Tucker Carlson Says White Supremacists Are Treated Like 'Child Molesters'

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson says that white supremacists are being unjustly treated like "America's new child molesters."

The conservative pundit maintained that it is currently "mandatory" in American society to "punish" people on the basis of skin color "as long as the victims are white" during the second episode of his new Twitter show, which was uploaded to the platform on Thursday night.

In the 12-minute video, Carlson urged viewers to "cling to your taboos like your life depends on them," before highlighting the taboo of child sex abuse as an example of a positive prohibition for society. He then argued that pedophiles were being treated better than those accused of white supremacy.

"White supremacists are America's new child molesters," said Carlson. "We've got zero tolerance for white supremacists because no one threatens the life of this country more than they do," he sardonically added.

Carlson then played a clip of President Joe Biden speaking about threats related to white supremacy, before dismissing the clip and questioning whether Biden and other public officials could even define white supremacy.

"Can anyone in authority actually define white supremacy?" he asked. "What is it? is white supremacy liking white people too much? If so, that's going to put those of us with white children in a pretty tough spot."

According to Merriam-Webster, white supremacy is defined as "the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races."

The dictionary also defines the phrase as "the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races."

While hosting an episode of his popular Fox News show in 2019, Carlson dismissed concerns about white supremacy as "a hoax," insisting that "it's actually not a real problem in America."

After the controversial episode aired, Fox News contributor Mo Elleithee, ex-spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, suggested in a tweet that Carlson was himself a white supremacist.

In addition to being the second installment of Carlson's Twitter show, the video uploaded on Tuesday was also the first episode since the pundit was reportedly sent a legal threat by Fox News.

Axios reported on Wednesday that Fox News general counsel Bernard Gugar sent a letter to Carlson's team shortly after the first episode was uploaded to Twitter on Tuesday.

Gugar reportedly wrote that "Mr. Carlson's services shall be completely exclusive to Fox" and urged him to stop "rendering services of any type whatsoever, whether over the internet via streaming or similar distribution, or other digital distribution."

Carlson attorney Bryan Freedman told Axios that any legal action Fox News might take against his client to stop the new show would be a violation of the pundit's First Amendment right to free speech.

"Fox defends its very existence on freedom of speech grounds," said Freedman. "Now they want to take Tucker Carlson's right to speak freely away from him because he took to social media to share his thoughts on current events."

Newsweek has reached out to Freedman and Fox News via email for comment.