Screenshot/Fox News
- Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson lashed out at one of his favorite targets on Thursday night: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He called the congresswoman a “vacuous little totalitarian moron.”
- Carlson mocked the Democrat’s claim that many lawmakers and staffers “narrowly escaped death” during the violent riot, during which five people died and dozens of police officers were injured.
- “When the most harrowing thing you’ve done in life is pass freshman sociology at Boston University, every day is a brand new drama,” Carlson said. “Sandy’s heart is still beating fast!”
- Federal prosecutors argued on Friday that the pro-Trump rioters intended “to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government.”
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Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson lashed out Thursday night at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who he called a “vacuous little totalitarian moron,” disparaging her for fearing for her life during last week’s deadly siege of the Capitol by President Donald Trump’s loyalists.
Carlson mocked the Democrat’s claim that many lawmakers and staffers “narrowly escaped death” during the violent riot, during which five people died and dozens of police officers were injured.
“When the most harrowing thing you’ve done in life is pass freshman sociology at Boston University, every day is a brand new drama,” Carlson said.
“Sandy’s heart is still beating fast,” he added, referring to the congresswoman by her childhood nickname.
Carlson also accused Ocasio-Cortez of being a hypocrite for praising Capitol Police officers as “heroic,” while supporting reallocating law enforcement funds to social services.
"She likes the cops now despite the fact they're white supremacists," he said. "What a difference a day makes."
The Fox host has repeatedly denied the fact that the rioters included many white supremacists and that they were attempting an insurrection, instead describing the events as a "political protest that got completely out of control."
Carlson's account of the Capitol riot flies in the face of overwhelming evidence and law enforcement's charges. Federal prosecutors argued on Friday that the pro-Trump rioters intended "to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government." They described the rioters who forcefully invaded the Capitol building and overran police as "insurrectionists." Some of the rioters shouted "hang Mike Pence," others beat police officers, one of whom was killed after being bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher.
The rioters came close to encountering lawmakers in the Capitol building. The vice president was just seconds away from coming in contact with the mob before he and his wife and daughter were evacuated, The Washington Post reported on Friday.
A spokeswoman for Fox News declined to comment on the record and a spokeswoman for Ocasio-Cortez did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
—Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) January 15, 2021
Ocasio-Cortez detailed her experience in the Capitol during the riots in an Instagram Live video last week in which she said, "I thought I was going to die."
"I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of the day alive," the congresswoman said.
Notably, Ocasio-Cortez said she didn't feel safe in the secure location she and other lawmakers were evacuated to because she worried some of her far-right GOP colleagues would expose her whereabouts and "create opportunities to allow me to be hurt, kidnapped."
Carlson himself has exaggerated threats made against himself and his family, which he expressed outrage about on his show. In 2018, he apparently falsely claimed that antifa protesters cracked the front door of his home.
And Carlson has long been accused of sympathizing with white supremacists, whom he has occasionally disavowed. The former longtime lead writer of Carlson's nightly program, Blake Neff, was exposed last summer for posting racist and sexist comments for years on an anonymous online forum. After Neff resigned, Carlson called his bigoted diatribes "wrong," but reserved sharper condemnation for the "self-righteousness" of Neff's critics.