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Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former network host Bill O’Reilly had opposite reactions to Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin accusing retired U.S. Army Col. Doug Macgregor of being an “apologist” for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
O’Reilly for his part chose to target Fox News for having allowed the so-called “apologist” to push pro-Putin propaganda in the first place. To hear him tell it, the Fox News of the past wouldn’t have allowed this. But sadly, the Fox News of the past is mostly no more, or so he argued.
“One thing that hasn’t changed is Jennifer Griffin, who is a spectacular Pentagon reporter. And Jennifer got a little upset over the weekend,” he said Tuesday, describing the viral scene of her referring to Macgregor as an “apologist.
After playing a clip of her remarks from Sunday, he argued that her “gutsy” pushback contrasts sharply with what usually happens these days on Fox News and other establishment networks.
Jen Griffin, Trey Gowdy go off on guest Colonel Macgregor: ‘What he just said was so distorted’ https://t.co/BDe3DlQrat pic.twitter.com/1wjW0TobBl
— Conservative News (@BIZPACReview) February 28, 2022
“It used to be that propagandists would be slapped down hard, and now they’re not. Not just on Fox, but on every television news program,” O’Reilly said.
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s the network morning shows, the late-night comedians, the cable news across the board – two left, one right – propaganda is just spat out there and the people running the shows are just sitting there going like this,” he continued, nodding his head in mock agreement.
“You can’t do that! That’s a disservice to the American people. You’ve got to know enough about the subject that you are involved with as an anchor or a host, that if somebody says something that’s propagandistic, you challenge. And that is what Jennifer Griffin was doing.”
Carlson responded quite differently. While inviting Macgregor back onto his show during the Tuesday edition of Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” late Tuesday, he seemingly suggested that Griffin is the real propagandist — a propagandist for the military industrial complex, that is.
“We always start with retired Colonel Doug Macgregor. Unlike so many of the TV generals you see all day long, McGregor is not angling for a board seat at Raytheon. Unlike so many of the so-called reporters you see on television, he is not acting secretly as a flack for Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon,” he said.
“No, Doug Macgregor is an honest man. So we’re gonna start, in place of a long script tonight, with a conversation with Doug Macgregor about what is actually going on in Ukraine.”
Dovetailing back to Macgregor, was what he’d said actually “propagandistic,” or was it merely a truth that O’Reilly, Griffin and others like them refuse to acknowledge?
Speaking on Fox News’ “Sunday Night in America,” Macgregor had pointed out that Russian President Vladimir Putin has long complained about NATO’s encroachment into the territories adjacent to Russia.
“Well, Vladimir Putin is carrying through on something that he has been warning us about at least for the last 15 years, which is he will not tolerate U.S. forces or missiles on his borders. Much as we would not tolerate Russian missiles or troops in Cuba. And we ignored him and he finally acted. He was not going to allow Ukraine, under any circumstances, to join NATO,” he’d said.
Listen:
Despite O’Reilly’s complaints about “propaganda,” Macgregor’s point has been echoed dozens of times in the past by a spate of national security experts.
These experts include renowned diplomat and historian George Kennan, Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger and “leading geopolitical scholar” John Mearsheimer, among many, many others:
Most fascinating thing about the Ukraine war is the sheer number of top strategic thinkers who warned for years that it was coming if we continued down the same path.
No-one listened to them and here we are.
Small compilation 🧵 of these warnings, from Kissinger to Mearsheimer.
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 1, 2022
The first one is George Kennan, arguably America’s greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy.
As soon as 1998 he warned that NATO expansion was a “tragic mistake” that ought to ultimately provoke a “bad reaction from Russia”. pic.twitter.com/NHOxU5e1om
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 1, 2022
Then there’s Kissinger, in 2014 ⬇️
He warned that “to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country” and that the West therefore needs a policy that is aimed at “reconciliation”.
He was also adamant that “Ukraine should not join NATO”https://t.co/U4wjoTTjvA
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 1, 2022
This is John Mearsheimer – probably the leading geopolitical scholar in the US today – in 2015:
“The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked […] What we’re doing is in fact encouraging that outcome.” pic.twitter.com/tJCUlueMqb
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 1, 2022
This is Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was “the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat […] since the Soviet Union collapsed” pic.twitter.com/lpDREJzspX
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 1, 2022
This is Clinton’s defense secretary William Perry explaining in his memoir that to him NATO enlargement is the cause of “the rupture in relations with Russia” and that in 1996 he was so opposed to it that “in the strength of my conviction, I considered resigning”. pic.twitter.com/mXwR81dpsB
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 1, 2022
This is Noam Chomsky in 2015, saying that “the idea that Ukraine might join a Western military alliance would be quite unacceptable to any Russian leader” and that Ukraine’s desire to join NATO “is not protecting Ukraine, it is threatening Ukraine with major war.” pic.twitter.com/hrDLoVOFnc
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 1, 2022
Yet these days, anyone who dares to make this point is automatically labeled a Putin “apologist” or even a traitor. The accusations are stunningly similar to those that were leveled during the Russian collusion delusion hoax and conspiracy theory.
Another point that’s been dismissed by critics is the fact that last December, Russia requested written “security guarantees” from U.S. officials.
According to non-establishment journalist Michael Tracey, Putin’s “core grievances” were “Ukraine’s potential accession into NATO, the already-existing moves to facilitate ‘interoperability’ between the Ukraine military and the US/NATO, and the conversion of Ukraine since 2014 into a de facto US military outpost.”
Writing for Substack, Tracey argues that U.S. President Joe Biden could have allayed these concerns and thus potentially prevented the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Yet the president chose to completely ignore Putin’s request.
This, the journalist writes, raises the following question: “[W]hy did the Biden Administration refuse to even consider giving Putin a ‘security guarantee’ on this key issue, to the point that they would evidently prefer to see a war of the kind that’s now been unleashed?”
And why, Tracey adds, have “the relevant decision-makers in the Biden Administration, the think tank-industrial complex, the war-drumming media” and others like Griffin and O’Reilly “been so adamantly opposed to even contemplating the possibility of giving Putin an assurance that NATO would not expand to Ukraine?”
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Writers and editors can be contacted at writers@bizpcreview.com with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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