Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Monday criticized President Donald Trump’s role in pushing the racist birther conspiracy theory that falsely claimed former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
And the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” host’s segment got a surprise endorsement from Trump himself, who shared the clip without comment on Twitter.
Carlson said:
Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton and her surrogates in the media attacked Donald Trump for his role in pushing the birther story. They didn’t just argue that it was dumb to think Barack Obama was born in Kenya, they said it hurt America. They said it delegitimized Obama as a leader by casting him as an illegitimate president. Those are fair points. If you can’t prove something is true, you shouldn’t claim that it is. If you don’t like a president’s policies, argue against them, offer a better alternative, don’t claim that he isn’t really the president, that doesn’t help the country.
Carlson’s criticism came as he repeated his argument why he believed special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible Trump campaign collusion was a hoax.
It’s likely that argument, and not the birther criticism, that prompted Trump to post the video.
Carlson ― who this month has been embroiled in his own scandal following the resurfacing of audio in which he made sexist, racist, misogynistic and homophobic comments ― accused Democrats of pushing “their own, far more harmful, conspiracy, the theory of Russian collusion.”
It was “all invented by the Clinton campaign for short-term political gain,” he added, calling the collusion claims made in the unverified dossier by former British spy Christopher Steele “fake.” Carlson has previously called the birther claim “a dumb talking point.”
Check out the segment, as shared by Trump, here: