Tag: Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson’s toxic ‘replacement’ rhetoric gets picked up in the House

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From the moment Fox News’s Tucker Carlson explicitly advocated the idea that immigrants are “replacing” real Americans — a rhetorical construct popular among self-proclaimed white nationalists — the danger was obvious. Carlson and allies such as author J.D. Vance like to position the outcry over his comments as being centered on his purported willingness to speak truth to power. The reality, though, is that Carlson is espousing an obviously false line in an effort to both denigrate Democrats as desperate and to cast immigrants as a dangerous force aimed at toppling America as we know it. The more this dishonest rhetoric spreads, the more risk it poses.

On Wednesday morning, it was offered by a sitting member of the House.

A subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee was meeting to examine the root causes of migration from Central American countries that make up a disproportionate portion of migrants seeking to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The State Department’s envoy to the region, Ricardo Zúniga, was offering testimony on the subject when Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) was given the floor. Continue reading.

Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch Defends White Nationalist Tucker Carlson

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Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch is defending Tucker Carlson’s April 8 segment promoting the white supremacist “replacement” conspiracy theory after the Anti-Defamation League’s chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt, called for Carlson to be fired.

Over the weekend, Greenblatt appeared on CNN to explain how the Murdochs, Fox’s board, and its advertisers enable Carlson to push white nationalist conspiracy theories on Fox News’ prime time.

According to CNN, Murdoch “dismissed the Anti-Defamation League’s demand that the company fire host Tucker Carlson, telling the organization in a letter that his company saw no problem with comments Carlson made about the racist ‘great replacement’ theory.” Continue reading.

ADL president and CNN’s Brian Stelter agree: Tucker Carlson reached a ‘new low’ by promoting a White supremacist conspiracy theory

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Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has been even more controversial than usual lately, promoting the racist Replacement Theory on his show and expressing sympathy for the violent mob that assaulted the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6 — and Anti-Defamation League National Director Jonathan Greenblatt is calling for Fox News to fire him. During an appearance on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” Greenblatt and host Brian Stelter agreed: Carlson is out of control.

A conspiracy theory that is popular among White supremacists and White nationalists, the Replacement Theory claims that liberals and progressives are trying to “replace” Whites with non-Whites by bringing them in from developing countries. Carlson, on his April 8 broadcast, claimed that “the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate” with “new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.”

Stelter acknowledged that it is most unlikely that Fox News will fire Carlson, whose “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has been getting even higher ratings than colleague Sean Hannity’s show. But he stressed that Carlson reached a “new low” by promoting a conspiracy theory associated with White supremacist and White nationalist ideology. Continue reading.

Tucker Carlson Goes Full Revisionist On The U.S. Capitol Riot

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The Fox News personality’s reality-denying spin on the deadly insurrection was slammed as “gaslighting garbage.”

Tucker Carlson struck a snide tone on Tuesday night to downplay the U.S. Capitol riot on the three-month anniversary of the deadly insurrection.

The Fox News personality attempted to spin the narrative on the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump — who were incited by the then-president ― as just “a mob of older people from unfashionable zip codes” protesting mass voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Carlson’s characterization of the violence contradicts videos showing the maurading mob. Five people, including a U.S. Capitol police officer, died. Trump supporters were caught on camera screaming, “Hang Mike Pence!” and stalked progressive lawmakers. Continue reading.

Tucker Carlson Attacks Obama: He’s a ‘Racial Arsonist’ Who ‘Sows Hate’

The Fox News star took offense at the former president calling for stricter gun laws in the wake of yet another senseless mass shooting, accusing Obama of creating extremism.

After completely ignoring the deadly Colorado mass shooting on his show Monday evening, Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s first coverage of the massacre on Tuesday night included an attack on the nation’s first Black president as a “racial arsonist” who “sows hate” and is “creating real extremism.”

Carlson, who somehow made no mention of the Boulder shooting while he was on the air the previous night, kicked off his primetime program on Tuesday by mocking media outlets and prominent figures who initially believed the suspected shooter was a white male. (Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa was born in Syria and raised in Colorado. His family describes him as “very anti-social” and says they believe he’s mentally ill.)

After completely ignoring the deadly Colorado mass shooting on his show Monday evening, Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s first coverage of the massacre on Tuesday night included an attack on the nation’s first Black president as a “racial arsonist” who “sows hate” and is “creating real extremism.”

Carlson, who somehow made no mention of the Boulder shooting while he was on the air the previous night, kicked off his primetime program on Tuesday by mocking media outlets and prominent figures who initially believed the suspected shooter was a white male. (Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa was born in Syria and raised in Colorado. His family describes him as “very anti-social” and says they believe he’s mentally ill.) Continue reading.

The Trump-Tucker cold war has begun

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One of the mysteries that lingers around President Donald Trump’s final days in office is why he chose to downplay the deployment of the coronavirus vaccine.

Granted, his last days took place in the shadow of the insurrection on Jan. 6 that followed his constant insistences that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen. But at some point that month, Trump himself quietly got the vaccine and, despite having nearly nothing else on his schedule, he never undertook any substantial effort to promote vaccination. No events focused on it. There was little mention of the vaccine publicly, in part because he was so focused on injecting his election-fraud nonsense into his followers.

Part of the impulse may have been one central to Trump’s approach since he took office. Trump always likes to give himself wiggle room for people to interpret his position however they want. He’ll say things vaguely enough to send one message to his base while maintaining deniability when questioned by the media. He’ll add quick caveats that, as needed, can be built into primary defenses or new rationales for support. For all of the praise Trump gets from his base for his directness, he is always careful to leave some escape routes allowing people to take different paths. Continue reading.

Tucker Carlson keeps attacking a New York Times reporter after the paper calls his tactics ‘calculated and cruel’

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Fox News host Tucker Carlson devoted a lengthy portion of his show Tuesday night to attacking New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz over her accounts of facing online harassment, claiming that in fact she has “one of the best lives in the country.”

After both she and the newspaper spoke out, with the Times calling his segment “calculated and cruel,” he returned to the airwaves Wednesday to continue lambasting Lorenz. He labeled her a “deeply unhappy narcissist,” denied that she faces online abuse and allowed a guest to baselessly accuse her of “harassing kids and teenagers.”

His segment is the latest instance of Carlson singling out a reporter — a tactic that his targets like Lorenz say has unleashed waves of new online abuse. Continue reading.

Tucker Carlson stands up for QAnon supporters

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Over the weekend, the Hawaii Republican Party ventured into some fraught territory: defending adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Its Twitter account cast them as patriots who were “largely motivated by a sincere and deep love for America,” and it blamed the media for being too sensational about it. A top official later resigned over an “error in judgment” in posting the thread.

On Monday night, though, a similar argument made its way onto the airwaves, courtesy of one of the most popular prime-time shows in cable news.

Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson decided to take his own swing at defending QAnon supporters, in a way. Like the Hawaii GOP, he didn’t promote or subscribe to the wild and baseless theory about a mass pedophile ring in the U.S. government, but he cast its adherents as victims of looming persecution, denied basic civil liberties. As with many things on his program, it boiled down to a familiar argument: The mainstream media and powerful forces are trying to silence people and control what you think — that, to use the modern parlance, they’re being “canceled.” Continue reading.

Tucker Carlson bashes Trump attorney Sidney Powell for lack of evidence in fraud claims: ‘She never sent us any’

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As Fox News host Tucker Carlson noted on Thursday night, he’s more than willing to give airtime to outlandish claims. “We literally do UFO segments,” he said.

But even Carlson said he was fed up with the total lack of evidence produced by Sidney Powell, one of the Trump campaign’s attorneys, for her unfounded allegation that electronic voting systems had switched millions of ballots to favor President-elect Joe Biden.

“We invited Sidney Powell on the show. We would have given her the whole hour,” Carlson said. “But she never sent us any evidence, despite a lot of requests, polite requests. Not a page. When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her.” Continue reading.

Trump and Tucker Carlson got caught falsely accusing a living woman of voting while dead

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As decisive a victory as President-elect Joe Biden has enjoyed — 306 electoral votes and a nationwide lead of at least 5.8 million in the popular vote — President Donald Trump and his allies are still hoping to overturn the election results in key battleground states. One of them is Georgia, where Trump’s campaign and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson wrongly accused a voter named Deborah Jean Christiansen of voting fraudulently. But CNN interviewed Christiansen, ascertaining that her vote was perfectly legitimate.

Trump’s campaign and Carlson both accused Christiansen of voting in the name of a dead woman. However, CNN reporters Konstantin Toropin, Daniel Dale and Amara Walker explain that in Georgia, there were two different women named Deborah Jean Christiansen. One of them died in 2019, but the other is alive and well and had every right to vote in the 2020 presidential election.

The two Georgia-based women, according to CNN, were “born in the same year and month but on a different day.” And CNN interviewed the Deborah Jean Christiansen who is still living and voted for Biden. Continue reading.