Tucker Carlson praised a Democrat running for president on Wednesday ― the extreme anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Watch the video below.)
Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and son of slain 1968 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, this week announced his long-shot bid to oppose President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2024.
The right-wing Fox News host had Kennedy on his show and gushed over him as if he were a hard-line Republican.
“If you’re an honest person, you understand this is exactly the moment in our history when we need serious adult conversations about the world around us, a world that is changing to our detriment and how we ought to respond to those changes,” Carlson effused after airing a clip of Kennedy’s opposition to U.S. policy in helping Ukraine repel the Russian invasion.
“Bobby Kennedy would love to have those conversations,” Carlson continued. “He’s not running to get rich. He’s running to make things better. But he’s not allowed to have those conversations. He’s been censored. Other media won’t even talk to him.”
Carlson then unspooled a montage of TV journalists pointing out Kennedy’s troubling campaign against COVID-19 vaccines.
“Notice not there, not anywhere, is a point-by-point rebuttal of his actual points,” Carlson said. “They never engage among the facts. They can’t. They would lose. Instead, they impugn his character. Now that man they call dangerous is Joe Biden’s leading primary opponent and their view remains the same: ‘Shut up you’re not allowed to talk.’ We disagree with that. We’re not Democrats, but Bobby Kennedy is one of the most remarkable people we have met and we are honored to have him on our show tonight.”
Kennedy’s presence on Fox News, a prominent sower of vaccine doubt, is no shocker.
He blasted the coronavirus vaccine ― found to be safe and effective in preventing hospitalization and death ― and mandates, comparing them to extremes in Nazi Germany, outlets noted. He got his Instagram account suspended for “repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.” He devoted a book to discrediting White House infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci. (He also “pushed” unproven COVID-19 treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in the book, The Associated Press noted.)
His own brother and sister have deplored his anti-vax activism as “part of a misinformation campaign that’s having heartbreaking ― and deadly ― consequences.”
And that’s on top of a second career of sorts already built on vaccine skepticism — promoting the widely discredited assertion that childhood vaccines are responsible for autism.
Fast-forward to 7:00 for Carlson’s introduction: