Tucker Carlson's call for harassing mask-wearers and for reporting child abuse over masked-up kids is dangerous even by his own standards

The Atlantic

The problem with Carlson's Fox News rant Monday night is that many of his viewers take him seriously. "Although Carlson makes a lot of ridiculous claims in a short period in this clip, it is his comments about children that are most disturbing," says David A. Graham. "After complaining that mask mandates imposed by the state are equivalent to living in North Korea, Carlson executes two athletic rhetorical maneuvers. First, he goes from describing mask wearing as excessive to describing it as abusive, and second, he elides the difference between a government mandate and a personal choice...One doesn’t need a lot of imagination to game out where this is going. Some viewers will take Carlson’s possibly arch exhortations to heart. They’ll call the police and child protective services. In most cases, authorities will ignore those calls. In some cases, especially if the callers repeatedly summon police as Carlson demands, they could be charged with filing false claims; it’s a good bet that neither he nor Fox News will be there to help them if they are. In other cases, encounters will end poorly for the innocent parents involved. The news is full of examples of how police called to respond to petty or wholly imagined offenses end up gravely injuring or even killing people. (Carlson believes Derek Chauvin was wrongly convicted.) But when government authorities fail to intervene—because, of course, no laws are being broken—Carlson’s fans may feel the moral obligation to take matters into their own hands, just like Edgar Maddison Welch, who stormed into a Washington, D.C., pizzeria heavily armed in 2016, because he wanted to prevent child abuse that he wrongly believed was occurring there. No one was hurt in that incident, though someone easily could have been. Welch spent about three years in prison."

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• Tucker Carlson delivers "night after unhinged night. And he seems to have no limits": "If Carlson were really talking about whether it’s necessary for tiny tots in strollers to be wearing masks outdoors, it would be one thing. He might even have a point worth discussing," says Margaret Sullivan. "But his screeds are nothing but outrage-mongering that — in the aggregate, and writ large — is going to cost lives. If the past is any indication, it’s a lost cause to hope that Fox will rein in Carlson. He’s doing exactly what the Murdoch ownership wants: Juicing ratings, and giving Fox a reason for existing in the post-Trump era. These days, the only question is how low he’ll go."
• Jimmy Kimmel slams Tucker Carlson's "child abuse" anti-mask rant: “I mean, who’s at home nodding along with that?” Kimmel wanted to know, suggesting that the only possible explanation is that Carlson is a “top secret Sacha Baron Cohen character.”
• MSNBC's Joy Reid calls Carlson a "male Karen" for urging viewers to call the cops on kids with masks
• Alabama and Texas child protective services officials say they haven't received any calls about child abuse reports following Carlson's anti-mask rant
• Carlson defends Joe Rogan for saying young people shouldn't get vaccinated