According to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, no company has hurt the United States more than the social media platform Twitter.
Speaking to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) on Tuesday night, Carlson brought up the conservative lawmaker’s current lawsuit against Twitter. A judge recently ruled that Nunes’ suit, in which he alleges the social media company enabled parody Twitter accounts to defame him, can move forward. (Yes, it is the one involving the cow account that ended up getting more Twitter followers than Nunes himself.)
Discussing the lawsuit, Nunes complained that Twitter was “allowing anonymous accounts, hundreds of them, to slander and defame me on a daily basis,” before wondering aloud whether the company’s “board members really know what Twitter’s been up to.”
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Carlson, meanwhile, replied by suggesting that Twitter was just plain evil.
“It’s hard to think of a company that’s hurt this country more than Twitter,” the Fox News star said. “Maybe there are some. I can’t think of one. If you look at the hate and the division and the cruelty that’s now common—it wasn’t common 10 years ago. Twitter’s a huge part of that.”
It didn’t take long for critics and media folks to react to Carlson’s take, especially considering the network he works for.
“Tucker Carlson just killed irony. RIP,” writer and Daily Beast contributor Molly Jong-Fast noted on Twitter.
“I can think of one,” Politico correspondent Tim Alberta tweeted.
The Nation’s sports editor Dave Zirin, meanwhile, cut right to the chase. “Correcting it for @TuckerCarlson who like most heirs is a little slow: ‘It’s hard to think of a company that’s hurt this country more than Fox News,’” he wrote.
The Fox prime-time host—who has been the target of a sustained advertiser boycott over his anti-immigrant and inflammatory rhetoric—went on to insist that Twitter “should be ashamed of themselves” while telling Nunes he hopes the congressman’s lawsuit calls attention to the “hate and division” that Twitter is supposedly responsible for.
