During Tucker Carlson’s desperate and deceitful fear mongering about police reform, the multi-millionaire played the role of a regular guy about to be victimized by out-of-control African Americans and their anti-white enablers.
In my previous post, I wrote about how Carlson tried to smear police reform advocates as so over-the-top that calling the police during a break-in “definitely qualifies as racism.”
This particular Carlson dog whistle to his white nationalist fans is not subtle: Being pro-black puts white lives in danger.
Carlson repeated this dog whistle later in the same commentary with such fakery I thought it deserved its own post:
CARLSON: If you make more than $100,000.00 a year, you are more than twice as likely to think cutting the police was a good idea and there's no mystery there, of course, rich people live in safe places. They can afford their own security. Jeff Bezos doesn't need the police, he has got his own.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, and it is unfortunate, Jeff Bezos and people like him are the only ones allowed to talk right now. It's hard to overstate how vicious the crackdown on free speech and free thought has been in the last few days.
Not allowed to talk? Who does Carlson, who has his own prime time show on the highest-rated cable news network think he's fooling?
As for making more than $100,000 a year, that's probably chump change to Carlson. He may not be as wealthy as Bezos but he was the 12th highest-paid news anchor in 2019 (behind Shepard Smith, whom Carlson reportedly pushed out, I thought it worth noting), according to TheStreet.com:
His 2019 salary stands at $6 million and net worth figure stands at $20 million, augmented not only by his popular nightly news show on Fox News but also from a $10 million publishing deal for his book "Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution."
In fact, Carlson’s net worth may be even higher given that he grew up wealthy and as far back as 2008 said he’s “extraordinarily loaded” from a “number of trust funds.”
Carlson’s attempt to play a man-of-the-people is more than just a charade. It’s part of his ongoing effort to keep viewers from noticing how many Trump economic policies are screwing them. In this case, it’s keeping viewers from considering that maybe their tax dollars would be better off going into public services that might have more benefits for real working folk, such as schools, infrastructure, and mental health.
You can watch the particular bit of Carlson’s dishonesty below, from the June 8, 2020 Tucker Carlson Tonight.