Fox News host Tucker Carlson made sexually explicit jokes about a Miss Teen USA contestant during a 2007 radio interview that resurfaced online Tuesday.
It’s the third set of historic recordings that feature the popular “Tucker Carlson Tonight” host making inappropriate, sexist, homophobic, racist and misogynistic comments to emerge this week. Some companies have decided to pull their ads from his prime-time show.
“She’s so dumb,” Carlson said of South Carolina teenage beauty pageant participant Caitlin Upton during his appearance on the shock-jock radio program “The Bubba the Love Sponge Show.”
“She’s like, she’s vulnerable. She’s like a wounded gazelle, separated from the herd,” he added. He made the comments during a discussion about a viral video from the pageant in which Upton struggled to explain why she thought a fifth of Americans were unable to pinpoint the U.S. on a map.
“If you had a wife that dumb, would it be good or bad?” Carlson asked, then he made an unsubstantiated claim that pageant host Mario Lopez had “plowed” Upton, who was 18 at the time.
When asked if there’d “be a problem legally if Mario fucked it” because they weren’t sure of Upton’s age, Carlson replied: “No! Are you kidding? He’s like James Brown. He gets a pass. The normal laws for that kind of thing don’t apply to him.”
Upton later revealed how the fallout from the pageant left her contemplating suicide.
NowThis News shared the audio, which was unearthed by Media Matters for America:
On Monday, Media Matters released audio from 2006 in which Carlson said he’d be open to a racist president. It followed the weekend posting of other recordings that featured a slew of inappropriate comments, including Carlson calling women “extremely primitive.”
Carlson claimed his comments were just “naughty words” made in “jest” and said he retained the backing of the network.