If you’ve watched Tucker Carlson on Fox News at any point between 2018 and now, odds are pretty good that you’ve heard him say the words, “Shut up, racist!” Usually, they come as a form of mockery of Democrats. But John Oliver has an idea of what those outbursts really are.
Most often, Carlson uses these words when he claims that they are the response Democrats give to most any conversation a Republican tries to have with them. According to Carlson, when a conservative simply tries to have an actual discussion — though particularly about topics like immigration or twice-impeached former president Donald Trump — about their views, they’re immediately shut down by Dems saying, “Shut up, racist!”
But, like we said, Oliver had a different thought on what’s happening when Carlson breaks that phrase out.
“And now, the last remaining sliver of morality in Tucker Carlson’s head tries to give him some advice,” the voiceover boomed.
Indeed, Carlson says this phrase so often that John Oliver was able to put together a supercut during Sunday night’s episode of “Last Week Tonight,” and that’s what followed.
In each clip, Carlson simply inserts “Shut up, racist” into his spiel as if it were an interjection, rather than prefacing it with something like “Instead, Democrats say…” or any other kind of explanation. As a result, the phrase seems spontaneous and, for the purposes of “Last Week Tonight,” like it is an inner voice breaking to the surface.
“The left doesn’t want to answer questions like that, or even have the conversation. Shut up, racist!” Carlson says in the first clip. “Instead they just declare that the current system is great.”
“Nobody wants to have that debate,” Carlson tells Lou Dobbs in another clip. “Shut up, racist!”
You can watch the full segment from “Last Week Tonight” in the video above.