Fox News personality Tucker Carlson was taken to task by a conservancy group Monday after recently asserting that immigrants have made the Potomac River “dirtier.”
The host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” made the claim in an interview published by The Atlantic on Sunday, drawing a rebuke from the president of Potomac Conservancy, Hedrick Belin.
“There’s a time to speak truth against ignorance and to stand up for our values — and that time is now,” responded Mr. Belin, adding that Mr. Carlson’s claim that immigrants make the Potomac River dirtier is both “factually incorrect” and “racist, plain and simple.”
“These thinly veiled racist beliefs have no place in any serious public discourse,” Mr. Belin added.
Mr. Carlson, a resident of Washington, D.C., triggered the reaction after telling The Atlantic recently that the Potomac River has gotten “dirtier and dirtier and dirtier and dirtier” during his decades living in the area.
“I go down there and that litter is left almost exclusively by immigrants, who I’m sure are good people,” Mr. Carlson said in the interview.
Mr. Belin countered that the Potomac is healthier now than it has been in years, adding that to “make the egregious assertion that one group over another is at sole fault for the river’s woes is wildly inappropriate and doesn’t reflect the true nature of local pollution sources.”
Fox News did not immediately return a request for comment.
Dozens of advertisers previously dropped “Tucker Carlson Tonight” after its host said last year that immigrants make the U.S. “poorer and dirtier.”
More recently, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called Mr. Carlson a “white supremacist sympathizer” after one of his guests made a similar remark last week.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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