In the aftermath of mass shootings in Texas and Ohio that left at least 31 people dead, Fox News Host Tucker Carlson said guns and white nationalism aren’t “actual problems” in America.
He made the remarks as part of his criticism of Democrats Monday on his news commentary show “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” The words “Vultures Leverage Pain for Political Advantage” were capitalized in the show’s lower third.
“Maybe that’s why they spend so much time trying to divert our attention from America’s actual problems. They don’t want to talk about what’s really making us sick. They have no answers,” Carlson said on the show. “They’ll tell you it’s about Trump, or guns, or white nationalism or Russia. It’s all a joke. These people are not serious. They’re children.”
Carlson was responding to two clips of Democratic presidential hopefuls saying President Donald Trump‘s statements on race and immigration are to blame for the shooting in El Paso, which is being investigated as a hate crime and an act of domestic terror.
Officials have said they believe the gunman posted a manifesto online that’s filled with anti-immigrant and white supremacist language.
Sen. Cory Booker and Julián Castro, the former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, spoke with journalist Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday about the document.
“The manifesto that apparently this shooter wrote that says that Hispanics are taking over the state of Texas and changing the country, this echoes the kind of language that our president encourages, talking about ‘invaders,’” Castro said on the show.
Booker echoed his sentiments and said the president is responsible because he has failed to condemn white supremacy.
“I think that, at the end of the day, especially because this was a white supremacist manifesto, that I want to say with more moral clarity that Donald Trump is responsible for this,” Booker said on the show. “He is responsible because he is stoking fears and hatred and bigotry.”
Trump has been heavily scrutinized for comments and policies critics deem racist and anti-immigrant.
Most notable are a proposal to cordon the Mexico–United States border with a wall and Trump’s message on Twitter last month telling four congresswomen of color to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
Trump has also frequently described undocumented immigrants crossing the southern U.S. border as invaders.
Carlson didn’t mention the Twitter messages specifically on his recent show. He instead, focused on how Democrats described recent mass shootings.
“So, 31 are dead tonight, and the only thing that these people can think about is how to terrify Americans into voting for them,” Carlson said on the show.
He said the “so-called political leaders” are “disgusting.”
“They’re also totally unimpressive,” Carlson said, “unequal to the task of fixing a society that on some days, like today, for example, seems on the verge of collapse.”
