PSA: Correcting a lie

Created
Fri, 21/04/2023 - 04:00
Updated
Fri, 21/04/2023 - 04:00
Philip Bump takes a look at the Ukraine claims coming from Tucker Carlson based upon Jack Texeira’s leaked documents. They are based upon altered documents as illustrated by independent analysis by Bellingcat: It is unusual for a newly announced Democratic candidate to make Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on one of his first stops on his media tour. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s long-shot bid to wrench the party’s nomination from President Biden is more usefully seen as a conduit for undermining Biden’s political strength than as a viable pathway for Kennedy himself. And if you are engaged in undermining Biden even unwittingly, Carlson is happy to give you some airtime. Given each man’s track record, it was inevitable that the resulting interview would include some misinformation. Carlson’s history of false claims about the Biden administration and Kennedy’s about vaccination gave them a lot of possible jumping off points. But instead the most interesting baseless claim to emerge during the conversation instead centered on Russia. “Nobody talks about this. There’s 14,000 Ukrainian civilians who have died but 300,000 troops. Russians are killing Ukrainians at a 7-to-1 to 8-to-1 ratio,” Kennedy claimed. “They cannot sustain this. What we’re being told about this war is just not true.” Where did Kennedy get those astonishing figures? Well, the source for the ratios was likely the person to whom Kennedy was talking: Tucker Carlson. Last week, Carlson made almost exactly the same point on his show. “The second thing we learned from these slides is that … Ukraine…