After Fox News star Tucker Carlson seemingly stood up for QAnon conspiracy theorists last week, casting them as the latest victims of cancel culture, it was really only a matter of time before he openly defended QAnon-peddling Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
At the top of his primetime program Monday night, the Fox News host continued his weeks-long theme of railing against what he sees as the left’s assault against free speech by rallying to the defense of Greene, saying the freshman Georgia lawmaker is only facing criticism for having “bad opinions.”
Just to recap, Greene—who is an avid booster of former President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen”—has come under fire in recent days after violent and conspiratorial comments and social media posts resurfaced in which she endorsed executing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and called mass school shootings “false flags.”
ADVERTISEMENT
With House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy still not taking action, a growing number of Republicans have joined Democrats in calling for some level of punishment for the congresswoman. Democrats, meanwhile, have moved swiftly to have Greene removed from House committees, reportedly giving McCarthy an ultimatum to strip Greene of her committee assignments or they will take the issue to the House floor.
Carlson, dismissing concerns by law enforcement and lawmakers about the threat of right-wing extremism as he downplayed last month’s Capitol insurrection, mocked recent news coverage of Greene’s conspiratorial comments and threats.
“No woman is more dangerous than this freshman member of Congress. The threat that she alone poses, as they say on cable news, is existential,” the host snarked. “This single congresswoman may be just weeks away from developing nuclear weapons.”
After playing a montage of cable news coverage of Greene, Carlson sarcastically added: “Oh. How dangerous is this three-named congresswoman you have probably never heard of? Well, so dangerous that in the name of democracy, she must be expelled tonight from the Congress!”
Noting that Greene won her district with 75 percent of the vote—her Democratic opponent unofficially withdrew months before—Carlson framed calls for Greene to be reprimanded as an affront to democracy.
“On the other hand, what do her voters have to do with democracy? That’s not how democracy works. In the new democracy, CNN gets the veto. If cable news doesn’t like your views, you have to leave Congress. That’s the rule,” he exclaimed.
After suggesting Greene hasn’t “actually harm[ed] anyone” and that she’s facing an “ideological” test, Carlson once again painted the criticism of her as being nothing more than cable news chatter.
“But CNN says she has bad opinions. Therefore, she’s the greatest threat we face,” he declared. “Now if you’re skeptical about any of this, our advice is keep it to yourself. Because free inquiry is dead, unauthorized questions are hate speech.”
