Leave it to Tucker Carlson to use a public health crisis to fearmonger about progressive politicians. (Watch the video below.)
The Fox News host broke out his dog whistle on Wednesday to attack Jackson, Mississippi’s Democratic mayor, Chokwe Lumumba, amid a water shortage in the city. Citizens are queueing up for water to drink, bathe, cook and flush toilets in the wake of recent flooding that compromised a water-treatment plant amid longtime problems.
Carlson, pronouncing the mayor’s name with a sneer, showed a 2017 clip of Lumumba pledging that Mississippi’s majority-Black capital was going to be “the most radical city on the planet.”
“We’re going to make certain that we change the whole scope of electoral politics,” he added.
Carlson summed up the city’s water woes, concluding: “So that’s truly a radical city. So radical that you literally can’t have water. Next step, take away roads and indoor heating. Once you’ve taken away flush toilets, there’s really no limit to the radicalism Mayor Lumumba can bring to Jackson, Mississippi.”
Lumumba, who became mayor in 2017, has cited “deferred maintenance over three decades or more” as the cause of the water system failure, and advocates have pointed to a legacy of environmental racism and Jackson’s high poverty rate as contributing factors.
H/T Media Matters