Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday called Fox News host Tucker Carlson a “white supremacist sympathizer” and responsible for her decision not to sit for an interview with the network.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, made the remark on Twitter in response to a segment that aired the previous evening on the conservative commentator’s prime-time opinion program, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” during a discussion in which her congressional district was characterized as being dirty and “un-American” due to its large population of immigrants.
“I go back and forth on whether to go on Fox News,” Mr. Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to the segment. “The main reason I haven’t is squaring the fact that the ad revenue from it bankrolls a white supremacist sympathizer to broadcast an hour-long production of unmitigated racism, without any accountability whatsoever.”
The congresswoman’s tweet about Fox News and Mr. Carlson referenced another Twitter user’s post that included video of her district being discussed on the show the night before.
“Her district is actually one of the least American districts in the country,” guest Seth Barron during Tuesday’s episode. “It’s occupied by relatively few American citizens. A very high percentage of her district is in fact illegal aliens. Now the way they inhabit housing there is such that they live in a lot of illegal spaces, like basements, and many people live there, so they wind up producing a lot of garbage that the landlords don’t want thrown out normally. So, hence you wind up with a lot of garbage on the streets. You have illegal food vendors pouring their pig grease into the gutters. I worked out there. It can be a little gross.”
Responding on Twitter, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that: “’Immigrants are dirty’ is a lazy, tired, racist trope.”
“Secondly, environmental injustice is a major motivation as to why we introduced and wrote the Green New Deal the way we did in the first place,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.
Mr. Barron, an editor and writer for City Journal, apologized from his own Twitter account roughly two hours later.
“I chose the wrong words and that is my fault. I am sorry,” Mr. Barron tweeted about his Fox News appearance. “The issue I intended to raise was that immigrants, both documented and not, are often unable to access legal, affordable housing. This crisis has led many people, including immigrants, to illegal basement dwellings, where landlords fail to collect trash, leaving residents in a tough position, ultimately putting their garbage on the streets. I didn’t do justice to a complex issue and I apologize.”
Fox News did not immediately return a request for comment.
Mr. Carlson, 50, has previously come under fire for making controversial remarks about immigration, including when dozens of advertisers dropped his show last year after he said that immigrants make the U.S. “poorer and dirtier.”
He said in July that Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat and former Somali refugee, was proof of how “dangerous” immigration has become, prompting the congresswoman to accuse Fox News of giving a platform to “white supremacist rhetoric” and suggesting that his program’s sponsors reconsider advertising on his show.
More recently, Mr. Carlson was accused last month of being a white supremacist after he suggested that immigrants “despoil” and “pollute” countries by overcrowding them.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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