Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson denied Monday that hurricanes were made stronger or more frequent due to the warming of earth’s atmosphere—instead suggesting that severe weather was sent by God to punish Americans for abortions.
Carlson, who has been actively campaigning for Republican nominee Donald Trump in recent weeks, went on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast and referred to abortion as “child sacrifice,” insisting that he was “just being honest” about the situation.
The podcast, which brands itself as “Home of the Ultra MAGA,” featured Carlson going on a tangent about how abortion may lead to hurricanes.
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In a common tactic used by the right-wing pundit, just before the diatribe he said he expected to be attacked for saying it.
“People are like, ‘Oh, well, we had another hurricane, must be global warming.’ No! It‘s probably abortion, actually,” Carlson said. “You can’t kill children on purpose....You can’t participate in human sacrifice without consequences.”
Carlson is not the first to make the connection between abortion and severe weather. In 2005, Pat Robertson, a popular televangelist, similarly blamed Hurricane Katrina on abortions.
Carlson’s comments are part of a larger rhetorical shift toward open Christian nationalism in recent weeks.
In the same podcast, Carlson falsely asserted that nuclear technology is “demonic,” and not created by “human forces.”
Carlson has made similarly off-the-rail comments in recent weeks, including a story he told on a recent documentary about Christian traditions about being “mauled” by a demon or “something unseen” in bed. He said the encounter left him bleeding, with visible claw marks—though neither his dogs nor his wife, all of whom were in bed at the time, woke up during the incident.
“I knew it was spiritual, immediately,” Carlson said in a promo clip for the film. “Then I was seized with this very intense desire to read the Bible.”
A few weeks back, Carlson referred to Trump as a “dad” who planned to give a “vigorous spanking” to his “bad little girl”—meaning the United States.
He’s also made a number of other questionable metaphors in reference to the 2024 election.
“If you allow your two-year-old to smear the contents of his diapers on the wall of your living room and you do nothing about it, if you allow your 14-year-old to light a joint at the breakfast table, if you allow your hormone addled 15-year-old daughter to slam the door of her bedroom and give you the finger, you’re gonna get more of it and those kids are going to wind up in rehab,” he said at a campaign stop in Georgia.
