Fox News host Tucker Carlson is sparking controversy with new claims [August 2019] that white supremacy in America is a “hoax” and “not a real problem.”
Carlson used his TV show Tuesday night to praise President Donald Trump for his response to recent mass shootings, including in El Paso, Texas, where a man killed 22 people to stop a “Hispanic invasion.” He said it is “just a lie” to say Trump ever “endorsed white supremacy or came close to endorsing white supremacy," and further called concerns about white supremacists a “conspiracy theory.”
“If you were to assemble a list, a hierarchy of concerns, problems this country has, where would white supremacy be on the list? Right up there with Russia probably. It’s actually not a real problem in America," Carlson said. “It’s a hoax... Just like the Russia hoax, it’s a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power.”
Carlson added that he’s never met “one person who ascribes to white supremacy” and suggested Trump’s rivals “are making this up” to help in the 2020 election (Herbert 1).
[August 2021] “I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World,” Carlson said during a discussion of immigration on Fox News Primetime on Thursday.
“But they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening, actually!” he exclaimed. “Let’s just say it, that’s true!”
Carlson framed the topic not as a racial issue, but as a “voting rights question.”
“If you change the population you dilute the political power of the people who live there,” he went on. “So every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter.”
The term “replacement” has a dark history. A right-wing conspiracy theory known as the “replacement theory“ or “The Great Replacement” holds that birth rates among white people are too low, and that people of colour are gradually “replacing” their share of the world’s population. The idea is popular with white supremacist groups around the world, including in the United States.
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Carlson denied that his remarks were racist.
“Everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it,” he said. “No, no, no. This is a voting rights question. I have less political power because they’re importing a brand new electorate. Why should I sit back and take that” (Antisemitic 1-2)?
Fox News host Tucker Carlson [May 2020] railed against continued statewide shutdowns meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus, claiming in a recent TV segment that they did little to flatten the curve and that "the virus just isn’t nearly as deadly as we thought it was."
Citing recent studies from hot spots such as New York, Carlson said the virus is "a full order of magnitude less deadly" than public health officials warned.
"The virus just isn’t nearly as deadly as we thought it was, all of us, including on this show," he said. "Everybody thought it was, but it turned out not to be" (McCarthy 1).
In a monologue on Thursday's edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the Fox News Host [April 2020] argued that COVID-19 posed a "miniscule" threat to people in rural states as he highlighted the dire state of unemployment across the country.
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After listing off the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths in parts of rural America, along with unemployment figures, Carlson said: "So maybe the lesson of all this is not every place in America is the same. Not everywhere is New York or New Jersey. The threat to rural America from this virus is minuscule, so why are we punishing the people who live outside the cities?
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"Unfortunately, as far as our leaders are concerned, these are the wrong people. They don't really count” (Walker 1-3).
In 2021, Carlson ran segments that misrepresented the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and asserted that U.S. officials were "lying" about them. He questioned why the CDC was advising vaccinated people to continue mask-wearing and distancing in April 2021, saying, "maybe [the vaccine] doesn't work, and they're simply not telling you that". Fact checks called Carlson's argument misleading, because COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective in protecting against COVID-19 infections and severe symptoms, and universal masking helps prevent unvaccinated people from spreading the virus.
[Anthony] Fauci called Carlson's remarks a "crazy conspiracy theory." Later Carlson falsely called Fauci "the guy who created Covid". In another segment, Carlson misrepresented federal data to claim that in the previous five months around 30 people per day in the U.S. died after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. Carlson's argument was called misleading because the federal database he cited, VAERS, consists of unverified public reports, some of which have been false; post-vaccine deaths can be from unrelated causes; and the CDC had found no connection between COVID-19 vaccinations and deaths based on VAERS. In July 2021, Carlson said plans by the government to provide door-to-door vaccinations were "the greatest scandal in my lifetime, by far" and falsely described them as an attempt to "force people to take medicine they don't want or need". He also likened vaccine passports to segregationist Jim Crow laws. He claimed that a vaccine mandate in the U.S. Armed Forces designed to oust "the sincere Christians in the ranks, the free thinkers, the men with high testosterone levels, and anyone else who doesn't love Joe Biden". On a day when two Fox News hosts, Steve Doocy and Sean Hannity, urged viewers to get vaccinated to protect against the surging Delta variant of the coronavirus, Carlson said, "There are a lot of people giving you medical advice on television and you should ignore them."
Carlson refused to say whether he has been vaccinated, responding to a reporter, "When was the last time you had sex with your wife and in what position? We can trade intimate details." More than 90% of Fox Corporation's full-time employees had been fully vaccinated by September 2021 (Wikipedia 5).
[November 2021] Hannity, Carlson, and Ingraham do their own version of the Fox News two-step: They don’t come out and say outright that Trump is a victim of massive voter fraud that cost him the election while simultaneously defeating Democratic House and Senate candidates. But they argue that it’s plausible. They feed the fire with oxygen.
Fox isn’t the only one playing this game. Much of the Republican Party, from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on down, engages in a similar version: either flat-out suggesting that Trump’s claims are legitimate or at least arguing that he should be able to make those claims and then see what happens (Kafka 2).
[June 2021] Taking his Jan. 6 denialism to another level on Tuesday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested the Capitol insurrection was a false flag orchestrated by the FBI in an effort to “suppress political dissent.”
Almost since the moment that former President Donald Trump incited thousands of MAGA supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol in order to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election victory, Carlson has downplayed the violent riots, repeatedly insisting there was “no insurrection” and that it was nothing more than a “political protest that got out of hand.”
At the same time, the far-right Fox News star has rallied to the defense of the Capitol rioters, portraying them as largely peaceful protesters while raging against federal prosecutors for the hundreds of criminal charges filed in the wake of the insurrection. With more rioters still facing potential indictments, many have taken to cooperating with the feds to avoid or lessen jail time.
And according to Carlson, the reason why the government has “thrown the book” at some rioters and not others is because of a deep-state plot to control the political narrative.
Taking aim at Attorney General Merrick Garland for announcing a new strategy to combat domestic terrorism and violent extremism in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack, Carlson said this was just further proof that the government wants to “crush anyone who leads opposition to” Biden.
After invoking Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest whataboutism argument about the Capitol riots which featured Putin referencing Capitol rioter Ashli Babbit’s death to deflect answering a question about jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, Carlson declared that Putin raised “fair questions.”
“Who did shoot Ashli Babbitt and why don’t we know?” Carlson added. “Are anonymous federal agents now allowed to kill unarmed women who protest the regime? That’s okay now? No, it’s not okay.”
Carlson went on to claim that the government is “hiding the identity of many law enforcement officers present at the Capitol on January 6, not just the one that killed” Babbit, stating that the government’s own court filings reveal that officers violently took part in the riot.
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… strangely, some of the key people who participated on January 6 have not been charged,” he continued. “Look at the documents, the government calls those people unindicted co-conspirators. What does that mean? Well, it means that potentially every single case they were FBI operatives. Really? In the Capitol on January 6?”
Using the indictment of Oath Keeper Thomas Caldwell as an example, Carlson noted that the documents show two additional people listed who haven’t been charged yet but were organizers of the riot.
“The government knows who they are, but they have not charged them. Why is that? You know why,” Carlson said with a dramatic nod. “They were all certainly working for the FBI. So FBI operatives were organizing the attack on the Capitol, on Jan. 6, according to government documents” (Baragona 1-2).
[ November 2021] The exalting of Kyle Rittenhouse reached new heights on Monday evening when Tucker Carlson used his top-rated Fox News prime time program to lavish even more praise on the teenager.
Before airing his interview with Rittenhouse, Carlson declared, "During the course of our long conversation, Kyle Rittenhouse struck us as bright, decent, sincere, dutiful, and hardworking." Carlson went on to say that Rittenhouse is "exactly the kind of person you would want many more of in your country. He's not especially political. He never wanted to be the symbol of anything." Later in the program, Carlson described Rittenhouse as a "sweet kid."
None of that is particularly surprising, given how Carlson has previously covered the case. But it shows how the dominant sector of right-wing media, led by Carlson, is continuing to work to elevate Rittenhouse as a role model for others. Not only are people like Carlson excusing the general concept of vigilante justice, they are actively encouraging it.
There are some voices in conservative media who have pushed back against this narrative. Notably, Carlson's Fox News colleague, Gillian Turner, pointed out earlier on Monday that while Rittenhouse was acquitted "he's not a hero here." As she said, "There are no heroes, there are no winners. There is no victory lap for Kyle or anybody else to take."
But Turner's microphone pales in comparison to Carlson's. And it's hard to see the interview Carlson conducted with Rittenhouse, in which he (predictably) attacked the news media and others, as something other than a victory lap…
An hour after Rittenhouse's interview with arguably the most prominent right-wing conspiracy theorist in the business aired, his attorney, Mark Richards, appeared on CNN and portrayed his client in a different light. Chris Cuomo asked about Carlson, Fox News, and whether Rittenhouse is aligned with such forces in right-wing media. Richards replied, "I don't think he is. ... I don't think he is a crazy right-winger."
Cuomo then asked Richards about the lionization of Rittenhouse: "What kind of message do you think this sends?" Cuomo asked, noting how some gun shops are promoting sales tied to Rittenhouse's name and how a GOP lawmaker offered him an internship. "Is that something Kyle endorses?" Richards replied, "I don't think that is something he endorses. I think it sends a message that certain people are morons…" (Darcy 1).
Works cited:
“’Antisemitic, Racist and Toxic’: Tucker Carlson Faces Calls To Resign after Promoting White Supremacist ‘Replacement’ Theory.” Independent, April 9, 2021. Net. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/tucker-carlson-fox-white-supremacist-b1829366.html
Baragona, Justin. “Tucker Carlson Bizarrely Suggests Capitol Insurrection Was Orchestrated by FBI.” Daily Beast, updated June 16, 2021. Net. https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlson-suggests-that-capitol-insurrection-was-orchestrated-by-fbi
Darcy, Oliver. “Tucker Carlson Exalts Kyle Rittenhouse during First Post-Verdict Interview: He's a 'Sweet Did.' CNN, November 23, 2021. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/23/media/tucker-carlson-kyle-rittenhouse/index.html
Herbert, Geoff. Tucker Carlson: White supremacists Are a Hoax, ‘Not a Real Problem.’ syracuse.com, August 7, 2019. Net. https://www.syracuse.com/us-news/2019/08/tucker-carlson-white-supremacists-are-a-hoax-not-a-real-problem.html
Kafka, Peter. “Fox News’s Election Fraud Pandering May Be Its Most Dangerous Lie Yet.” Vox, November 13, 2020. Net. https://www.vox.com/recode/21563312/fox-news-trump-election-fraud-murdoch-hannity-carlson-ingraham
McCarthy, Bill. “Tucker Carlson Says Coronavirus Isn’t as Deadly as We Thought. Experts Disagree.” Politifact, May 4, 2020. Net. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/may/04/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-says-coronavirus-isnt-deadly-we-tho/
“Tucker Carlson.” Wikipedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_Carlson#COVID-19_pandemic
Walker, James. “Fox News Host Tucker Carlson Says Coronavirus Lockdown Is 'Punishing' Rural America, Calls It 'Mindless and Cruel.'” Newsweek, April 24, 2020. Net. https://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-tucker-carlson-lockdown-punishing-rural-america-mindless-cruel-1499942
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