White Tucker Carlson Guest Says African-Americans ‘Need to Move on’ From Slavery (Video)

Carlson currently faces an advertiser boycott which has resulted in dozens of sponsors leaving his program

Tucker Carlson guest Mark Steyn offered his thoughts and slavery and the issue of reparations to the descendants of U.S. slaves, telling viewers of Carlson’s Fox News show Thursday that nobody living today knew anyone who had been a slave and that people just needed to move on from the whole issue.

“Slavery was abolished a century and a half ago. Nobody alive today had a grandparent who was a slave and in that sense I think you reach a point where, you know, you need to move on,” said, Steyn, a Canadian author and culture commentator who is white. “The reparations thing eventually, as the decades go by, becomes ridiculous.”

“This is nothing real to the lived experience of people of all kinds of identities today,” he added, going on to say that by the same logic he should be given reparations as a Canadian because of unspecified harm inflicted on him from the American Revolution.

Carlson sat silent as Steyn spoke, but he offered no pushback on the idea and offered a hearty laugh when Steyn joked about Canadian reparations.

Reps for Fox News did not immediately respond to request for comment.

The moment comes as Carlson faces a months long advertiser boycott after a segment on his show in December in which he said illegal immigration made the United States “poorer” and “dirtier.” Since that episode, major brands like Pacific Life, Red Lobster, SmileDirectClub and dozens of others have pulled ads from the show.

Earlier reporting from TheWrap calculated that the combined losses to the network from the Carlson boycott (and a similar one against his primetime colleague Laura Ingraham) has been more than $18 million.

Fox News has disputed the numbers, insisting that the network has not lost any revenue from the boycotts and said that some advertisers have been coming back.

The network has previously vowed to stand behind their embattled hosts, and insisted that boycotts against them are politically motivated by activist pressure groups.

“We cannot and will not allow voices like Tucker Carlson to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts from the likes of Moveon.org, Media Matters and Sleeping Giants,” a spokesperson for Fox News told TheWrap in December.

“Attempts were made last month to bully and terrorize Tucker and his family at their home. 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.”

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