Fox News host Tucker Carlson is under fire again, this time for forthcoming remarks he made Wednesday that sought to rationalize the actions of the 17-year-old man who allegedly killed two Protestants and one injured in Kenosha, Wis.
“How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with guns decided they had to keep order like no one else would?” Carlson told his viewers on Wednesday during a segment about Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager arrested and charged with murder for the events on Tuesday.
The comment sparked big blowback on social media, with critics calling for Carlson’s dismissal. Two current Fox News ads – digital asset management company Grayscale and Gabi Insurance – took to Twitter to distance themselves from “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
“We do not deserve his words and will not be participating in his show indefinitely,” Gabi Insurance tweeted.
Such controversies and responses from advertisers are not new to Carlson, a conservative provocateur who has complete freedom to express his views on his nightly program, one of the most watched in cable news. Advertisers including Walt Disney Co. and T-Mobile have previously drawn their support for its comments on immigration and the Black Lives Matter movement.
A Fox News spokesman said Thursday that the company’s executives had not commented on Carlson’s comments about Rittenhouse. But the network cited the full text of the segment to show that the host meant criticizing enforcement, and not justifying the actions of a guard.
“Kenosha turned into anarchy because the authorities in charge of the city left it,” Carlson said, according to the transcript. “People in charge of the governor of Wisconsin have refused to enforce the law. They stood back and they saw Kenosha burning. So are we really surprised that looting and arson turned into murder? ”
Rittenhouse, a white teenager who has often praised the police, is accused of murder in what officials describe as a guard act that resulted in three Protestants being shot, two dead, late Tuesday night. Circumstances warned police that Rittenhouse – who was a minor and was not allowed to carry a weapon openly – wandered the street with a semi-automatic rifle slung around his neck.
Since his arrest Wednesday across the border in Antioch, Ill., Details have surfaced that Rittenhouse posted on social media in support of the pro-police Blue Lives Matter movement. He spoke to journalists before the shooting about being part of a self-styled civilian patrol that came to Kenosha to protect businesses from vandalism.
The protests followed the shooting of police on Sunday by Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who is currently hospitalized and paralyzed from the waist down, according to his family. In response to a domestic squabble, police shot Blake seven times outside his car in the back while his three children were watching from the back seat.
The incident added to the growing national tension over police in Black communities, which has sown since the death of George Floyd, the unarmed Black man killed on May 25 by Minneapolis officers, sparking a wave of protests all over the country.
Carlson plans to be on air tonight to cover last night’s Republican National Convention. The network representative said he has no plans at this time to address his comments about Rittenhouse or the reaction to it.
The justification for vigilante activity was picked up Thursday by other Fox News commentators.
“I have to say about the argument of vigilante justice, if you do not have police to defend companies and people who are being attacked … then there is a gap that is being filled,” Fox News staffer Katie Pavlich said.
Fox Wall anchor Chris Wallace truncated back on Pavlich’s comments during the conversation about the network’s ‘Outnumbered’.
“Vigilant justice is a completely indecent response to the rebellion in the streets,” Wallace said. “There is no justification for what happened in Kenosha, and waiting is a crime and it should be punished as a crime.”
