1 year ago
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On Thursday, 21-year-old Jack Teixeira of suburban North Dighton, Massachusetts, was arrested by the FBI in connection with a number of classified documents posted to an online forum. On Friday, Teixeira, who is currently an Airman 1st Class in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was charged with one count of unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information, and one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents. The 11-page criminal complaint makes it clear that Teixeira is charged under 18 U.S. Code § 793 for acts of espionage.
Also on Thursday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that Teixeira was “white, male, christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime.” Greene went on to say that the U.S. government is the real enemy for “waging war in Ukraine, a non-NATO nation, against nuclear Russia without war powers.” In a follow-up tweet, Greene described Teixeira as a fall guy for “exposing the truth about Ukraine” and said that “the same people that want to take away your guns, are waging war, in a foreign country, without permission from congress.”
On Thursday evening, Tucker Carlson not only defended Teixeira, but claimed that he was a whistleblower being singled out for “telling the truth” about Ukraine. Because of this, claimed Carlson, Teixeira is being treated "like Osama bin Laden, maybe a little worse." Bin Laden was shot in the head, then buried at sea, and he was probably dead even before he was shot. So just possibly his treatment is a bit rougher than being arrested at home while wearing gym shorts.
Carlson then went on to read figures from online documents. Except that he skipped the documents Teixeira actually uploaded and went straight to a laughable photoshop from Russian media that showed Ukraine losing seven times as many soldiers as Russia. This, said Carlson, was how Teixeira had revealed that “Ukraine is losing the war.”
Carslon and Greene are not alone. Because the first response of the right to a racist, antisemitic loner who fetishizes guns and obsesses over violence is to pull him in and make him a hero. Just like they did with Kyle Rittenhouse.
