Fox News' Tucker Carlson, White Supremacist Manifestos 'Eerily' Similar, 'Daily Show' Mash-Up Suggests
Comedy Central's The Daily Show produced a segment Friday that juxtaposed video clips of Fox News' Tucker Carlson with the texts of two white supremacist mass shooters, depicting "eerily similar" remarks.
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah spliced together Carlson's consistent remarks about "ethnic replacement" and "obedient third world" voters in order to draw comparisons to two 2019 manifestos written by mass shooters. Quipping that "we need to talk about plagiarism at Fox News," the comedy program highlighted manifesto phrases from Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shooter Brenton Harrison Tarrant and El Paso, Texas, shooter Patrick Wood Crusius. The 2019 shootings killed a combined 74 people and injured 60 more.
Former President Donald Trump and right-wing provocateur Candace Owens were named directly in the Christchurch shooter's manifesto. This prompted Carlson to respond in August 2019 that "white supremacy is actually not a real problem in America" and is instead a left-wing "hoax."
The Friday Daily Show segment opens by saying: "In 2019, two white supremacist mass shooters left eerily similar manifestos justifying their crimes. Now there's a new copycat."
Text taken directly from the two shooters' manifesto rants about white supremacy were highlighted under clips of Carlson reiterating his belief that Democrats and "the left" are attempting to replace white people with "new obedient voters from the third world—that's what's happening actually."
"Democrats know, if they keep up the flood of illegals into the country, they can eventually turn it into a flood of voters for them," Carlson says in one clip.
Several phrases were used explicitly by Carlson and at least one, and some cases both, of the two mass shooters. "Ethnic replacement" and "demographic replacement" were cited by each multiple times. And there were similar references to Democrats allegedly "handing out citizenship, free health care, free housing vouchers and free food."
Responding to potential ties to white supremacist ideologies that year, Carlson said he's "never met anybody who ascribes to white supremacy or thinks that ideology is a "good idea" in the 50 years he's been alive.
"This is a country where the average person is getting poorer, where the suicide rate is spiking—'white supremacy, that's the problem'—this is a hoax," Carlson said in 2019. "Just like the Russia hoax, it's a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power."
The Christchurch shooting took place on March 15, 2019 at the Al Noor Mosque in the New Zealand suburb of Riccarton and later continued at the Linwood Islamic Centre, leaving 51 people dead and 40 were injured in an event which the shooter broadcast live on Facebook with a body camera.
The August 3, 2019, El Paso, Texas, shooting killed 23 people and injured 23 others during an attack which sought to target Latinos. The 21-year-old alleged shooter released a manifesto simultaneously which touted his belief in the white nationalist "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory as well as anti-immigrant comments.
Newsweek reached out to both Fox News and Comedy Central for any additional remarks Saturday morning.
