Tucker Carlson says President Trump caved to U.S. intelligence agencies - here's why

Tucker Carlson said that President Donald Trump caved to U.S. intelligence agencies and to the forces that are trying to destroy our Democracy by turning back on his comments from the summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"The president buckled"

"Well as the rage storm swirled," Carlson said on his show Tuesday, "the president bowed to the inevitable, genuflecting before U.S. intelligence agencies whose judgement must never be questioned and recited the now obligatory oath of loyalty to the spy bureaucrats now in charge of our country."

Carlson played the video of Trump walking back his comments by explaining that he meant to say "wouldn't" when he said "would" about Russian meddling in the U.S. elections.

"So that's the hostage tape," Carlson said, as he threw his pen down on the table.

"The president buckled to criticism, and that's not what they're saying but that's exactly what happened, he buckled," he explained. "And that happens, this is politics after all."

"People who have made America weaker, and poorer, and sadder"

"What is amazing, and unusual and ominous, is who made him buckle," Carlson continued. "The people yelling the loudest about how the Russians are our greatest enemy and Trump is their puppet, happen to be the very same people who have been mismanaging our foreign policy for the past two decades."

"These are the people who have made America weaker, and poorer, and sadder," he added after a list of foreign policy failures. "The group whose failures got Trump elected in the first place. You would think by this late date they would be discredited completely and unemployable, wearing uniforms and picking up trash by the side of a turnpike somewhere.

"But no they're not. They're hosting cable news shows, they're holding high positions of influence at the State Department. They run virtually every non-profit public policy institution in Washington."

"The cold war is over, the world has changed," Carlson continued. "It is time to rethink America's alliances, and to act in our own interest, for once."

"Russia is not a close friend of the United States," he added, "but the question is why should we consider Russia a mortal enemy? Of course Russia spies on us, so do a lot of countries, some of them far more effectively than Russia."

"This is about Democracy, whether or not voters rule their country"

Carlson said that the Russian threat was comical compared to the threat by the communist government of China, or the "remarkable sway that the Sunni Gulf states have over our political process." He added to the list of threats Latin American countries who are "changing election outcomes here, by forcing demographic change on this country at a rate that American voters consistently say they don't want."

Carlson added that the people pushing foreign policy failures are getting rich from China, the Sunni Gulf states, and have "Latin Americans clean their homes and watch their kids," but aren't getting rich from Russia.

"In some ways, this whole story is about Donald Trump and what he said and what he does," Carlson continued.

"But on a deeper level it has nothing to do with Donald Trump," he added. "This is about Democracy, whether or not voters rule their country. It turns out the very people telling you they are saving our Democracy are working overtime to destroy it, and scolding you as they do."

Here's Tucker Carlson's scathing monologue:

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trump's change of policy on Russian meddling, and said that Trump had been consistently tougher on Russia than his predecessor.