Fox News host and Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson hit back at former Fox News reporter Carl Cameron Monday after suggesting the host should be in jail.
Cameron told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Saturday that Carlson has “shouted fire in a crowed movie house,” leading a person to jail or “something worse.” The network’s former chief political correspondent praised President Joe Biden’s administration for beginning to “make a move” against speech reportedly causing “damage” and “violent hate.”
“The administration is beginning to make a move on that, says the journalist. Maybe wind up in jail or maybe something worse,” Carlson began. “Well, what’s something worse? We’re not sure what something worse is. But it certainly feels like we’re moving toward it at very high speech at this point. That’s the end point to talk like that, something worse. Because rhetoric has its own internal logic, you’ve experienced it, you can talk yourself into things. We’ve all done that.”
“Democrats are doing it right now. What they’re talking themselves into right now is ‘something worse,” he continued. “It’s scary. It is time to pull back. It is time to de-escalate, otherwise this is going to get really ugly really soon.”
Liberal media pundits have pinned Carlson for the May 14 shooting in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket that killed 10 people. The 18-year-old gunman, Payton Gendron, is a self-described “white supremacist,” “anti-Semite” and “left-wing authoritarian” who condemned Republicans and Fox News in his 106-paged manifesto. (RELATED: ‘It Infuriates Me!’: Megyn Kelly Eviscerates Media Blaming Tucker Carlson For Buffalo Shooting)
The gunman referred to black Americans and immigrants as “replacers” in connection to the Great Replacement theory, an alleged Ethno-nationalist political theory warning white people that they are being replaced by non-white immigrants. Carlson has been accused of promoting the theory, though he accused Democrats of promoting it in 2021 by citing a 2015 segment of then-Vice President Joe Biden said “it’s a source of our strength” that white people would make up less than half of the American population.
Rolling Stone Magazine author Talia Lavin called Gendron a “mainstream Republican” and latest right-wing extremist to participate in racially motivated violence in her May 16 article. “The View” co-host Ana Navarro said Carlson and Republican leaders “need to be called out” for pushing the theory.
NBC’s Ben Collins accused Carlson of “directly trying to preach” to extremists like Gendron during a May 16 appearance on “Morning Joe.”