Tucker Carlson took aim at Twitter during his evening Fox News opinion program Tuesday, accusing the platform of playing a huge part in driving hate and division among Americans.
“It’s hard to think of a company that’s hurt this country more than Twitter. Maybe there are some. I can’t think of one,” he said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
“If you look at the hate and the division and the cruelty that’s now common — it wasn’t common 10 years ago. Twitter’s a huge part of that,” continued Mr. Carlson. “They made a small number of people really rich. They should be ashamed of themselves.”
Twitter did not immediately return a message requesting comment.
Mr. Carlson made the remark while interviewing Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican, about a $250 million defamation lawsuit the congressman has filed against Twitter and the users behind three parody accounts that mocked him online. A Virginia judge ruled last week that the lawsuit can move forward despite objections raised by Twitter and a Republican strategist who operated one of the accounts.
Critics of Mr. Carlson have accused him of spouting hate speech on his cable program in the past, and companies have previously pulled ads from the show as a result of his remarks.
Dozens of advertisers boycotted “Tucker Carlson Tonight” amid an outcry caused by him saying late last year that immigrants make America “poorer and dirtier and more divided,” and others followed suit after audio emerged in March of controversial comments he made about women and rape.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Republican, accused Mr. Carlson’s advertisers of “underwriting hate speech” after he said during a July broadcast that the congresswoman, a former Somali refugee and naturalized U.S. citizen, is proof of how “dangerous” immigration has become.
“Fox News is now giving a nightly platform to white supremacist rhetoric,” Mr. Omar reacted at the time.
More recently, Mr. Carlson came under fire after calling white supremacy “a hoax” and “conspiracy theory” during an August broadcast. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security subsequently added white supremacy to its list of priority threats in a counterterrorism strategy released the following month.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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