Tucker Carlson Teases an Insurrection over Trump
The Fox News host seemed to be inciting viewers to violence.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has privately said he hates Donald Trump “passionately,” called for violence and for people to stockpile AR-15s after the former president was indicted.
Trump became the first former president ever to be criminally charged Thursday when a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict him for his role in paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Carlson, who has remained a full-throated Trump supporter on air despite knowing full well the man lied about the 2020 election, was livid. He referred to the indictment as a “political purge” during his show Thursday night, all while spreading harmful transphobic conspiracies about the shooting in Nashville, Tennessee.
He then proceeded to appear to call for violence.
“It almost feels like [Democrats are] pushing the population to react,” Carlson said while talking with presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. “At what point do we conclude they’re doing this in order to produce a reaction?”
Carlson also said it was “probably not the best time to give up your AR-15,” a comment that is both dangerous and incredibly tone deaf considering what just happened in Nashville.
His guest at that moment, conservative activist Ned Ryun, had also warned the U.S. was barreling toward “that path to a one-party state and authoritarian government”—which is incredibly ironic considering Republican-led states are already trying to overturn the will of the voters.
Keep in mind that Carlson knows better. Documents released in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News revealed that the network’s hosts and executives never believed any of the conspiracies they spread about the 2020 election.
Carlson had texted someone two days before the January 6 insurrection that “there really isn’t an upside to Trump,” adding, “I hate him passionately.”
And yet Carlson continues to be a glorified spokesperson for Trump and the Republican Party.