In March 1997, I had a conversation with Tucker Carlson that would predict the future. Specifically it predicted liberalism’s current empire of lies.

Carlson has recently expressed amazement at how bad the public lies have gotten. Last week on The Glenn Beck Show, Carlson revealed footage from the Capitol January 6 that undercut our Principalities and Powers’ official narrative. Especially its claims about Jacob Chansley (the wacky guy in the Viking helmet) who was visibly nonviolent, but nonetheless got four years in prison.

Carlson sounded amazed and a bit dejected. His father had worked in government. Carlson grew up in Washington. He was used to political battles, but not such outright lying. “I know deception when I see it,” he says, “it’s demonstrable and its proven. They’re all lying.” It turns out, Tucker concluded. “Liz Cheney is affirmatively a liar.”

Stephen Glass: Media Pioneer

I thought back to a conversation I had with Carlson in 1997 that foresaw this moment. That year I attended CPAC, the annual conservative conference held at the Sheraton in Washington, D.C. I was writing a story for the New York Press. After the conference I called Tucker Carlson, who was then a writer for the Weekly Standard. I was friendly with Carlson, wanted to get his take on conservatism, and where it was moving in the Clinton years.

Our conversation had barely started when he steered it to CPAC. ”Hey, were you at CPAC?” he asked me. I said I had been. “Did you see any drugs or heavy drinking and sexual assaults?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. I hadn’t seen anything but conservatives giving speeches and hawking their books. Tucker pointed me to an article in The New Republic. In it, a journalist described how a group of four young male conservatives conspired to sexually assault a woman. It deserves quoting at length, as twenty years later, similar lies would be resurrected to try and destroy me. It also foreshadows the contagion of lies that has infected our elites, from government to media.

A Fantastic Piece of Journalism. Literally.

The New Republic article describes an awful criminal plot hatched by a small group of make conservatives:

Over the next hour, in a haze of beer and pot, and in between rantings about feminists, gays and political correctness, the young men hatch a plan. Seth, a meaty quarterback from a small college in Indiana, and two others will drive to a local bar. There, the three will choose the ugliest and loneliest woman they can find. “Get us a real heifer, the fatter the better, bad acne would be a bonus,” Michael shouts. He is so drunk he doesn’t know he is shouting. Seth will lure the victim, whom they call a “whale,” back to the hotel room. The five who stay behind will hide under the beds. After Seth undresses the whale, the five will jump out and shout, “We’re beaching! Whale spotted!” They will take a photograph of the unfortunate woman.

The piece concludes: “This is the face of young conservatism in 1997: pi***d off and pi***d; dejected, depressed, drunk and dumb.”

In a Stephen Glass, Darkly

The author of the piece, called “Spring Breakdown,” was a man named Stephen Glass. Glass had made the entire story up. He would become the most notorious fabulist in modern journalism, the author of dozens of fictional stories played off as fact.

Glass is now the patron saint of the Deep State, our elites, and the media. His example is how they operate.

Readers of The Stream know that I have often written here about the 2018 ordeal, when the media and the Democrats said that I had witnessed a sexual assault by my high school friend Brett Kavanaugh. They also said that Brett and I had been at ten teen parties where girls were drugged and gang raped.

That nightmare is several years in the past, and I have a new book about my experience, so there’s no need for a deep dive on the subject. What is extraordinary, however, is how the fantasies of Stephen Glass, the drunk right-wing goons ganging up on a scared, innocent girl, parallel the lies told more than to decades later about me and Brett.

Stephen Glass’s tactics are now mainstream. They were, and are, the official playbook of our elites, from the Democrats to NeverTrump zealots. People in power will tell such lies until they get caught, and even after that. One media orc who in 2018 said that he saw me buying and selling cocaine in the 1980s — a lie — just got his head handed to him by Russell Brand, and then by good guy and conservative Tom Elliot. Faced with a cavalcade of his own lies by Elliot, this dunderhead will shake it off and be back to warn us all about the evil Ron DeSantis.

Give Reporters and FBI Agents the Silent Treatment

This is why it is so absolutely crucial that regular people simply not engage with this new American Stasi. Imagine the worst, most unscrupulous and malicious liar you’ve ever known in your life. That person is the reporter who just showed up at your door. The assumption that leftist politicians and the media are reflections of Satan himself, the father of lies, is not an exaggeration.

A reviewer of my book The Devil’s Triangle wrote this on Amazon:

Mark is so honest where his own shortcomings are concerned that it’s easy to underestimate him. But this is a guy who had his wits about him. His instincts were right on, and he made one right call after the other. He got a good lawyer, he didn’t talk to the media, he didn’t fall into traps. One imagines how his story — to say nothing of the larger story, the political hit on Brett Kavanaugh — might have played out had he been less wily, less sober-minded and alert, had he slipped up just once. Kudos to the guy.

You, too, can have your wits about you. Assume every liberal “journalist” you see on television or read online is no different from Stephen Glass. He is now the role model for our elites.

Mark Judge is a writer and filmmaker in Washington, D.C. His new book is The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs the New American Stasi.