Tucker Carlson kept up the long Fox News tradition of race baiting on Martin Luther King Day last night. He began by spending 13 minutes browbeating African American Fox contributor Jehmu Greene. Democrat Greene is a candidate to lead the Democratic National Committee. But instead of probing her platform, Carlson spent most of the time hinting that she might be anti-white.

Carlson opened the discussion by focusing on Rep. John Lewis’ salvo on Meet The Press in which he called Trump’s presidency illegitimate and that he planned to boycott the inauguration. “This is a fight Democrats started,” Carlson said, echoing Sean Spicer’s defense of Trump’s low-class Twitter response to Lewis.

Noting that Lewis is so respected that the Navy named a ship after him, Greene responded, “To see what Donald Trump is doing on Martin Luther King Day, no one is standing for it. Not Democrats, not Republicans, not anybody who cares about the future of this country.”

What does that say about Fox News then?

“So he’s the one Congressman out of 435 you’re not allowed to attack,” Carlson griped. Which, as Greene said, was a “ridiculous” interpretation of her comments. But it was also a dog whistle that Lewis was getting special privileges he didn’t deserve, “merely” because he’s a civil rights hero.

From there, Carlson wanted to know how Greene would help the party appeal to white voters. She did have a few minutes to talk about the need for the Democratic Party to improve its communication strategy. But at about 5:15, Carlson interrupted to sandbag her with more explicit racial attacks:

Carlson fixated on comments by Symone Sanders, a spokeswoman for Bernie Sanders who has said, “We don’t need white people leading the Democratic Party right now.” He began to hector Greene to say whether or not she agreed.

“We need to find ways where everybody feels welcomed,” Greene began. “I don’t agree with…”

But Carlson interrupted, suggesting it was crucial to get Green’s position on white people. What he was really doing, of course, was trying to hammer her into “a heads I win, tails you lose” position of either vilifying a prominent black Democrat or looking anti-white.

“Do you think she should have said that? Do you think that’s an OK thing to say and do you agree with it?” Carlson demanded to know. “Will you denounce that?” As if that were the most important thing to know about a potential DNC chairperson.

Believe it or not, Carlson spent more than four minutes badgering Greene on this topic. Then, at about 12:10, Carlson started haranguing her again about race. It started after Carlson tried to bully Greene into saying “yes or no” as to whether she supports Donald Trump’s plan “to reimport drugs at a lower price from Canada.”

Greene said, “I’m not gonna play this gotcha game. I’m not gonna sit here and cheerlead somebody who is refusing to even celebrate Martin Luther King Day.”

Carlson interrupted to accuse, “Why do you always bring it back to race?” In fact, he was the one who kept doing that.

Greene replied that the discussion had started on the subject of race. “Tucker, you’re the one who picked the topic,” she correctly pointed out.

Carlson played dumb. “I’m asking you about health care,” he argued disingenuously.

I thought Greene had a terrific answer: “You know what? I am the last person that is going to cheerlead some small little one-off from Donald Trump. Because I am looking at the bigger picture of what this man is about to do to this country and responding to the waves of people who are terrified, who are fearful – the women who are marching the day after the inauguration and the men who are joining them because they understand we have to resist.”

Carlson continually talked over her before sneering, “This is pretty thin, Jehmu. This is not very impressive, I have to say.” Then with a smirk, he said, “Alright, good luck with that,” and closed the discussion.

But this was not the only race baiting Carlson did last night. I'll have more in my next post.

Watch this first example of Carlson’s Martin Luther King Day behavior, from the January 16, 2017 Tucker Carlson Tonight.