Fox News host Tucker Carlson engaged in a wide ranging discussion about racism and bigotry in American on Wednesday, during which a guest on the show accused a number hip-hop stars of promoting anti-Semitism.
“We’ve got this whole trope now in rap music, all the major marquee rappers, Ice Cube, Jay Z, Scarface, it’s just rampant anti-Semitism,” the Hoover Institution’s Victor Davis Hanson said on set. He also took a shot at LeBron James, who he called a “national icon,” for sharing anti-Semitic posts on social media in December. (James later apologized over the issue)
Hanson went on to offer a list of examples of bigotry that he said went unpunished, name-checking Sarah Jeong at the New York Times for her disparaging tweets toward white people and Politico’s Marc Caputo who mocked Trump voter’s teeth.
Reps for all three rappers did not immediately respond to request for comment from TheWrap.
Hanson came on set after Carlson completed a lengthy monologue accusing Democrats of being responsible for the nation’s most egregious acts of bigotry, citing such present day examples as a lawsuit brought by Asian American against Harvard University and this BuzzFeed article about things “white people need to stop ruining.”
The monologue — promptly called out by Carlson’s regular critics at Media Matters for America — suggests that the Fox News host has no plans to moderate his content despite an advertiser boycott which has now claimed dozens of his sponsors. In the last few weeks, Carlson has taken heat for comments about immigrants making the United States “poorer” and “dirtier,” and remarks accusing high earning women of causing a number of social ills.
Despite the criticism, his increasingly populist challenges to Republican orthodoxies has also resulted in praise by Carlson of such figures as Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Vox writer Jane Coaston declared that Carlson’s questioning of free markets, the U.S. financial system and America’s “ruling class” has sparked “the most interesting debate in conservative politics.”