Fox News host Tucker Carlson spoke with fellow network host Brit Hume on Tuesday, and it didn’t go as well as he had hoped.
Carlson has been battling accusations of racism after his rant last week attacking diversity, and Hume was on the program to help defend him.
And he did.
But then things took an interesting turn.
Before speaking with Hume, Carlson launched into new diatribe claiming that pro-immigration politicians hate America.
“The real threats we face today may be from within,” Carlson said. “Leaders who hate the country they govern so much that they seek to make American citizenship irrelevant.”
That comment set the stage for a gentle-but-firm takedown by Hume:
“Tucker, you know I love you, but when you were talking about leaders who hate our country, I don’t think there are any leaders out there who hate our country, except in foreign lands perhaps. I think there are people who may have all the wrong ideas about how it should be governed, but I don’t think they hate our country and I don’t really think it strengthens the case to say that they do.”
Carlson looked stung.
“Whoa, no!” he shot back. “No, I think they do!”
“If you have the richest people in our country desecrating our national symbols and that’s considered a sign of heroism, what does that say about the attitudes of the people doing it?” Carlson added. “Or if you have people saying America was never a just and good place, I mean, those are acts of hostility toward the country, I think.”
Hume wasn’t buying it.
“They’re criticism of the country,” Hume said. “Whether they are actual acts of hostility I must be permitted to doubt.”
Hume also said he disagrees with some citizens’ “profoundly wrong ideas,” but that it doesn’t mean they hate the country.
“I think the word ‘hate’ is flung around with much too much abandon in our discourse today,” Hume said.
See the full segment, posted online by Media Matters, in the clip below.