Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) blasted Fox News host Tucker Carlson as a “white supremacist sympathizer” and his show as an “hourlong production of unmitigated racism” after a Tuesday night segment on her New York district.
In the segment, Carlson showed video footage of litter in New York’s 14th District, and asked City Journal Associate Editor Seth Barron about the presence of garbage if the lawmaker claims “to care about the environment.”
Barron responded that “part of the reason is because her district is actually one of the least American districts in the country, and by that, I don’t mean that it’s not part of America, but it’s occupied by relatively few American citizens,” alleging that “a very high percentage of her district’s” population is made up of undocumented residents.
{mosads}“The way they inhabit housing there is such that they live in a lot of illegal spaces like basements, and many people live there, so they wind up producing a lot of garbage that the landlords don’t want thrown out normally. Hence, you wind up with a lot of garbage on the streets. You have illegal food vendors pouring their pig grease in the gutters,” Barron said.
Barron did not immediately provide any evidence for his claims about Ocasio-Cortez’s district.
Ocasio-Cortez slammed Carlson and Fox News for the segment on Twitter, writing “I go back and forth on whether to go on Fox News. The main reason I haven’t is squaring the fact that the ad revenue from it bankrolls a white supremacist sympathizer to broadcast an hour-long production of unmitigated racism, without any accountability whatsoever.”
“ ‘Immigrants are dirty’ is a lazy, tired, racist trope. Secondly, environmental injustice is a major motivation as to why we introduced and wrote the Green New Deal the way we did in the first place,” she added, touting her major policy initiative.
Barron tweeted an apology Wednesday, sharing that “I chose the wrong words and that is my fault” and that he “didn’t do justice to a complex issue.”
A Democratic National Committee (DNC) official who appeared on Fox News last month pressed host Bill Hemmer on why the network continues to employ Carlson after his comments following the El Paso shooting earlier this year that left 22 people dead. After President Trump condemned white supremacy in the wake of the attack, Carlson called it a “hoax” and a “conspiracy theory used to divide the country.”
“Why the hell does Tucker Carlson still have a job here in the first place? The reality is, this is someone who said white supremacy is a hoax, and why does Fox allow him to still be here in the first place?” DNC Vice Chairman Michael Blake asked Hemmer.
The Hill has reached out to Fox News for comment.