It’s not hard to imagine Fox News host Tucker Carlson rubbing his hands with glee as he prepared to weaponize July 4th, the Statue of Liberty and a Congolese immigrant exercising her First Amendment right of protest during his special brand of dog whistling to white nationalists in a monologue last night.
Knitting his brows with that oh-so-sincerely-serious face Carlson often adopts, he wrapped himself in faux patriotism and launched a series of anti-American smears and dog whistles he surely knew his white nationalist fans would lap up.
Media Matters has the transcript excerpts (my emphases added):
CARLSON: Signs of growing extremism in this country on the left are everywhere. Just yesterday, a Congolese immigrant shut down the Statue of Liberty -- our Statue of Liberty -- to protest the Trump administration's immigration policies. The left applauded that.
But take three steps back and think about what you’re watching right here. Congo is a war-ravaged hellscape, a country noted for mass rape and cannibalism. Imagine escaping a country like that, and being welcomed in our country, the United States. You would be grateful, wouldn't you? Many Congolese are grateful.
This person is not grateful at all. She took over one of our monuments to scream about how racist we are, and progressives support her. They have gone insane.
Here’s what fake-sincere Carlson didn’t tell you: The Statue of Liberty belongs to all Americans, not just the kind Carlson approves of, and that includes protester Therese Patricia Okoumou, a naturalized citizen who has lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years. Last I checked, becoming a citizen does not mean giving up your First Amendment rights to protest, nor to get a permit from Carlson beforehand so as not to trigger his racist fee fees.
While he was at it, Carlson used his prime time platform to suggest that civil rights is really only a subterfuge by which uppity, ungrateful brown people can collude with liberals to execute a coup and subjugate whites.
CARLSON: What happened to liberals? Well, a lot of things. One, they lost power, and that drove them off the deep end. They plan to get their power back, no matter what it takes. A new book by Professor David Faris is called It's Time to Fight Dirty, and it explains how the left plans to do it.
[...]
As Faris puts it in the book, quote, "Republicans have always feared that immigration would change the character of American society. Democrats should reward them with their very worst nightmare." Remember that paragraph. It is the blueprint for what we are about to see.
They're going to tell you it's about civil rights, or some other principle they pretend to care about, but they’re lying. It's about seizing power and holding it. That's their only aim, they're deadly serious about it. While you were grilling in the backyard last night, they were plotting, in effect, a coup.
Last week, Politico reported that Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott is cracking down on inflammatory rhetoric on the network. Either she doesn’t consider this kind of ethnic hate mongering inflammatory or she was never serious about the crackdown in the first place.
See why neo-Nazis love Carlson and watch him return the love below, from the July 5, 2018 Tucker Carlson Tonight, via Media Matters.