Culture

Tucker Carlson resurfaces 2013 clip of Don Lemon blasting 'thug' culture, 'absent fathers'



Fox News host Tucker Carlson resurfaced a 2013 clip on his show Wednesday of CNN anchor Don Lemon criticizing “thug” culture and lecturing Black Americans on what is “acceptable behavior.”

Mr. Carlson dedicated a portion of his opening monologue to highlight the rising violence in Democratic-led cities that have also seen an uprising of Black Lives Matter protests and demands to defund the police. The Fox News host played a clip of Mr. Lemon lecturing actor Terry Crews during his Monday program about how the Black Lives Matter movement is specifically in response to police brutality after Mr. Crews criticized the movement for not also addressing Black-on-Black crime.

Mr. Carlson also played a clip of Mr. Lemon and his colleague Chris Cuomo mocking conservatives for tying the rising crime in New York City to the defund-the-police movement after the city recently cut $1B from the police department budget.

“Shootings this June more than doubled compared to the same month last year,” Mr. Carlson said. “Weak and vulnerable people of all races are paying the price for this. This is not a concern over at CNN. Don Lemon doesn’t care. He is a highly paid news anchor. For him, the shootings and murders are the stuff he covers on television, not something that affects his life.”

Mr. Carlson went on to play a 2013 clip from Mr. Lemon’s show, in which he spoke about how “absent fathers” and the embrace of “rap culture” had damaged the Black community.

“More than 72% of children in the African-American community are born out of wedlock — that means absent fathers,” Mr. Lemon said at the time. “And the studies show lack of a male role model is an express train ride to prison. And the cycle continues. So please, Black folks, as I said, if this doesn’t apply to you, I’m not talking to you. Pay attention to and think about what has been presented in recent history as acceptable behavior. Pay close attention to the hip-hop and rap culture that many of you embrace, a culture that glorifies everything I just mentioned. Thug and reprehensible behavior. A culture that is making a lot of people rich, just not you, and it’s not going to.”

“Wow,” Mr. Carlson responded. “Can you imagine what would happen if Don Lemon or his bodybuilding buddy over there or any of these hairhats said something like that on CNN tonight or MSNBC? That would be their last live broadcast ever. They would be fired immediately. You can’t express views like that, and so they don’t. It tells you a lot.”

Mr. Carlson lamented that in 2013, the U.S. was “a different country” where “people were kind of allowed to say what they thought was true” without fear of being canceled.

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