important to understand here is there s a direct line of what we traditionally think of as the most important dangerous aspects of a cult and what s going on with the mass radicalization today in society. you can draw that line between the cult a consult leader and attributions of a cult leader and attributes of an authoritarian leadership like donald trump. also you can draw a line between the tactics, and that s the most important thing, the tactics that are being used to take advantage of people s vulnerabilities and how they hold him there is the same and the exit strategy is also the same. is what you see currently with trump it s so hard to talk about this honestly, diane. we re talking about american neighbors. do you think some of your neighbors in this country are basically been sucked into a cult, a political cult? well, in short, yes.
you re helping the democrats! why did you use that word? you re playing into the other side s characterization. i was talking about people who commit violence against cops and you and i both agree if you commit violence against cops, you should go to jail. but you re not a terrorist, you know, you re not. cruz v carlson is the cringest example of a daily tug of war. among the majority of the people of the 1/6 issue, they know it was violent and republicans were at fault. but at this point 4 in 10 say president trump bears at least a modern amount for the riots. you have anderson cooper saying it was the minority that understands the election was legit and you have this ensiters by trump. it was an intermural fight. how much to blame trump.
that s the whole story, right? hannity s role, what hannity knew about trump s state of mind. fox never explained it to the viewers. so i guess that s how rupert and lackland murdoch want it to be. they re the owners. they re the bosses. they don t want to look inward. they don t want to know. they want to reckon with their own role in radicalizing the grand old party, and in republicaning the trump presidency, by the way. they helped take down trump. they don t want to recon their responsibility, something others do. let s bring in amanda carpenter, political comment irto the bulwark. amanda, you are a former staffer. you might know what he was doing and thinking. what was he thinking? to me it s not ted cruz s humiliation, which is what most of the media is focusing on.
but you know what? no other fox shows followed up on that fact. they never covered the cruz interview. that will go in history books about what happened in the republican party and fox books just pretended it didn t happen. this is what happens on fox, they ignore their own role in driving the gop. this week the house s january 6th committee asked sean hannity for help because he knows a lot of what s going on inside the trump white house before and after the riot but he s never told viewers about it. hannity kept his own audience in the dark about his interactions with trump, about his messages to trump s aides. what did hannity know and when did he know it? he s never told his viewers so the committee wants to know. the committee published a few text messages and requested his assistance. but fox only mentioned it on air very briefly and as the washington post pointed out, fox never mentioned why the committee wants hannity s help.
but when right wing people do it, you can t call them that. it s just something bad that happened. to me that is the real takeaway of that interview because we know how the politics of this play out. you can t do that because the democrats politicized this word, it s the politics. how does that play out? we ve seen the example. how that plays out is president trump orders troops and tear gas for people who were on lafayette square. but when his guys go to the capitol you get sweet messages about how we love you, please go home and everyone s whitewashes what happened. has what happened in that interview and that s what scares me the most. i don t think it s funny. i don t think it s funny at all. i think it s worrisome. we should take it very seriously because this is how tucker carlson is guiding the message for the republican party on that net work. yes, for the gop. cruz is there trying to distance himself from the violence, while tucker is giving the rioters a big bear hug. it s