On Wednesday's World News Tonight, ABC reporter Terry Moran reveled in a leaked Tucker Carlson text message about a mob of white men beating up an "antifa kid." He claimed "For years...Tucker Carlson promoted racist views on his show, the highest-rated program on Fox...viewers had long heard Carlson give voice to a message of white supremacy, especially on the issue of immigration."
ABC anchor David Muir introduced the story with these words behind him on screen: "NYT UNCOVERS RACIST CARLSON TEXT."
TERRY MORAN: For years, former news star Tucker Carlson promoted racist views on his show, the highest-rated program on Fox. Now, The New York Times has obtained a text message from Carlson that shows he expressed similar views in private, too. In the text message to his producer said the day after the January 6th, 2021 attack on the Capitol, Carlson described a video he had recently seen showing a group of three Trump supporters attacking a person he called an "Antifa kid."
To describe Carlson's show as "racist" in general is a smear not only of the host, but the audience that makes it "the highest rated program on Fox." In The New York Times, A.O. Scott said the same thing, only fancier: "His most successful on-air persona, perfected on Fox after the departure of Bill O’Reilly, has been a volatile mixture of upper crust and salt of the earth. Whiteness was the glue that held the package together, and in this text you can see it coming unstuck, even as Carlson tries to work through some inherent contradictions."
At least Moran read both parts of the text, including Carlson's regret for wanting someone hurt, even killed:
"Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable, obviously. It's not how white men fight," Carlson wrote. Admitting, "Suddenly, I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they would hit him harder. Kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it." Carlson then added, "An alarm went off. This isn't good for me. I'm becoming something that I don't want to be." That text was filed as part of Dominion's defamation lawsuit against Fox News, but never made part of the public record. Just before the lawsuit was settled, on the eve of trial, the text was seen by members of the board of directors of Fox, according to The New York Times.
Days later, Carlson was fired. For Fox executives, that text was apparently the final straw. But viewers had long heard Carlson give voice to a message of white supremacy, especially on the issue of immigration.
TUCKER CARLSON (2018 video): We have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided.
You can see where liberals would scream "racism" at the overgeneralization that white men fight in a more civilized way than other men. That's not historically true, and it's not great to root for violence, as Carlson recognizes, even if networks like NBC and CNN have promoted Antifa disorder and admired their brass knuckles.
Let's not forget this is the same Terry Moran who adored Barack Obama, the leader who disparaged his own white grandmother as racist. In February 2009, he proclaimed "I like to say that, in some ways, Barack Obama is the first President since George Washington to be taking a step down into the Oval Office."
Incredibly, Terry Moran could look mild-mannered next to the Tucker-haters at MSNBC, who spewed talking points about his "homicidal rage."
MSNBC took the leaked Tucker Carlson text message about a pro-Trump mob beating an 'Antifa kid,' and only said Carlson demonstrated 'homicidal rage,' which left out the other half of the text with his moral revulsion at such rage. That leaves a lie. pic.twitter.com/vUltmnKfwa
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) May 7, 2023
