Tucker Carlson has claimed on his FOX News show Tucker Carlson Tonight that there’s been “a near-total media blackout of this story.” But since there doesn’t seem to be any type of memo circulating to journalists telling them to not cover “this story,” let’s cover it now and see how much veritas it really has.
What’s “this story” that’s supposedly the subject of a media blackout according to Carlson? Well, Carlson has also tweeted the following about it: “Project Veritas just released an undercover video of a Pfizer executive bragging about how his company conducts Frankenstein science, manipulating COVID viruses for profit, and does it in secret, possibly in violation of federal law.”
Wow, a Pfizer exec bragging about “Frankenstein science?” That sounds like a monstrous revelation, doesn’t it? But before Carlson’s claim makes you sit bolt upright in your chair, keep in mind that this was Carlson who had said this. Yes, this was the Tucker Carlson whom John Oliver has called a “superspreader” of Covid-19 vaccine fears and doubts and a “scrunch-faced fear baboon,” as I covered on May 3, 2021, for Forbes. Now, to be fair, Carlson is not necessarily always “scrunch-faced.” He has also sported the “I’m concerned”, the “Whatcha talkin bout, Willis”, and the “I really have to go to the bathroom” facial expressions. But is there any truth to what Carlson has been claiming about this Project Veritas video or is it actually a hot air baboon situation?
The video appeared to be an undercover video because the footage was rather grainy and filmed at a rather awkward angle. It looked like the type of video taken to prove that someone’s significant other is doing more with the office manager than offic’ing and managing. This video featured someone described by Project Veritas as “Jordon Trishton Walker, Pfizer Director of Research and Development – Strategic Operations and mRNA Scientific Planning,” answering questions from an unidentified interviewer. So you could either take Project Veritas’s or Carlson’s words for it or search for this name on Google, Bing, or Duck Duck Go yourself. After all, someone with that kind of title should be fairly easy to find on the Internet, right?
Well, a Google search didn’t really reveal any legitimate source that could verify the person’s name and title. Similarly, a search on LinkedIn doesn’t reveal any such verifiable profiles either, just some accounts trying to spread his name. Some of these accounts are spelling the name slightly differently such as “Jordon Triston Walker” or “Jordan Triston Walker.” Of note, a search for “Triston” without the “h” did return an Urban Dictionary entry that described “Triston” as “a very hot and cute boy who always wants to disagree. Who has the softest hair in the entire world.” So if you are looking for someone hot, disagreeable, and really soft-haired, there is that.
OK, let’s suspend disbelief for a second and assume that the video featured an actual Pfizer exec. Did the video then really show what Carlson claimed? Hmm, rather than one continuous piece of footage where you could see the real flow of the conversation, the video seemed more like a compilation of clips stitched together. That makes it difficult to tell whether a statement was taken out of context. For example, in the video, this so-called Walker guy explained, “We’re exploring, like, you know how the virus keeps mutating? Well, one of the things we’re exploring is like, why don’t we just mutate it ourselves, so we could focus on, create, preemptively develop new vaccines, right?” That’s a little vague. You can’t tell for sure who “we” really is and whether he was talking about real plans or hypothetical ones.
