Congratulations, America. The end of Tucker Carlson Tonight marks a great day for the Republic. Really.
On Monday's Last Word, guest host Ali Velshi spoke to NBC's Ben Collins, who covers the "dystopia beat" for NBC News:
ALI VELSHI: Ben, on Twitter today, you said, "Tucker was singularly skilled at mainstreaming white nationalist talking points and acting incredulous when anyone called him on it. But he mastered the steady drip. Over five years, the Great Replacement went from 8chan manifestos to Primetime on Fox News. It was no accident."
This is something you have taught me for years, the way in which wacky, outside, weirdo conspiracy theories get white-washed. At one point, through Alex Jones, then it goes into Fox, and then it gets out to mainstream conservatives who watch Fox, not thinking that it is 8chan and Alex Jones, and yet, they end up with the same messages.
BEN COLLINS, NBC NEWS: Yeah, you know, the more this has gone on, the more you're viewing a momentous occasion for the health of the Republic, here. I know that sounds nuts, but listen for a second. For this man's ties to 4chan, Tucker was effectively a composite character of a 4chan message board user, and I don't mean that as a joke. I mean that, as that's where he got his stories.
A couple of weeks ago, he took documents that were altered to show that there were more Ukrainian casualties in Ukraine during this war than Russian casualties, this was not true, but it was found on 4chan, and he ran it on the show. He also ran a hoax a few weeks ago about this thing called "the trans day of vengeance," which was the day that trans people are going to rise up. That happened to be April Fools Day, but that didn't really seem to get past his BS meter or his staff's, and that is because his staff goes to 4chan. One of his lead writers, actually his lead writer, who was fired from the show, for ties to white nationalist message boards a few years ago -- this guy really was tied into, simply, the worst parts of the internet. Places where people dump manifestos before they do mass shootings, that is what was going on here. So even aside from the great replacement theory, even aside from the complete lies he was pushing about January 6th, aside from all of those things, there is nobody on Fox News, in mainstream media, on cable television who's like that. That's gone now, there's no immediate replacement who is an extremist online, and you know I would say internet poison, as Tucker Carlson was.
