Tucker Carlson has hit back at former Fox News colleague Carl Cameron for recent comments saying the host should be be jailed or ‘end up in something worse,’ for his show’s content.
‘“Maybe wind up in jail or maybe something worse”’ Carlson said Monday, quoting a comment made by the former reporter over the weekend to CNN’s Jim Acosta, which criticized the host for spreading false and potentially harmful material.
‘What’s “something worse?”‘ Carlson, 53, asked his audience, after airing a clip of the remarks from former reporter Cameron, which the host told his audience to take as a threat.
‘We’re not sure what “something worse” is – but it certainly feels like we’re moving toward it at a very high speed at this point,’ Carlson seemed to warn, before ominously adding, ‘That’s the end point to talk like that – “something worse.”‘
Carlson – who has come under fire for comments that leftist critics say support ‘The Great Replacement theory, a racist ideology that allegedly inspired the accused Buffalo mass shooter and New Zealand Mosque killer – went on to criticize the left for trying to push a narrative that he is racist.
‘Rhetoric has it’s own internal logic,’ Carlson, on of the network’s most prominent voices, said. ‘We’ve experienced it – we can talk ourselves into things. We’ve all done that.’
He continued: ‘Democrats are doing it right now. And what they’re talking themselves into right now, is, quote, “something worse.” It’s scary.’
The host then seem to offer a grim warning to his progressive critics.
‘It is time to pull back, it is time to deescalate – otherwise this is going to get really ugly, really soon.’
Tucker Carlson has hit back at former Fox News colleague Carl Cameron for recent comments saying the host should be be jailed or ‘end up in something worse,’ for his show’s content
Cameron, who left Fox News in 2017, has been severely critical of the network’s promotion of opinion shows, especially Carlson’s
Cameron, a longtime fixture at Fox before his sudden departure in 2017, has been highly critical of his former network in recent months, especially its promotion of opinion shows such as Carlson’s Tucker Carlson Tonight and Tucker Carlson Today.
On Monday, Cameron, who blames Fox News and conservative media for the Buffalo shooting, called for government intervention to take Carlson off the air, comparing his broadcasts to the trope of falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater.
‘The fact of the matter is, if you disturb the peace by starting a riot in a movie theater, cops are going to arrest you and you might end up in jail or you might end up in something worse,’ said Cameron, who now run progressive news aggregator Front Page Live.
‘The president has to be more forceful and sooner or later the law enforcement and the US government is going to have to stop the lying because it’s causing people’s deaths,’ he said.
‘It’s not just Fox, it’s social media in general. It’s on the internet. And we have to remember that a good portion of what we read is coming from folks who aren’t Americans, pretending to be Americans in order to gaslight them even worse.’
He went on: ‘In this particular case, Tucker has been screaming fire in a crowded movie house for years.’
‘That cliché really comes to the matter of what is free speech. And the fact of the matter is, if you disturb the peace by starting a riot in a movie theater, cops are going to arrest you.’
At that point, Cameron offered the remark Carlson deemed menacing.
‘And you might end up in jail, or you might end up in something worse,’ Cameron said.
Carl Cameron did not directly accuse Cameron of preaching ‘The Great Replacement Theory’ on his show
Carlson has come under renewed scrutiny in the aftermath of the Buffalo supermarket shooting that killed 10 African American people on May 14, after it emerged the suspect in the shooting was a subscriber to the white nationalist ‘The Great Replacement Theory.’
The theory – which states that non-white immigration is a liberal plot to alter the cultural landscape of the United States – is something that Carlson has repeatedly been accused of espousing on his show.
During the interview, Cameron suggested Carlson be censored and de-platformed because he ‘puts out falsehoods that cause damage and violent, violent hate’ – but did not outright accuse the host of pedaling the racist ideology.
The on-air discussion served as the most recent installment of a media tour that has seen Cameron blame conservative media for the shooting at the Buffalo Tops supermarket on May 17.
During an interview with MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace on May 17, Cameron asserted that the President Biden should be ‘taking some names and putting people in jail’ following the racially motivated massacre by 18-year-old Payton Gendron.
‘It really is kind of horrible to think that journalists with national and international capacity are putting together this type of nonsense,’ Cameron said of longtime colleague Carlson in the interview.
The former Fox Chief Political Correspondent then praised president Biden for an appearance the day prior that saw him address the racism and hate officials say motivated the gunman.
‘I think the president did a great job. I wish he had done a lot of this a lot sooner, and we need a lot more from the left and the middle, and we got to watch out because the Republicans have become the purveyors of misinformation, and when our two-party system is broken like that, democracy is seriously in trouble,’ Cameron said.
‘The president acknowledged that it’s time to actually start doing things and maybe taking some names and putting people in jail.’
Cameron first began criticizing his former employer in 2019, following the departure of Shepherd Smith from Fox.
Cameron has come forward in the past to criticize Carlson’s coverage of the January 6 Capitol riot and of the Covid-19 vaccine
