Tucker Carlson claims we're 'speeding toward assassination' of Trump, amping up baseless far-right conspiracy theory.
(This article is from Business Insider dated September 2, 2023.)
Tucker Carlson baselessly claimed that the political establishment is plotting to assassinate former President Donald Trump because they "just can't have" him as president again.
The former Fox News host peddled the conspiracy theory in an interview* with anti-woke comedian Adam Carolla posted on Wednesday.
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98UpXcfbhQ8
"If you begin with criticism, then you go to protest, then you go to impeachment, now you go to indictment, and none of them work. What's next? Graph it out, man. We're speeding toward assassination, obviously," he said.
"They have decided — permanent Washington, both parties have decided — that there's something about Trump that's so threatening to them, they just can't have him," he said.
Carlson had, in fact, asked Trump if he feared being killed in an interview last week, to which the former president responded: "They're savage animals. They're people that are sick."
The conspiracy theory has been amplified by prominent far-right figures such as Infowars' Alex Jones and former Fox News host Dan Bongino, according to NBC News.
Jones has claimed for years that Trump might be assassinated, and earlier this year, accused "the deep state establishment" of planning to take him out.
Bongino claimed that the "plot to take out Trump is metastasizing" in a recent podcast episode titled "Speeding Towards Assassination?"
While Trump has never made such an assertion, he often describes himself as the victim of a "witch-hunt" following four historic indictments.
Daniel Jones, the president of the nonpartisan research organization Advance Democracy, warned that Carlson's rhetoric could incite real-world violence, per NBC.
"Those of us who follow and track extremism have seen that the rhetoric around the indictments of Trump is very similar to the rhetoric we saw prior to the Capitol insurrection," Jones told the outlet. "I think everyone in this space is concerned about what the next 12 to 18 months look like."
Fox fired the once most-watched host on cable news in April after the network reached a nearly $800 million settlement in Dominion Voting Systems' defamation lawsuit over broadcasting Trump's lies about electoral fraud.
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