- Tucker Carlson's latest COVID conspiracy theory is that white people are being discriminated against.
- The Fox News host featured footage from InfoWars in an attempt to back up the false claim.
- Carlson aired a shorter version of the clip, omitting context on monoclonal antibody eligibility.
Parroting months-old material from the conspiracy website InfoWars, Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been pushing a demonstrably false claim that white people are being denied COVID-19 treatments because of their race.
While Carlson has already equated children wearing masks to child abuse and aired a conspiracy theory-ridden interview with anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his January 10 segment reached a new level of misleading material and outright falsehood.
"The United States has mistreated racial minorities in centuries past, they say, therefore whites must suffer now," Carlson said. "So your ancestors did bad things, or people who looked like your ancestors did bad things, so now, we are withholding medicine from you.
"They call this equity," he continued. "It's not equity. It is collective punishment. It's the North Korean standard. It's the definition of evil."
Airing a shorter version of a clip that was first shared by InfoWars host Harrison Hill Smith and later posted to the conspiracy site's page, Carlson omitted the latter portion of the video where Smith is told he can't receive monoclonal antibody treatment because of his lack of underlying health conditions.
With COVID-19 surging across the US, therapeutics such as monoclonal antibodies have been stretched thin across the nation's hospitals. Now, evidence suggests that two of the three monoclonal antibody treatments may be less effective against the Omicron variant.
"If you were 65, you'd be good," the nurse tells the InfoWars host in a portion of the video Carlson didn't air. "But nope, you're healthy and [have] no medical conditions, so research shows that you should be able to fight off COVID."
Despite the nurse giving the patient a clear answer, Carlson came to the opposite conclusion.
"So you can't get lifesaving drugs from the government of Texas if you're the wrong color," Carlson said after airing the shortened clip. "Think about that."
In response to Insider's request for comment, a Fox News spokesperson pointed to non-InfoWars sources Carlson included in the segment.
"Tucker Carlson's monologue cited official government documents from the FDA and health departments in New York City, Utah, Texas, Minnesota as evidence for the claims that non-black or non-Hispanic COVID patients are facing adverse race-based factors impeding them from receiving COVID therapeutics and other scarce drugs for treatment," the media representative wrote in an email.
The Texas Department of State Health Services has gone on record to state that white people are not being denied antibody treatments because of their race, and neither the FDA nor any of the states mentioned by Fox say "you can't get lifesaving drugs" on the basis of race, as Carlson claims they did.
A CDC study published on January 7 explained the disparity in COVID-19 deaths by race while noting that full vaccination and receiving a booster shot drastically reduce the disproportionate outcomes.
"Population-wide data have demonstrated that COVID-19 hospitalization and death are more frequent among Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native persons than among non-Hispanic White persons," the authors write.
After the misleading clip was aired, Carlson, for his part, said he can't help it if his viewers are left to conspiratorial thinking.
"I mean, if you wanted to make the population radical and distrustful and conspiracy minded — if you wanted to destroy the bonds that hold people together — this is exactly what you'd do," he said.