Tucker Carlson embarked on a nearly 10-minute diatribe to kick off his Monday night show, railing against those condemning the Bashar al-Assad regime for its alleged chlorine attack on a town in Syria.

The tl;dr of Carlson’s monologue? The establishment is trying to demonize the Assad regime and blame it for the horrific attack that left dozens dead, including children, so that it can justify military action in Syria.

“Leaders on both sides of the aisle in Congress, in the media, in our intelligence services and virtually every overfunded think-tank in Washington have suddenly aligned tonight on a single point of agreement: America must go to war in Syria immediately. Bashar al-Assad cannot continue to lead that country. He must be overthrown.”

“Assad is an evil man they tell us,” Tucker continued. “Assad’s poison gas suffocated children. Pictures of the aftermath of that are all over the internet and they are horrifying. Assad is a monster. That’s the official story — almost everyone in power claims to believe it.”

Carlson, apparently blissfully unaware that Assad has committed a few other atrocities that have earned him the “monster” nomenclature, continued to bash pundits on rival networks calling for action to respond to the attack.

And then, Tucker “False Flag” Carlson came out in full force:

“All the geniuses tell us that Assad killed those children. But do they really know that? Of course, they don’t really know that, they’re making it up. They have no real idea what happened. Actually, both sides in the Syrian Civil War possess chemical weapons. How would it benefit Assad, from using chlorine gas last weekend?”

Carlson went on to make the case that it’s “the same story they told us last April,” when dozens of people were killed in a town in northern Syria — which Turkish officials confirmed was the result of a sarin gas attack. That horror, described as the worst chemical attack in years, prompted Trump’s limited missile strike on a Syrian airfield.

Tucker then accused those claiming Assad was behind the 2017 attack of lying, before stating that “two months ago, the secretary of defense admitted that actually, we still have no proof that Assad used sarin gas last year.”

“The story, it turns out, was propaganda, it was designed to manipulate Americans, just like so much of what they say.”

Tucker doesn’t make it clear who “they” are here, though it’s safe to assume he’s referring to a shadowy cabal of media elites hellbent on Middle East interventionism. As for his claims about Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Carlson is referring to his comments in February that the U.S. itself doesn’t have conclusive evidence sarin gas was used, despite reports from the ground and the conclusions of a number of outside groups.

Carlson went on to warn of the pitfalls of deposing Assad’s regime, arguing that “Syria is a highly complicated place.”

“With Assad gone, who would run it exactly? Do we have another strongman in place to install? Or is it our hope that a stable democracy will magically appear in the wake of this protracted civil war?”

“And who exactly are these moderate rebels you’re always hearing about, the ones that we’re supporting with your tax dollars?” Carlson asked, referring to the Syrian rebel forces the U.S. is funding to fight Isis.

Tucker concluded by proudly quoting a Donald Trump tweet from 2013, arguing “we should stay the hell out of Syria.”

Watch above, via Fox News.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Aidan McLaughlin (@aidnmclaughlin) on Twitter

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