Tucker Carlson Supports Russian Bio-Weapon Disinformation

US media is report­ing that Fox News star Tuck­er Carl­son con­tin­ues to advance pro-Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion, this time alleg­ing that the US is run­ning secret bioweapons labs in Ukraine and that the U. S. is the one attack­ing Rus­sia with a dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign. Accord­ing to an MSNBC report:

March 10, 2022 Tuck­er Carl­son once again used his tony spot atop Fox News’ prime­time line­up to advance some con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about the Russ­ian war against Ukraine. This time it was a twofer: 1) the idea Amer­i­ca was run­ning secret bioweapons labs in Ukraine, and 2) that the U. S. is actu­al­ly the one attack­ing Rus­sia with a dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign, rather than the oth­er way around. Vic­to­ria Nuland, Under Sec­re­tary of State for Polit­i­cal Affairs in the Biden admin­is­tra­tion, tes­ti­fied this week before the Sen­ate and dis­cussed bio­labs in Ukraine. Right wingers say this is proof that Vladimir Putin isn’t lying — and that the U. S. appar­ent­ly has been fund­ing secret weapons research in Ukraine. But as even a Fox News’ own Jen­nifer Grif­fin explained tonight to Sean Han­ni­ty, “those are Sovi­et-era bio­labs that U. S. has been engaged since 2005 in try­ing to help Ukraine con­vert the research facil­i­ties safe­ly.” Any­way, back to Tuck­er Carl­son, who spent a long time on his show talk­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ty the U. S. was involved in ille­gal bioweapons research in Ukraine. And dur­ing this dis­cus­sion he advanced the idea that it’s the U. S. and not Rus­sia engag­ing in “dis­in­for­ma­tion.” “It is a clas­sic Russ­ian tech­nique to blame on the oth­er guy what they are plan­ning to do them­selves, that is what Vic­to­ria Nuland said,” Tuck­er Carl­son said after play­ing a clip of her tes­ti­mo­ny. “We almost laughed out loud. So what you are say­ing, Vic­to­ria Nuland, if, for exam­ple, you were fund­ing secret bio-labs in Ukraine but want­ed to hide that fact from the peo­ple who were pay­ing for it in whose name you are doing it, then you might lie about it by claim­ing the Rus­sians were lying about it. In oth­er words, you might mount a dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign by claim­ing the oth­er guy was mount­ing a dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign. Is that what you are say­ing, Vic­to­ria Nuland? It’s pret­ty fun­ny. What is not fun­ny is that this is all entire­ly real.” Except, as Fox News’ own Jen­nifer Grif­fin explained less than an hour lat­er, “it” in this case is not, actu­al­ly, real. Watch Tuck­er Carl­son’s com­ments above, and Griffin’s expla­na­tion of the facts below:

Read the rest here.

the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed in Feb­ru­ary that Russ­ian media was claim­ing the Unit­ed States was devel­op­ing bio­log­i­cal weapons in a net­work of labs in Ukraine.

GIOR cov­er­age on Tuck­er Carl­son has included:

• We report­ed ear­li­er this week that Carl­son was con­tin­u­ing his efforts to blame the US and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion for the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine while echo­ing Russ­ian talk­ing points on the caus­es of the conflict.

• We report­ed last month on Tuck­er Carl­son’s role in Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da efforts dur­ing the inva­sion of Ukraine, includ­ing one Carl­son broad­cast where his com­ments were sub­ti­tled and re-broad­cast by RT, the Russ­ian state-backed media outlet.

• A recent­ly pub­lished Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report doc­u­ments Tuck­er Carl­son’s role in a new and devel­op­ing alliance between US con­ser­v­a­tives and Euro­pean nation­al­ists, seen as a poten­tial vehi­cle for Russ­ian influ­ence operations.

Yes­ter­day, we report­ed com­ments by a US Repub­li­can con­gress­woman alleg­ing what she describes as the “Putin wing of the Repub­li­can Party.”