Three days after a Texas man allegedly killed 22 people in El Paso after apparently posting a manifesto complaining of a “Hispanic invasion,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson said white supremacy is not a problem in the United States and is actually a “hoax” and a “conspiracy theory.”
Carlson, who regularly spouts the same anti-immigrant “invasion” rhetoric the El Paso shooter is believed to have espoused in a racist manifesto, hit back against those who say President Trump’s rhetoric on immigration may have emboldened the suspected shooter. The Fox News star claimed it is “just a lie” to say Trump ever “endorsed white supremacy or came close to endorsing white supremacy.”
Crediting the president for condemning white supremacy while addressing the recent mass shootings, Carlson not only blasted critics of the president but took it a step further and dismissed the issue of white supremacy altogether, saying “the whole thing is a lie.”
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“If you were to assemble a list, a hierarchy of concerns, problems this country has, where would white supremacy be on the list? Right up there with Russia probably. It’s actually not a real problem in America.”
After asserting that one could fit all the white supremacists in America within a football stadium, the Fox News primetime star—who has repeatedly claimed racism is essentially a non-existent problem— then mocked the idea of white supremacy being an issue in this country.
“It’s a hoax,” he declared. “Just like the Russia hoax, it’s a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power.”
Moments later, during an interview with frequent guest Victor Davis Hanson, Carlson insisted he's “never met anybody—not one person—who ascribes to white supremacy.”
“I don't know a single person who thinks that's a good idea,” he added. “I don't—I mean, they are making this up, and it's a talking point which they are using to help them in this election cycle, obviously, because Russia died.”
The New York Times, meanwhile, recently highlighted how white extremist ideology is a major driving force in deadly mass shootings. Furthermore, the FBI said last month that the majority of domestic terrorism cases they’ve recently investigated are versions of white supremacist violence.
Besides the El Paso shooting, at least a dozen people were killed over the past year in two separate synagogue attacks in Poway, California, and Pittsburgh, Pennslyvania, both of which were tied to alleged gunmen who had expressed white nationalist views online beforehand.
