Tucker Carlson, who has a history of attacking U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman, is drumming up a new theory to come after the Pennsylvania Democrat again over an NBC News interview on his post-stroke health.
The Fox News host, who has padded his shows with conspiracy theories in the past, claimed that Fetterman merged “with a computer” and could be “hacked” due to his use of an electronic captioning device in the interview.
Fetterman, who spoke to NBC News reporter Dasha Burns this week in his first sit-down interview since his stroke in May, “occasionally stuttered and had trouble finding words” during his interview, the news outlet said.
Burns claimed “it wasn’t clear” that Fetterman was understanding the conversation while engaging in small talk before the interview.
The reporter’s comments drew criticism, The Associated Press noted, and BuzzFeed News, which is owned by HuffPost’s parent company, reported that disability advocates referred to NBC’s coverage as “deeply upsetting” and stigmatizing.
Carlson deemed Fetterman’s use of the device as “thrilling” for trans-humanists.
“But for everyone else, for the voters of Pennsylvania, for example, it does raise some obvious questions. For example, where exactly does the software end and John Fetterman’s consciousness begin?” Carlson asked.
“We don’t know, we can’t know. But it’s obvious that Pennsylvania could very well be sending a computer program to the U.S. Senate where inevitably it will be hacked.”
Carlson later remarked that things would be “fine” in the Senate as long as there wasn’t a power outage in the Capitol.
Twitter users criticized Carlson’s “computer program” comments on Wednesday, with some noting that the Fox News host was reading off a teleprompter.