REX TILLERSON DID CORRECTLY CALL THE PRESIDENT AS HE SAW HIM

 AN EXAMPLE OF WASHINGTON D.C. POLITICS

 

…Two, well known Washington fixtures of Washington politics: Hunter Biden and Tucker Carlson

 

Washington friendships can be dependent on their politics

 

It's pretty amazing that someone like the Fox personality that has the number one rated show on the networks, while he continually criticizes the current U.S. President.

This individual, and his wife, at one time were very good friends with the current president’s son, Hunter Biden.

In fact, at one time, Tucker Carlson and his wife were looking to get their son in a better position with his college application to Georgetown University. They then decided to turned to a well-connected Washington friend who had an even better-connected father.

“I realize you don’t really know Buckley,” Susie Carlson wrote via email in 2014 to Hunter Biden, a Georgetown graduate and the son of the then-vice president. “Maybe you could meet or speak to him and he could send you a very brief resume with his interests and grades attached.”

Tucker Carlson had added that his son was a good squash player and an excellent fly fisherman. “He loves Washington for all the right reasons, I think,” Carlson added, “and really wants to go to school here.”

When Biden agreed to write a letter of recommendation, Susie Carlson added a heap of praise: “Tucker and I have the greatest respect and admiration for you. Always!”

Both the Carlsons’ past compliments to Hunter Biden may come as a surprise to many present-day viewers of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” the highly rated prime-time Fox News show.  Especially since the show’s host has repeatedly ridiculed Hunter Biden for seeking to profit off his family connections and at times, for his history of personal troubles and Hunter’s drug use.

The interactions of the Carlson’s and the president’s son reveal the extent to which Carlson was willing to turn on a former associate.  Especially as he thrives in a hyper-partisan media world in which conservatives have made Hunter Biden a prime target for attack during his father’s presidency.

They also show how Carlson once sought to benefit from the elite political circles in Washington that he now regularly rails against as the “ruling class,” i.e: all the Democrats.

“When your dad is president, you get superpowers,” Carlson said in October 2021 during a segment about Biden pursuing a new career as an artist. “Maybe Hunter Biden will invent a new vaccine, next we will be required to take. Who knows? You never know. The sky is the limit when your dad is in power.”

Some emails between Tucker Carlson and Biden, saved on a device copied from a laptop that Biden purportedly left at a local computer repair shop in 2019. The Washington Post has verified many of those emails through a forensic analysis and corroborated additional messages, including the referenced correspondence with Carlson’s wife, with a person familiar with the communications.

Tucker Carlson, during a phone interview, said that he was once close with Biden, as he has stated on his show.

“Hunter Biden was my neighbor. Our wives were friends. I knew him well. I talked to him many times about addiction, something I know a lot about,” Carlson said. “And I’ve said that. I think that Hunter Biden is an addict and that’s why his life is falling apart, and I feel bad for him. I’ve said that many times, and I mean it.”

But Carlson has refused to discuss the emails, pointing to past claims by former U.S. intelligence officials that the laptop’s emergence in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign had all the marks of Russian disinformation.

“I can’t confirm these emails. The emails that you’re referring to were described by our intel community as Russian disinformation,” he said, adding that he doesn’t have access to the account so could not verify the emails. “So why would I? And I read that in The Washington Post.”

On his show earlier this month, Carlson hosted the owner of the computer repair shop where Biden purportedly left his laptop, the host stated: “Everyone’s admitting the laptop was not Russian disinformation. It’s real. It was Hunter Biden’s.”  Of course, how Carlson knows that it was Hunter Biden’s emails, and not Russian disinformation is beyond me.

A copy of the laptop hard drive was provided to The Post by Jack Maxey, an activist who received a copy of the hard drive from Rudy Giuliani back in 2020.  At the time, Maxey was working with Trump’s Stephen Bannon and his “War Room” podcast. 

Two security experts who did a forensic analysis of the data at the request of The Post were able to verify a portion of the emails as authentic communications. The emails cited in this report were either verified by the analysts or recently corroborated by a person familiar with the communications.

After articles surfaced in the New York Post in October 2020, The Washington Post had requested a copy of the material to independently assess.  They repeatedly asked Giuliani and Bannon for a copy of the data to review before the 2020 election, but the requests were always ignored. The Washington Post wrote about the New York Post articles at the time and, in March, began publishing reports based on its own review of the data.

The request for Hunter Biden to help Carlson’s son get into Georgetown came at a time when the Bidens and the Carlson’s were very close. “Tucker and I would be so grateful if you could write a letter or speak to someone in the Georgetown Admission’s Office about Buckley,” Susie Carlson had written.

Biden wrote back that he would be honored, and he agreed to prepare a letter to the president of the university. “I will do anything you would like me to do.”

Tucker Carlson then supplied a summary of his son’s attributes, hobbies and academic record. He added that his son was a compulsive reader, enjoyed the outdoors and spent a month on a sailboat.

The next day, Carlson sent a note of gratitude.  “I can’t thank you enough for writing that letter to Georgetown on Bucky’s behalf,” he wrote. “So nice of you. I know it’ll help.”

It is unclear whether Biden ended up writing the letter. It is also unclear whether Buckley Carlson got admitted into Georgetown, but he ended up attending the University of Virginia.  Buckley Carlson, is now the communications director for Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who did not respond to requests for comment.

Tucker Carlson has declined to comment about his request of Biden for a letter of recommendation, saying only that his son did not go to Georgetown.

After some portions of the email exchanges were previously made public, when Trump ally, Lin Wood, posted one of them on social media, liberals who had long questioned the authenticity of other emails rushed to point out Carlson’s hypocrisy.

In reality, for years there was a chummy relationship between Biden and Carlson, two on-the-rise figures who became well-known fixtures in the Washington establishment.

It’s pretty amazing how because of Carlson’s increase stature and his exposure on Fox as a fan of the former president Trump, while constantly being against anything that President Biden says.  

It seems to show how the supposed previous friendship has turned out to have been so false.

I guess it’s just typical Washington D.C. politics.

Copyright G. Ater 2022