In response to the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois that left seven dead and dozens injured, Tucker Carlson offered an absurd explanation for what is driving mass shootings in the United States: women’s “lectures” about men’s “privilege” and weeds.
The Fox host introduced the controversial image during his Tuesday night show by pulling down a photo of 21-year-old Robert Cremo, the suspect in Monday’s massacre, and said he wouldn’t “sell a gun to that guy.”
“Look at Robert Bobby Cremo,” Carlson said. “Do you sell a gun to that guy? Does he look like a walnut? Of course he does.”
Earlier in the day, authorities announced that Mr Kremo had been charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, with more charges expected in the coming days. If convicted, Illinois attorney Eric Reinhart said he would face life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The host then asked his viewers why the accused gunman didn’t sound any alarms before the Independence Day shooting, despite the fact that during the same clip the host noted how the police were called to the 21-year-old’s home twice in 2019. His threats to harm himself and kill his family .
“Maybe he didn’t stand out,” the host began. “Maybe because there are a lot of young people in America who suddenly look and act like this guy.”
Carlson then went on to introduce several factors that he saw as the driving force behind the alleged actions of Mr. Kremo and many other “angry” youths who find themselves at the center of mass shootings in the United States, including social media, video games, porn and drugs, and, more generally, More specifically the capture of “government subsidized cannabis” as an important contributor.
“It’s high in subsidized weed, and you smoke more, it’s good for you,” Carlson said.
He also claimed, without providing any confirmed figures or statistics, that Kremo, like many young people, is “drugged with endless psychotropic substances that are distributed in every school in the country by criminals masquerading as counsellors.”
But the moment that seems to have struck a chord with the Twitterverse was when the far-right commentator made a sentence suggesting that women, and more specifically their so-called insistence on reminding their male counterparts of “privilege,” were the reason they went “nuts.”
“They are angry. They know that their lives will not be better than their parents’ lives. They will be worse. That is all but it is guaranteed.” “However, the authorities in their lives—most of them women—never stop lecturing them about their so-called privilege. You are male, you are special!”
The remarks, which quickly angered online commentators, went so far as to almost defend the so-called “outraged”, often collectively shot, after he said: “Imagine that. Try to imagine an unhealthy and unhappy life of That. So, a lot of young people in America are going crazy. Are you surprised?”
The backlash to Carlson’s comments Tuesday night was swift in condemning the far-right agitator, with some highlighting how conservative critics like Mr. Tucker will find a way to blame almost everything under the sun, except for firearms.
98% of mass shootings are committed by men, but Tucker Carlson still found a way to blame women. User @TheScottCharles tweeted, while another listed all the things the Fox host was willing to blame for the mass shootings — “marijuana, SSRIs, social media, pornography, video games, school counselors, women (seriously)” — and all. Things an expert wouldn’t notice, including guns or the accused shooter.
Others were more brief to take punches from Mr. Carlson – “it’s hard to overstate how much these people hate women” – while another user poignantly noted how grateful she was to Mr. Carlson and fellow Fox News, Laura Ingraham, who similarly pinned marijuana as a cause. Behind the mass shooting, they won’t be tasked with telling 2-year-old Aiden, orphaned by the Independence Day shooting, why his parents are no longer alive.
“We are very fortunate that Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson will not be the ones to explain to 2-year-old Aiden that he lost his parents to marijuana use and bullying women.”
