The Tucker Carlson Show - If You Dissent, They Will Come For You
Aired: 2023-12-07
Duration: 07:51


=== Why They Arrested Me (07:51) ===

[00:00:00]  Fast forward to your trial.
[00:00:02]  It turns out your crime was exactly what you said it was, posting a tweet.
[00:00:08]  So what happened then?
[00:00:11]  So they took me to the courthouse and because it was COVID, there were some delays.
[00:00:18]  I was in a holding cell.
[00:00:20]  They take off your handcuffs and put you in leg irons.
[00:00:26]  And then you just wait for your arraignment, go before the judge.
[00:00:30]  Even then, I still don't know why I'm being arrested.
[00:00:34]  They got a public defender on Zoom speaking for you.
[00:00:38]  And then...
[00:00:39]  Wait, you're in leg irons and you have no idea why you were arrested.
[00:00:42]  Yeah.
[00:00:42]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:00:45]  And not until I got a copy of the criminal complaint did I know what was going on.
[00:00:52]  At what point was that?
[00:00:53]  After the arraignment, and they let you go.
[00:00:56]  They take the leg irons off and they put you on the streets of West Palm Beach.
[00:01:01]  They didn't bring you home?
[00:01:02]  No.
[00:01:03]  Well, one of the guys I was in a holding cell with, he helped me make it over to the train station where I could grab a taxi.
[00:01:10]  Your new prison friends were helping you.
[00:01:12]  Exactly, exactly.
[00:01:13]  Yeah.
[00:01:13]  Do you join a gang?
[00:01:16]  No.
[00:01:17]  I'm sorry to make light of it.
[00:01:18]  I just don't know.
[00:01:19]  I mean, in the old America, this would provoke an uprising.
[00:01:22]  You can't do that.
[00:01:23]  You're not allowed to arrest people for criticizing you.
[00:01:27]  But the reaction to your arrest was very different.
[00:01:30]  Describe it, if you would.
[00:01:32]  Well, I mean, there was a lot of support, but, you know, I was on Rachel Maddow that night.
[00:01:39]  I mean, the left was really celebrating this.
[00:01:42]  They were celebrating.
[00:01:43]  They thought it was terrific.
[00:01:46]  To arrest you for making fun of Hillary Clinton.
[00:01:49]  Right.
[00:01:51]  I mean, you're from this country.
[00:01:52]  You grew up here.
[00:01:53]  Did that surprise you?
[00:01:54]  Yeah, I was pretty surprised.
[00:01:57]  But I got to tell you, after the left has sort of done a 180 since 2016.
[00:02:04]  So if they celebrated your imprisonment, why wouldn't they celebrate your execution?
[00:02:10]  Some of them would.
[00:02:12]  Clearly.
[00:02:13]  I think so.
[00:02:14]  What kind of support did you get?
[00:02:17]  Well, I got to thank you for you showcased my arrest on your show.
[00:02:25]  Might have been that night or the next night, and there was just— By the way, in the back of my mind, I thought, we're probably going to find out that Doug Mackey works for Al-Qaeda.
[00:02:33]  I mean, there's got to be a story.
[00:02:36]  Yeah, no.
[00:02:36]  I mean, a lot of people felt that way.
[00:02:38]  Well, it would have to be.
[00:02:39]  They can't arrest you for making fun of Hillary Clinton.
[00:02:42]  Anybody who learns the details of my case says, that's it?
[00:02:46]  You know, what's going on?
[00:02:47]  Like, the people that actually learned the details of the case.
[00:02:53]  But there was a tremendous outpouring from the American people.
[00:02:57]  People that maybe are conservative, but not necessarily.
[00:03:01]  People that support free speech.
[00:03:03]  Yes.
[00:03:04]  People that don't support an abusive federal government.
[00:03:08]  So.
[00:03:09]  Yeah, people opposed to fascism.
[00:03:11]  Speaking of it.
[00:03:11]  Antifa opposes fascism.
[00:03:13]  Did they come to your aid?
[00:03:14]  No.
[00:03:16]  Oh, they didn't?
[00:03:17]  No.
[00:03:18]  I'm thinking they're not sincere.
[00:03:20]  What about the ACLU?
[00:03:22]  They cheered on my arrest.
[00:03:24]  The ACLU cheered on your arrest?
[00:03:27]  Yeah.
[00:03:27]  On what grounds?
[00:03:30]  Because they said the, well, I don't think they care that much about the First Amendment anymore.
[00:03:36]  No, it's only the American Civil Liberties Union.
[00:03:40]  They were more interested in the idea that there was this effort to stop people from exercising their right to vote.
[00:03:49]  So they chose that.
[00:03:50]  They chose to support it on that ground.
[00:03:53]  So let's get to that claim, because that's the heart of it.
[00:03:56]  So Hillary Clinton, You know, whatever her faults, who really has become a vicious person, a hater, sort of dismisses out of hand that you have a First Amendment right to make fun of her.
[00:04:08]  And she does that by saying that people say all kinds of things about us, but his went from running a very deliberate effort to mislead people about where and how to vote, an effort to subvert the election because thousands of people who they targeted through their algorithms thought, oh, I can text my vote for Hillary Clinton.
[00:04:30]  Now, just again, to restate, you had no quote algorithms.
[00:04:33]  No.
[00:04:33]  Hillary Clinton has no idea what an algorithm is, needless to say.
[00:04:37]  So you were a solo operator.
[00:04:39]  You're one guy on your laptop.
[00:04:43]  But the claim is that you somehow stole people's right to vote.
[00:04:49]  Is there any evidence that that's true?
[00:04:52]  No.
[00:04:53]  Man, the government said that they didn't have to show any evidence of that at trial.
[00:04:57]  They said the fact that there was a conspiracy was enough.
[00:05:02]  They went around and interviewed people because they would have loved to put someone on the stand who didn't vote because they thought they could text their vote.
[00:05:10]  They couldn't find a single person.
[00:05:12]  They couldn't even find people that they went and looked up people that texted the meme, the number, supposedly, four years ago, and they couldn't even remember doing it or they thought it was silly and they wanted to see what would happen.
[00:05:24]  They actually interviewed people?
[00:05:25]  How did they know who these people were?
[00:05:27]  They subpoenaed their phone numbers.
[00:05:30]  Not really.
[00:05:31]  Yes.
[00:05:32]  And their voting records.
[00:05:35]  What did this effort cost?
[00:05:37]  I have no idea.
[00:05:39]  But millions of dollars.
[00:05:40]  It had to have cost that much.
[00:05:42]  What role did the Huffington Post play in this case?
[00:05:45]  They, well, so I was posting pseudonymously.
[00:05:50]  So they doxed me in 2018.
[00:05:53]  So you were not using your real name as many people don't, both on the internet and in literature.
[00:06:01]  And a Huffington Post reporter decided to reveal your true identity.
[00:06:05]  Yes.
[00:06:05]  Who was the reporter?
[00:06:07]  Luke O'Brien.
[00:06:08]  Luke O'Brien.
[00:06:09]  How did he find out who you were?
[00:06:11]  Just through some basically people that leaked my name to him, basically.
[00:06:18]  Disgruntled people or whatever you want to call it.
[00:06:20]  So because Luke O'Brien did this, you were arrested and faced 10 years in prison.
[00:06:27]  Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[00:06:28]  I mean, their criminal complaint basically was just using what Luke O'Brien did.
[00:06:35]  So it sounds like, in effect, Luke O'Brien, like so many journalists, is actually working for the National Security State in order to imprison and destroy people who dissent.
[00:06:44]  Could be.
[00:06:46]  Does it sound that way a little bit?
[00:06:48]  I have my suspicions, I guess.
[00:06:50]  Boy, you are from Vermont.
[00:06:54]  I'm tempted to ask you, how do you get there from here?
[00:06:57]  You have a right to be anonymous on the internet, obviously.
[00:07:00]  Luke O'Brien's supposed to be like a reporter or something, and he's spending his time trying to discover your identity because he doesn't like your politics.
[00:07:08]  What was the effect other than the federal indictment of being doxed by the Huffington Post?
[00:07:16]  It was very difficult, personally for me.
[00:07:19]  Very hard on my family, very hard on myself, and very hard on my friends.
[00:07:26]  So it was very difficult.
[00:07:28]  You know, I lost a lot at the time, but I think it was also.
[00:07:31]  So tell me what you lost.
[00:07:32]  So I lost basically just friends.
[00:07:35]  I had difficult relationships with family members.
[00:07:40]  And I just had to restart everything.
[00:07:42]  Because you were revealed to have said naughty things on the internet?
[00:07:45]  That's right.
[00:07:45]  Yeah.
[00:07:47]  Does sound kind of Soviet, doesn't it?
[00:07:49]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:50]  I think it does.