Tucker Carlson offered a lengthy monologue on Wednesday evening identifying what he said were the causes of decline in Middle America. On his show, Carlson identified the role of women — and specifically their increasing earnings potential — as a primary issue.
“Study after study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don’t want to marry them. Maybe they should want to marry them but they don’t,” Carlson said. “Over big populations, this causes a drop in marriage, a spike in out of wedlock births and all the familiar disasters that inevitably follow, more drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarcerations rates, fewer families formed in the next generation.”
Carlson said economic changes had resulted in the loss of male-dominated industries at the expense of women-focused employment like hospitals and schools.
“Manufacturing, a male-dominated industry, all but disappeared over the course of a generation,” he said. “All that remained in many places were the schools and the hospitals and both of them are traditional employers of women. In many areas women suddenly made more than men.”
At no point did Carlson cite any of the studies that he said irrefutable demonstrated the accuracy of his assertions.
The subject seems certain to inflame viewers at a sensitive time. The Fox News primetime host has been under fire in recent weeks over remarks about illegal immigrants making the United States “poorer” and “dirtier.” In December, an advertiser boycott took a bite out of dozens of sponsors, resulting in Carlson’s show running with a significantly lighter ad load in 2019.
The network and host have remained defiant saying they would never bow to outside pressure campaigns no matter the cost.
“We cannot and will not allow voices like Tucker Carlson to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts,” the Fox News said in their most recent statement on the matter. “He is now once again being threatened via Twitter by far left activist groups with deeply political motives. While we do not advocate boycotts, these same groups never target other broadcasters and operate under a grossly hypocritical double standard given their intolerance to all opposing points of view.”