Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson is calling out her one-time employer for defending current network star Tucker Carlson, who has repeatedly spewed white supremacist talking points on the air.
After the Anti-Defamation League urged the network to drop its top-rated host, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch defended him, saying “we respectfully disagree” and claiming the company “abhors antisemitism, white supremacy and racism of any kind.”
But Gretchen Carlson, who left Fox News in 2016 and reportedly received a $20 million settlement and an apology from the network over sexual harassment allegations against then-CEO Roger Ailes, wasn’t buying it:
Last week, Carlson promoted the racist “white replacement” conspiracy theory, in which shadowy elites are supposedly using non-white immigrants to diminish white culture.
“I have less political power because they are importing a brand-new electorate,” Carlson said on the air. “Why should I sit back and take that?”
The ADL said that kind of rhetoric had led to racist violence and mass shootings. Jonathan Greenblatt, the organization’s national director, tweeted:
On Monday, Greenblatt said Murdoch’s reply missed the mark.
“The message is simple: it’s a moral failure to not take action against this hate,” Greenblatt wrote on Twitter, and linked to an open letter the ADL sent to Murdoch that details Carlson’s history of echoing white supremacist rhetoric.