As guest host of the Hannity show last night, Tucker Carlson boasted about a phony scoop from Maine Senator Susan Collins: that President Obama has a food tester. It would seem that neither he nor the Fox News producers knew or cared that it’s old news – and that presidential food testers have been at the White House since before President Obama. But, apparently, Carlson thinks President Obama should stop acting like “a king,” save some taxpayer dough and put himself at risk. And Fox News didn’t mind. UPDATED

Near the end of last night’s show, Carlson said he had “a revelation of a long-rumored but until now a well-kept presidential secret.”

As a banner on the screen read, “PRESIDENTIAL SECRET REVEALED?” Carlson boasted that his Daily Caller “captured it all on tape.” He then played a clip of Republican Senator Susan Collins discussing what Republicans served at a recent lunch on Capitol Hill. She “revealed” that President Obama “honestly did look longingly” at the food “but apparently he has to have, you know, essentially, a taster.”

Carlson sneered, “A food taster? It is good to be king. Well, the Daily Caller points out that the Secret Service declined, of course, to confirm the existence of a presidential food taster over the years but it sounds like the senior senator from Maine just confirmed that remarkable fact – and you’re paying for it.”

Had Carlson or FoxNews.com (which later posted about this "news") bothered to do a simple Google search, they would have likely discovered a 2009 post on the conservative website Hot Air reporting on this very fact – and linking to a 2003 Daily Mail article about President George W. Bush bringing a food tester to Buckingham Palace. “According to sources, everything that is destined to be served up for the President has to be tasted first,” the article noted. About six months ago, HuffingtonPost reported on a food taster at an Obama fundraiser in Tampa before adding, “Media outlets have picked up on a taster everywhere from Paris to India. The secret service has always refused to confirm that Obama travels with a food taster, in keeping with their policies on security issues.”

Then again, if this wasn’t news, Carlson wouldn’t have had an excuse to gripe about it. And as awful as Carlson's comments are, it's not a huge shock given that Fox hosts the go-to website for those longing for President Obama's assassination.

Video below via Heather at Video Cafe.

3/18/13 UPDATE: Carlson continued griping about the cost of President Obama's food tester yesterday morning on Fox & Friends Weekend. Oh, and Tucker? I suspect it's a food tester, not taster. I imagine the methods of detecting poison have evolved a bit since the days of yore.