Tucker Carlson quotes Martin Luther King in bizarre rebuttal to New York Times investigation

Controversial Fox News host Tucker Carlson is once again whinging about the press reporting on his show, this time quoting the civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr in an attempt to shut down criticism from The New York Times.

The prominent American outlet – we’re talking about the NYT here, to be clear – has published a series of investigations into the conservative broadcaster’s status on the extreme right. In one example, some poor souls at the paper analysed 1,150 episodes of Tucker Carlson Tonight to understand some of his common talking points and strategies.

In the piece, the authors found more than 800 shows mentioning the “ruling class”, arguing Carlson “frames nearly every topic on his show as a ‘ruling class’ plot, from gun control to marijuana legalisation to Covid restrictions”.

They also pointed out a repeated turn of phrase used by Carlson, which is his argument that the elite or establishment “care far more” about a particular subject than the needs of ordinary Americans.

Another article, penned by Nicholas Confessore, argues Carlson has a “playbook” approach or “feedback loop” which he uses on Tucker Carlson Tonight.

“Go straight for the third rail, be it race, immigration or another hot-button issue; harvest the inevitable backlash; return the next evening to skewer critics for how they responded. Then, do it all again,” Confessore wrote.

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In a clip from Tucker Carlson Tonight, shared to Twitter on Friday, Carlson responded to the outlet’s reports: “Here’s a newsflash for you. The New York Times putting out another story about how this show is racist because we support national borders.

“This has got to be the 10th, or 27th, or 217th story just like this The New York Times has run, all of them are pretty much identical – ‘racist, racist, racist!’”

Taking aim at Mr Confessore directly, Carlson said he’s “the same as the last guy before him”, as they’re all “obedient little establishment defenders who will say anything to please their bosses”.

“Or suck-ups, brown-nosers, lickspittles – not people you want to have dinner with,” Carlson added as if anyone would want to have dinner with him.

He continued: “If you want to criticise this show, there are plenty of things you could say – we’ve got a ton of supposedly controversial opinions on a million different topics. We talk about them every night.

“Big financiers wrecking America; marijuana actually isn’t medicine; Russiagate is totally idiotic and so is the war it’s now causing; feminism is a corporate lie; marriage makes you happy, so does raising your own children; and so on.”

Carlson, getting into the swing of things with his tantrum, even offered up the view that Fox “[doesn’t] think UFOs are real” – because of course, that’s one of the most controversial opinions to have in 21st century America.

He added: “The funny thing we don’t have exotic opinions on, is race. Our view on race is really simple: we believe Martin Luther King. We don’t think your skin colour is the most important thing about you.

“We think all people were created by God, and should therefore be judged by what they do, not by how they look.

“Only Nazis think your race defines you, and we just don’t believe there are a ton of people in this country – even the left – who actually believe something that evil.”

Concluding his monologue, Carlson claimed The New York Times keeps calling him racist “to make us shut up”, but that they “don’t plan to” play along with their accusations.

Oh, how we wish he would.

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