Tucker Carlson’s Legacy of Anti-LGBTQ Rhetoric

Last month, far-right political commentator and Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson was let go from the broadcast company of which he was the most-watched host, bringing to an end his seven-year run of championing the republican party’s most heinous ideology for cable news. In light of his departure from Fox News, let’s take a look at some of the worst anti-LGBTQ segments from Carlson’s show.

The Green M&M Fiasco

Carlson, in response to the iconic green M&M switching shoes, went on a nearly year-long rant about “woke-ness” and feminism ruining his beloved childhood candy. As the viral clips goes, Carlson, while live on cable tv, said the company was attempting to make the spokescandies “less sexy” and “unappealing.” Dropping the memorable line “miserable, nonbinary candy is all we deserve.” Other right-wing commentators jumped on board slamming the candy company for an otherwise unnoticeable footwear change. While on the lighter side of anti-LGBTQ propaganda, Carlson was uniquely gifted in tying transphobia into even the most mundane of coverage.

Marti Gould Cummings

After Biden invited a drag artist, Marti Gould Cummings to speak at the White House for the signing of the Respect for Marriage Act in December of 2022, the artist quickly began receiving death threats from conservatives who had watched Carlson’s coverage of the topic. He reported, as well as many other far-right news outlets, that Cummings was a predator. This is unsurprising, as homophobic rhetoric has revolved around the conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia for decades. Carlson pointed to an old tweet from Cummings which was taken out of context as his evidence that they were in fact preying on children. The tweet read: “The kids are coming out to sing and suck d.”

For those who may not know, queer folks, especially those in the drag community, will use terms like “kids,” “children,” or “girls” to refer to their of-age peers. These colloquialisms come from drag houses, where there are usually drag mothers or fathers and their “children.” This language is also used in the ballroom scene and points to the importance of established community and chosen families for queer people. Of course, the nuance of this was lost (perhaps purposefully) on right-wing media mouthpieces such as Carlson, and Cummings was soon the target of an angry and threatening conservative smear campaign.

Club Q Coverage

Perhaps most egregious was Carlson’s coverage in the wake of the devastating attack on Club Q. Following in the footsteps of other far-right commentators like Alex Jones, Carlson wasted no time when it came to using a national tragedy in the form of a mass shooting to cut propaganda. Just a day after the shooting, Carlson claimed LGBTQ advocates were using the tragedy as an excuse to censure conservatives. Because in the wake of massive loss of life due to hate and contempt felt towards gay and trans people, the real oppression is when someone tells Tucker Carlson to shut up on Twitter.

Platforming Libs of TikTok

As any good journalist would, Carlson often looked to politically active Twitter users for guest spots and interviews. One such account is that of Chaya Raichik, known as Libs of TikTok on the platform. Raichik often will tweet unhinged attacks on the democratic party, feminism, anti-racism, the LGBTQ community, or anything she deems “woke.”

On Carlson’s show, Raichik claimed that the LGBTQ+ community had become a “cult” that pulls people in “unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”

“They brainwash people to join and they convince them of all these things, and it’s really hard to get out of it,” Raichik said, adding that the community is “extremely poisonous,” “evil,” and “out to groom kids.”

Nashville Shooting Coverage

Conservatives truly have a knack for taking national tragedies and spinning them to fit their narrative, all while claiming that it’s actually everyone else who does so. Once news broke that the mass shooter who shot and killed six people in a school in Nashville, TN was in fact transgender, right-wing media went into a complete frenzy. There is some contention on whether or not the shooter was “truly trans,” though I think speculating on their identity thoroughly misses the point. Of the thousands of mass shootings that have occurred in the United States, roughly three have been committed by someone who identified as transgender; an overwhelming majority of mass shootings are perpetrated by cisgender males.

Carlson however, took this as yet another opportunity to spread anti-trans agitprop claiming that the “transgender movement” was now targeting Christian children. “All the conversation on television has been about the guns that were used, and there may be a reason for that—They don’t want to talk about who did it and why,” Carlson said in a segment the day after the shooting.

He even went so far as to claim that identifying as trans “conveys status in this country,” pitting trans people against “working-class whites,” despite the fact that many trans people are themselves working-class. “Yesterday’s massacre did not happen because of lax gun laws,” Carlson says. “Yesterday’s massacre happened because of a deranged and demonic ideology that is infecting this country.”

Being a conservative propagandist comes with a large paycheck, just look at Steven Crowder’s public rejection of a $50 million contract from the Daily Wire, condemning it at “slave wages” for proof. Being fired as a Fox News host however does not bode well for one’s career, historically. The once-popular host of his own prime-time Fox News show, Bill O’Reilly was let go from the broadcasting company in 2017 and since has seen significant drops in viewership for his podcast No Spin News.

So we hope Carlson too will fade into perpetual obscurity while Fox fills his time slot with yet another terribly opinionated, anti-LGBTQ propaganda-cutting talking head.

Featured image courtesy of social media.