OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former Fox News host took sharp aim at the media on Friday in his first public appearance since the network canceled his popular prime-time show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
As noted by The Epoch Times, during his speech in Oxford, Ala., at a fundraising event organized by Rainbow Omega — a faith-based nonprofit group supporting persons with mental and developmental disabilities — “Carlson did not hold back when speaking about what he sees are issues undermining America—lack of truth in the media landscape and a ‘manufactured’ national division.”
He also opened his speech with his characteristic self-deprecating humor.
“I think I’m probably the first unemployed person who was ever invited to speak,” he said to laughs in the capacity-filled 1,215-seat Oxford Performing Arts Center. “When I accepted this speech … I didn’t realize how much free time I would have.”
Fox News announced on April 24 that the popular primetime host Tucker Carlson and the network “have agreed to part ways” after more than a decade.
“Carlson’s last program was Friday April 21st, Fox News said, meaning Carlson did not get a chance to sign off to his viewers. The news comes days after Fox News reached a historic 11th hour settlement with Dominion Voting Systems for over $787 million,” Axios reported.
The network’s ratings have crashed since, leading to Fox finishing behind left-wing network MSNBC for the first time in years.
In his hour-long speech, Carlson did not specifically mention the situation with Fox News. Instead, he discussed various political and social issues that he believes could potentially result in the “end of democracy” and the “enslavement” of the American people, The Epoch Times reported.
“American politics is supposed to be designed to improve people’s lives, but what is the point of it actually?” he said. “As we’re worried about these big abstract problems in faraway places, or claiming we can control the weather or whatever we’re claiming, there are kids with developmental disabilities who have aging parents, and the parents are legit terrified about what happens when they pass.”
He went on to say that most issues that occupy the media’s attention are not really relevant to the everyday lives and concerns of most Americans and are, in his view, designed to keep Americans divided and angry at each other.
“I’m starting to really believe that the divisions that we see in our society are pretty much manufactured,” he said, adding that one of those divisions centers on alleged racism.
“Obama’s first term was how we were going to get past race. I didn’t vote for the guy, but everybody I knew was excited, and so was I,” Carlson said. “We elect some guy I disagree with, but we get to the point where we stop picking at the scab and move forward as one country. Why wouldn’t I be for that? As a Christian, I was totally for that.”
However, that didn’t happen. During Obama’s second term, especially, Carlson said the then-president continued to focus on race. He said: “Oh no, we’re not post-racial. All we’re going to talk about is race and make each other hate each other on the basis of race.”
“I don’t think most Americans hate each other on the basis of their ethnic differences,” he added. “I think a lot of that is just a lie, actually, designed to distract people.”
Journalists are to blame for much of that, along with a lot of other “propaganda” published by the “overwhelming majority” of American media, he said.
“Why are they not only not addressing the issues that matter? But they’re kind of going out of their way to ignore them?” Carlson wondered. “They have no idea that the economy is sagging, really? How could you not know that? We have no idea that we’re actively fighting Russia in a war?”
“I just think that’s at some point, you have to call it what it is—which is lying,” he said. “And lying with a very specific purpose, which is to avert your gaze, to pull your attention away from the things that matter. That’s not news coverage. That’s just classic propaganda.”
He then smacked the media over the perpetuation of several narratives involving the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
“If you can control someone’s brain and get them to say, ‘I really need to wear a mask inside my car alone to protect myself—if you can get someone to that place where he gets in his Subaru and just instinctively puts on a mask with the windows up, then you’ve won,” Carlson said. “You’ve defeated them … in the enslavement of people, taking away their choice, and in so doing their dignity, really their humanity.
“That is the goal, obviously,” he said.
