Tucker Carlson wanted presidential candidates to vow to kill Muslims

Fox News host Tucker Carlson advocated for the mass murder of Muslims, promoted white supremacy, and said President Barack Obama isn’t black because “he has one white parent.”

The racist and bigoted rantings were unearthed on Monday in recordings found by Media Matters for America, culled from a series of interviews Carlson gave from 2006 to 2011 on the “Bubba the Love Sponge” radio show.

In a discussion about his ideal presidential candidate, Carlson fantasized about a nominee that would be openly bigoted against Muslims.

“It’s these lunatic Muslims who are behaving like animals, and I’m going to kill as many of them as I can if you elect me,” Carlson said, giving an example of the type of rhetoric he would like to hear on the campaign trail.

The Fox News host described Iraq as “a crappy place filled with a bunch of, you know, semiliterate primitive monkeys.”

Carlson also said he believes that “white men” deserve credit for “creating civilization.”

Carlson told one of the co-hosts of the program he was “onto something” when he suggested, “basically, we need a racist president.”

He then laid out a candidacy that largely resembles how Trump would later conduct his campaign.

“You know, someone who really will — and everyone claims, ‘Oh, I say it like it is.’ But nobody actually does. The guy who does, who says, ‘I’m unabashedly pro-American. Fuck the French. Who cares what they think? The Belgians? They don’t like it, they can pound sand.’ You know what I mean? That guy is going to get elected.”

In an attack on President Barack Obama, Carlson said he shouldn’t be considered black because of his mom.

“How is he black, for one thing? He has one white parent, one black parent,” Carlson stated.

Carlson also went after the Congressional Black Caucus.

“The Congressional Black Caucus exists to blame the white man for everything, and I’m happy to say that in public because it’s true,” he said.

On Sunday night, recordings of Carlson calling women “primitive” and defending child rape were released.

All of the offensive remarks Carlson made in line with the white supremacist message he has promoted night after night on Fox, and which led to him losing many of his advertisers late last year.

That didn’t prevent Mike Pence from appearing on his program in January, and in fact based on Pence’s role on the presidential ticket with a racist like Trump, it may have been one of the reasons he went on the program.

Fox News is a network that peddles lies and misinformation, coupled with racism, bigotry, and right-wing propaganda. It operates as a quasi-official arm of the Republican Party and hosts like Carlson and their bigoted views are the entire point.

That open embrace of hate and the network’s deep connection to Trump is why the Democratic Party recently declined to host its presidential primary debates on the network. In 2008, Democrats also declined to have Fox host their debates. The eventual nominee, Barack Obama, went on to win an easy general election victory.

Carlson, discussing the controversy around his hate speech, noted that the network supports him. Of course, they do.

Pushing hate and lies is what Fox News is all about, and it has been since it launched in 1996.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.