These are 10 of the 'most fascist things' Tucker Carlson said at Fox News

25 April 2023

On Monday, April 24, the day's biggest media bombshell was, hands down, Tucker Carlson's totally unexpected departure from Fox News. The news that CNN had fired liberal host Don Lemon also broke that same day, but that story was overshadowed by the news that Rupert Murdoch himself had reportedly decided to fire Carlson despite the fact that he was Fox News' biggest star. Fox News has plenty of hosts who are major figures in right-wing media, from Sean Hannity to Laura Ingraham to Jeanine Pirro. But no one at Fox News generated higher ratings than the incendiary, highly controversial Carlson.

During the George W. Bush years, Carlson, now 53, sometimes expressed sympathy for libertarian ideas and was an admirer of then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). And he was employed by very mainstream outlets, from CNN and MSNBC to PBS.

But along the way, Carlson took a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist turn. Carlson often frustrated liberals and progressives during the 2000s; when he was hosting "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Fox News from 2016-2023, he scared them. And to Never Trump conservatives, Carlson came to symbolize everything they considered dangerous about the MAGA movement.

In a listicle published by The New Republic on April 24, journalist Tori Otten lists ten of the "most fascist things" Carlson said during his years at Fox News. At the top of Otten's list is his enthusiastic desire to "promote" the Great Replacement Theory — which has become a prominent part of white supremacist and white nationalist ideology. Carlson, Otten observes, "argued that Democrats want to replace white people so they can control" the U.S.

Other items on Otten's list range from Carlson saying that Russian President "Vladimir Putin wasn't so bad" to claiming that "the desire to procreate has been 'subverted' by birth control and abortion" to obsessing over "the total collapse of testosterone levels in American men."

Carlson, Otten recalls, "said white supremacy is not a real problem," described former President Donald Trump as "sensible and wise," and "minimized the severity of statutory rape and said women are 'primitive.'"

Otten also lists the disturbing things Carlson had to say about the 2020 presidential election and the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building. Carlson, Otten remembers, "said the January 6 rioters were 'peaceful protesters'" and "knowingly lied that the 2020 election was stolen." In addition, he "called for an insurrection after Trump was indicted."

"Text messages and deposition excerpts show that (Fox News) hosts, including Carlson, knew the election conspiracies were false and that former President Donald Trump's lawyers weren't credible, but they spread the conspiracies and invited the lawyers on air anyway," Otten notes. "Carlson, who has repeatedly fawned over Trump on his show, even texted someone that he was looking forward to ignoring Trump. 'I hate him passionately,' Carlson said of the former president."

Read The New Republic's full article at this link.

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