'I lost control': Tucker Carlson issues rare apology after bizarre meltdown over NYT essay
Fox News' Tucker Carlson has issued a rare apology following his latest bizarre rant in response to an essay published by The New York Times.
According to Mediaite, the essay, written by author and guest columnist Heather Kaye, described her experience raising her two daughters during her 16 years residing in China.
During his Friday evening segment of "Tucker Carlson Tonight," the conservative primetime host took aim at the essay saying, “She misses the communist party of China co-parenting her children. She misses their ‘firm hand’ and we’re quoting. We’re not making this up.”
Carlson also quoted an excerpt from the piece saying, "Our stringent government co-parent quickly made its presence felt. The girls’ Chinese kindergarten lectured us on everything, including how many hours our daughters should sleep, what they should eat, and their optimal weight."
“The Communist Chinese Party [sic] fat-shamed this lady’s kids!” the Fox News host said as he continued to read the essay aloud. "We sometimes felt as if our children were on loan to us for evenings and weekends, to be delivered back to school each weekday."
“Now, again, she’s not writing a new version of Darkness at Noon, she’s complementing the government of China,” Carlson said.
At one point in her essay, Haye wrote, “Ironically, the tight control of the Communist Party surveillance state results in its own kind of freedom: With crime and personal safety concerns virtually eliminated, our daughters were riding the subway unsupervised in a city of around 26 million people from the age of 11.”
He went on to offer a deeply critical opinion of The New York Times and Haye although he did not specifically name her.
“That is un-American,” he said. “That person is sick, and if you don’t recognize how sick that person is, if you long for a fascist government to call you’re little girls fat, you’re a sick person, ok? The fact that the New York Times would run that and expect all of its readers to applaud – “Oh if only the government would tell my kids they’re fat, this would be a better country.”
Following his rant, Carlson attempted to cool down admitting that he'd "lost control."
“I lost control and I want to apologize for that, but it’s true,” Carlson told him. “For the New York Times to run a piece from some totally–I don’t want to keep attacking her, some mom who wants the Communist Party to tell children they’re too fat, fat-shame her little girls and she gets off on it, and the New York Times readers applaud this like that’s normal. That is not normal. That’s not American. That’s demented.”
