On a fine spring morning, as then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson prepared to enter the ranks of First Amendment combat to decry censorship, he learned that his volley on behalf of freedom would go unheard.
On Wednesday — one year later — Carlson biographer Chadwick Moore posted on his website the monologue Carlson would have used to open the April 24, 2023, show.
The episode never aired. After Carson sent the script to the network, he was told by Fox News that he had been canceled.
“Carlson planned to tease the first part of a one-hour interview with former Capitol Police chief Steven Sund. In that interview, which Fox owns and refused to air, Sund revealed federal law enforcement and Democratic members of Congress were aware of impending violence during the January 6 election integrity protests but vetoed assistance to cops on the ground,” Moore wrote.
“More chilling, and perhaps darkly ironic, Carlson planned to discuss members of the government lobbying to have his show taken off the air,” he wrote.
Since then, Carlson has continued to speak, defying the conventions of mainstream media as he wishes, as with his interview with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
But a year ago, he had a powerful response to comments from Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York labeling his efforts to champion Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion defendants as inciting the kind of violence that government needs to suppress.
“We have very real issues with what is permissible on air,” Ocasio-Cortez said on former White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s MSNBC show on April 23, 2023.
“And we saw that with Jan. 6, and we saw that in the lead up to Jan. 6. And how we navigate questions — not just a freedom of speech but also accountability for incitement of violence — this is the line that we have to really explore through law as well,” she said.
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“I believe that when it comes to broadcast television, like Fox News, these are subject to federal law, federal regulation in terms of what’s allowed on air and what isn’t,” the congresswoman said.
“When you look at what Tucker Carlson and some of these other folks on Fox do, it is very, very clearly incitement of violence — very clearly incitement of violence. And that is the line that we have to be willing to contend with,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
The monologue Carlson never gave pushed back hard, according to Moore.
“Sandy Cortes did just an interview with Jen Psaki, in which she demands that authorities pull our show off the air,” Carlson wrote in the script, using one of his favorite nicknames for Ocasio-Cortez.
“Members of Congress aren’t allowed to talk like this,” he said. “The constitution of the United States prohibits it. American citizens have an inalienable right to critique and criticize their political leaders. Our politicians are not gods. They’re instruments of the public’s will. They serve the rest of us, not the other way around.
“For that obvious reason, politicians can never censor our speech or try to control what we think. That unchanging fact is the basis of our founding documents, of our political system and of our personal freedoms.
“As a former government official who claims now to be a journalist, Jen Psaki should know this, and defend America’s foundational principle. She refuses. Instead, Psaki nods along like a fan as Sandy Cortez calls for law enforcement to shut down news programming.”
Carlson wrote that it was “distressing to watch this. The last thing America needs is more public figures saying radical things. What if we came on the air five nights a week and called for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes to be hand-cuffed and carted away because we don’t like her political views? We could certainly do that. We never would, because it would be terrible for our [country].”
After denouncing extremism, he wrote that “because the words of our leaders matter, let’s consider the substance of what Sandy Cortes is saying. She’s demanding that our show be canceled because the things we’re saying are quote, ‘very clearly an incitement to violence.’
“Is this true? Even accounting for the fact that people tend to hear what they want to hear, it is not true. It’s a lie, as anyone who watches this show knows. We are opposed to violence, not just philosophically but in practical terms.”
Carlson turned to the Capitol incursion.
“January 6th was a violent insurrection they tell us — and on the basis of that claim, they’ve turned the war on terror against America’s own citizens,” he said. “We believe that is a false characterization, as we’ve said many times. January 6th was not an insurrection, which is why no one has been charged for that crime. No guns were brought into the Capitol. No plans to overthrow the government have ever been found.
“It was not an insurrection. But there was violence. A Capitol police officer called Michael Byrd executed Ashli Babbit, an unarmed protester, and was praised for doing it by politicians in both parties.”
After discussing the murky role of Ray Epps – who eventually received probation for his role in calling for the Capitol to be stormed – Carlson turned to his interview with Sund, which never aired.
However, the script that Moore shared had some text and notes as a guide to what would have aired.
“CLIPS HERE OF SUND SHOWING THAT [then-House Speaker Nancy] PELOSI AND THE PENTAGON AND FBI KNEW VIOLENCE WAS COMING, BUT DID NOTHING TO STOP IT. KEPT HIS GUYS FROM PROTECTING THEMSELVES. HID INTEL. KEPT THE NATIONAL GUARD FROM ASSISTING. IN OTHER WORDS, THEY ENCOURAGED VIOLENCE,” Carlson’s note read.
“We also spoke to Sund about intel and FBI officers in the crowd [CLIP HERE: MORE UNDERCOVER FEDS THAN HE’S EVER SEEN AT A DEMONSTRATION],” he wrote.
Carlson later sat down with Sund in August for his show on the X social media platform.
Ep. 15 Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund reveals what really happened on January 6th. Our Fox News interview with him never aired, so we invited him back. pic.twitter.com/opDlu4QGlp
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 10, 2023
The Western Journal reached out to Fox News for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
