Tucker Carlson is a “dangerous” “nitwit” – at least, so says liberal political commentator Ron Reagan Jr., the youngest child of the late President Ronald Reagan, whom conservatives and the Republican party have long worshiped.
Reagan Jr. appeared on Jim Acosta’s CNN show Saturday to talk about the current state of the GOP, which Acosta says is “pretty simple: because Republican leaders won’t take out the trash in their party, it keeps piling up.”
When Ronald Reagan was president 1981-1989, he believed in what Acosta called a “big tent” Republican Party, “where many parties could come together and co-exist.” But looking at today’s GOP, “where Republicans are getting death threats or getting censured like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for pursuing the truth over Trump,” Acosta wondered what President Reagan would have to say about that.
“My father would be profoundly disappointed. He would be ashamed of his Republican party, which is no longer his Republican party, of course. And he would be deeply concerned,” Reagan Jr. said. “We only have two parties, practically speaking, in the country and one of them has become undemocratic, one of them is tilting towards autocracy, one of them is spouting Russian talking points at this juncture. This is, as you said, a national emergency. My father would have seen that very clearly.”
Of particular concern to Acosta is the drastic difference between the Reagan years and today’s GOP, which is showing itself in the debate within the Republican party about standing up to Russia in support of democracy in Ukraine. Acosta showed a clip of Republican congressman Mike Turner of Ohio’s recent interview on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in which the frequently controversial host flippantly wondered why the U.S. would take Ukraine’s side and not Russia’s. “I’m totally confused,” he smirked.
As Turner said, “Ukraine is a democracy, Russia is an authoritarian regime that’s seeking to impose its will on a validly elected democracy in Ukraine, and we’re on the side of democracy,” Carlson’s grin slid into a look of puzzlement.
“It’s a shame that anybody is listening to a nitwit like Tucker Carlson but just because he’s a nitwit doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous — and that goes for some of his colleagues, shall we call them, in the Republican party, elected officials that seem to be embracing Vladimir Putin, who, let’s be clear, is an autocratic thug,” Reagan Jr. said.
Speaking of Putin, Reagan Jr. continued: “This is a man who has his political enemies murdered. This is not somebody that my father, for instance, would have been comfortable dealing with. He reached out to Mikhail Gorbachev because he saw somebody he could actually deal with, and he recognized a person who was trying to bring the Soviet Union in for a soft landing as it collapsed.”
Reagan Jr. went on to say that he doesn’t think the current Republicans holding office “really have much of a foreign policy sense at all. And, again, all of this poses a real danger to our country. Our country is terribly divided now, and there are a good number of people who would take Vladimir Putin’s side over our own president. And, I don’t want to throw around words like ‘traitor’ or ‘traitorism,’ but that’s coming pretty close.”
You can watch that portion of Acosta’s interview with Reagan Jr. below.