Giuliani”—who has been peddling unhinged and baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud on behalf of the president—“because he has questions about some of the voting that took place last week,” the Fox News star then claimed that the media is purposely protecting Biden.
“The Biden people are fine with this,” he added. “They don’t want to deal with the media either, so they are not dealing with the media.”
Noting that a Politico reporter pointed out that the Biden team had “no regular transition briefings” immediately after Biden’s projected victory, Carlson exclaimed that this “is a break with tradition and it’s worrisome.”
“So what exactly is going on behind his news blackout veiling Joe Biden from public view? Well, pretty much exactly what you would expect is happening,” Carlson continued, going on to criticize Biden’s Klain appointment.
While dinging Biden for supposedly hiding from the public despite making multiple public appearances in recent days, the far-right primetime star made no mention of that fact that Trump has largely remained confined to the White House for the past week.
Outside of a brief appearance at Arlington National Cemetery for Veteran’s Day—he made no public remarks—the president hasn’t been physically heard from since his unhinged speech last Thursday in which he falsely claimed he was the clear winner of the election while spouting crazed conspiracies.
Carlson’s grousing about Biden supposedly breaking with tradition may also strike some as quite strange considering that Trump has refused to concede the election despite the networks—including Fox News—calling the election for Biden on Saturday morning and Biden on track to win 306 electoral votes.
