Tucker Carlson turned outrage over the police killing of 16-year-old Ma'Kiah Bryant into a white-power weapon by "joking" that Blacks and Democrats want (Black) kids to be allowed to stab each other.
Police may have been legally justified in shooting Bryant, who was running with a knife toward another person when she was shot in Columbus, Ohio. But that doesn’t make it right. Furthermore, Blacks and their allies have good reason for concern. NPR notes, “According to the group Mapping Police Violence, Columbus police are responsible for more Black deaths in the last several years then departments in much larger cities like Los Angeles or Philadelphia, and many more than in comparable nearby cities like Cleveland and Cincinnati.”
Carlson suggests racial justice concerns are about giving Blacks the right to commit crimes
Despite the fact that Republicans would rather a teen massacre than gun control, “sworn enemy of lying” Carlson pretended “Democrats” (his code word for “people of color”) are enabling crime to run amok. He was "joking" about the Democratic press conference (it didn't happen), but he was dead serious about his messaging that people of color are savages. It’s a Carlson fave meme.
CARLSON: At a triumphant press conference yesterday, leading Democrats unveiled their findings which are now a plank in the party's platform. They're going to allow children to stab each other.
Now, stabbing people has long been taboo in this country, especially for those under the age of 18. For decades, young Americans have hidden their switchblades, their stilettos, their Ka-Bars and machetes. Kids were forced to live as if plunging blades into strangers was something to be ashamed of, instead of a normal, healthy part of childhood. But no more. Knife fights are human rights. Stabbing can finally come out of the closet.
In some ways, it's a return to the future. The right to stab has been restored to the pantheon of freedoms our Mayan ancestors enumerated thousands of years ago in our founding document, the Declaration of Diversity.
Sure, Carlson sprinkled in a bit of hate for other characteristics of liberals, but only a white-supremacist apologist, like Lachlan Murdoch, would be fooled as to Carlson’s true message.
CARLSON: Going forward, allowing children to stab others will be enshrined in law, alongside America's other core foundational rights, the right to commit voter fraud, the right to free body piercings, the right of trans-illegal aliens with pituitary disorders to become fighter pilots. These are the rights upon which this nation was founded. The rights the Democratic Party exists to protect.
Carlson mocks concern for police force against Blacks as support for assault and murder
After playing a clip of the 911 call that brought police to Bryant, Carlson played the race card more explicitly.
CARLSON: "Someone is trying to stab us and get our grandma. We need a police officer here now." Now if your first thought when you heard those words was, "Calm down, racist, stabbing people is an important part of childhood development." If that was your response, give yourself an equity ribbon. There may be a job for you on MSNBC primetime. A stabbing? What's the harm there? That was our thought.
And then we saw a clear version of the tape of what happened next, and we will concede that just for a moment, we wondered if allowing kids to kill people with knives was really the enlightened idea they told us it was.
Not one of Carlson’s clips showed anyone condoning crime
Carlson went on to play clips from a slew of Black people expressing outrage, not because Bryant should have been allowed to stab anyone, but because the police shot and killed a 16 year-old instead of finding another way to de-escalate the situation.
But Carlson sneered, “Yes, there was an attempted murder in progress and that's common in kung-fu movies. But it doesn't mean you need to use firearms.”
Carlson mocked three different African Americans before turning his White Power sights on a favorite Black target, MSNBC host Joy Reid. He described her as “the race lady over at MSNBC.” He claimed she lived too privileged a life to have seen knife fights defused by teachers in high school, i.e. without guns. Then he accused her of condoning stabbings. Even though that’s not at all what she said in the clip he played.
CARLSON: So stabbing people isn't a big deal, says Joy Reid. If you think it is, if you have a problem with kids committing violence on your street or in your school, the problem isn't them. The problem is you. You're the criminal. You're racist.
Carlson threw in an attack on a white Democrat, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther, who had the nerve to say, "How did we get here? This is a failure on the part of our community. Some are guilty, but all of us are responsible." Then he moved back to attacking “long-time Obama bagman” and African American Valerie Jarrett. He turned her tweeted comments, "Demand accountability. Fight for justice," into “Let them use knives, or else.”
You can watch Carlson lie in order to paint Blacks as savages and Democrats as enabling savagery below, from the April 22, 2021 Tucker Carlson Tonight.
- Yes, I did absent-mindedly overdose myself on blood pressure medication a few years ago.