Tucker Carlson, who fear mongers about left-wing rhetoric leading to violence, laughed off a pipe bomb sent to right-wing boogeyman George Soros after Donald Trump and other right-wingers began blaming him for the protests against Brett Kavanaugh and then the migrant caravan.
As Think Progress has noted, on October 5, Trump baselessly accused Soros – a regular Fox scapegoat – of paying anti-Kavanaugh protesters. The next day, Rudy Giuliani retweeted a tweet calling Soros the anti-Christ and calling for his assets to be frozen. Yesterday Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX) told Fox that it was possible that George Soros was funding the migrant caravan. Rep. Matt Gaetz (F-FL) made the same baseless suggestion last week. Yesterday, a pipe bomb arrived in Soros’ mailbox.
Inflammatory rhetoric is Carlson’s stock in trade but he tries to disguise his tactics with a cloak of phony civic mindedness. So, for example, Carlson makes statements such as, “The left is officially out of epithets. All that’s left is physical harm. Who’ll be the first to call for that?” And this: “[S]plitting the country into tiny warring groups is useful to [Democrats]. It helps them maintain their power and so they’re happy to do it. … Divide and conquer, whatever it takes.”
Yet Carlson’s supposed concern for violence not only evaporated when confronted with the real, potentially deadly violence aimed at Soros, Carlson laughed loudly and derisively when Democrat Philippe Reines suggested a connection between the pipe bomb and Trump:
REINES: In the last ten days Donald Trump used the name George Soros for the first time in his presidency, and the guy had a pipe bomb in his mailbox last night, and we’re talking about whether or not Sarah Sanders gets her cornish hen?
CARLSON: Whoever put a pipe bomb in George Soros’ mailbox—
REINES: Why do you think they did?
CARLSON: Because Trump criticized George Soros, one of the richest people in the world?
REINES: Because Donald Trump runs around—
CARLSON: No, because George Soros—
[…]
I’m laughing because to draw a between Trump, Soros - I’ve criticized Soros a thousand times I hope he’ll live long enough so I can continue to criticize him.
No, Carlson probably doesn’t wish Soros any harm. But any person truly concerned about our democracy would have coupled his insistence that there was no connection between Trump's rhetoric and the pipe bomb with at least some alarm and sympathy for Soros. Yet Carlson could not be bothered to suggest to the Fan In Chief or to anyone else on the right that maybe they should dial it down. In fact, even in this segment, Carlson went on to call liberals “an angry mob.”
Watch Carlson prove his utter hypocrisy and lack of decency (again) above, from the October 23, 2018 Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Crossposted at News Hounds.
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