carlson swalwell
For more than a year, elected Democrats and the liberal media have alleged that President Donald Trump colluded with the Russian government to "steal" the 2016 election away from the "rightful winner," Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, a narrative that has been steadily unraveling over time.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has grown impatient at the lack of actual evidence put forward to justify such claims or the investigations that have sprung from them, so Monday he invited one of Trump's most vociferous critics on the topic of Russia - California Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat who sits on the House Intelligence Committee - to appear on his program.

Carlson asked Swalwell for any evidence he has seen after 18 months of investigation to back up the collusion case, according to BizPac Review.

Swalwell offered up nothing that hasn't already been made known before about tenuous business connections and marginal meetings that went nowhere, and even seemed to point to an obvious joke by Trump on the campaign trail in July 2016 where he asked the Russians if they knew the whereabouts of Clinton's 30,000 missing emails as "proof" of some sort of secret coded message to encourage Russian hacking and interference.


Carlson noted that those emails have never turned up, to which Swalwell replied, "let's let the Mueller investigation continue," insinuating Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation had perhaps obtained them.

He also said that the mere "attempt" by Trump to invite the Russians to hack and obtain Clinton's emails was, in and of itself, a crime.

"I hate to inject common sense into this," Carlson said. "If you're trying to make secret contact with Russia, your handlers back in Moscow, wouldn't you dial them up on the short wave in the basement? Would you really sent a coded message in the middle of a joke at a press conference?"

Swalwell replied, "I'm not saying he's the smartest guy in the world, Tucker. Never accused him of that."

Incredulously, Carlson asked, "So that's - that's the smoking gun right there?"


"No, it's part of the evidence," Swalwell said with all seriousness. "An invitation made by the candidate, telling them it's OK ... he's not the smartest guy in the world."

Carlson couldn't help but point out the absurd duality of Swalwell's assertion. "So he's both a secret agent for Putin but he's so dumb that he spills his secrets at a press conference on TV?" he asked.

Swalwell replied, "The latter," making it clear that he is part of the camp that believes Trump is an incredibly unintelligent individual. "There's no 'who could be so stupid they admit the crime in public' exception," he added.

Carlson later pointed to several examples of how Trump has been tougher on Russia than former President Barack Obama - such as sending lethal arms to Ukraine, killing hundreds of Russian soldiers in Syria or hurting their economy with increased U.S. oil and gas production - all of which Swalwell simply dismissed as things Trump was forced to do because of public sentiment that he was too favorable to Russia.

Carlson could only laugh at the ludicrous replies from Swalwell, which was pretty much the reaction the entire interview received on social media.

Despite having ample time and countless opportunities, this Democrat representative - like the rest of his colleagues and cohorts in the media - was unable to produce any sort of compelling evidence that definitively linked Trump or his campaign with the Russian government during the election.

But that won't stop them from continuing to insist that evidence of collusion will eventually be uncovered, just you wait and see.