Rob Reiner Confuses Tucker Carlson Over Russia Investigation; Fox Host Slams Hollywood’s Embrace Of China

Suggesting that cyber war isn’t really war, and that China is even worse than Russia when it comes to cyber war – or something like that – Tucker Carlson donned his well-worn befuddled face when Rob Reiner dropped by Tucker Carlson Tonight for a surprise, and contentious, visit.

Earlier this week, Reiner and journalist David Frum launched the non-profit Committee to Investigate Russia to spread information about Russia’s “involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and its threat to the country’s institutions.” The committee released a video narrated by Morgan Freeman claiming that the two countries were “at war.”

The war claim baffled Carlson, who devoted a considerable portion of his interview with Reiner debating the definition of war. Carlson insisted that the video should have made clearer that Reiner & Co. meant cyber war, not war war. (Watch the exchange above).

“So when does the bombing start, exactly?,” Carlson had said in the segment’s intro.

“You don’t really believe we’re at war, so why are you saying it then?”, the host asks Reiner. (No word on Carlson’s potential confusion over Fox News’ annual fretting over the War on Christmas).

“If you watched the whole video you wouldn’t really be confused about it,” Reiner said, perhaps unaccustomed to the ever-present, expression of furrowed-brow confusion on Carlson’s face.

Following the debate over definitions, Carlson steered the conversation away from Russian interference to China’s hacking, and says that “you guys in Hollywood sell your movies there and allow their censorship offices to change your movies in order to make money.” He said Hollywood liberals were being disingenuous by saying nothing on the issue “until Hillary Clinton loses.”

Responded Reiner, “It’s not about hacking into computers and stealing information, it’s about using that information and weaponizing it in some way,” Reiner said.

“We’ve been invaded,” Reiner says at one point, then possibly to spell things out for his host, adds, “in a certain way.”

The exchange came on the same day that Russia’s state-controlled news media excoriated Freeman for his participation in the Committee’s video, suggesting the actor has a “Messianic complex”  and abuses marijuana.

“I am still not sure how Russia hacked our Democracy,” Carlson tweeted after his Reiner interview.