Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday fired off an attack on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, calling the California Republican “a puppet of the Democratic Party.”
The comments were part of the fallout from a recent report in The New York Times based on an audio recording of a Jan. 10, 2021, call among House Republican leaders. The report said that McCarthy disparaged comments from Republican Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Mo Brooks of Alabama in the aftermath of the Capitol incursion.
Referencing actions of social media companies to ban former President Donald Trump, McCarthy mused about a similar action — seemingly with Gaetz and Brooks in mind.
“Can’t they take their Twitter accounts away, too?” McCarthy said, according to the report. McCarthy’s spokesman has since denied McCarthy wanted any individual members removed from Twitter.
Carlson was incensed about the report.
“Kevin McCarthy of California told his close friend Liz Cheney that he hoped the social media companies would censor more conservative Republicans in Congress,” Carlson said.
Tucker Carlson turns on Kevin McCarthy pic.twitter.com/Io7K39mbju
— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) April 27, 2022
“Donald Trump, the sitting president, had already been silenced by those companies. But McCarthy wanted the tech oligarchs to do more, to force disobedient lawmakers off the internet,” he said.
After referencing the Times report about McCarthy’s comment, Carlson said, “Those are the tape-recorded words of Congressman Kevin McCarthy; a man who in private, turns out, sounds like an MSNBC contributor.”
Carlson said conservatives face danger, even if the GOP regains control of the House in the fall elections.
“Unless conservatives get their act together right away, Kevin McCarthy or one of his highly liberal allies, like Elise Stefanik, is very likely to be Speaker of the House in January,” he said, referring to Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York.
“That would mean we would have a Republican Congress led by a puppet of the Democratic Party,” he said.
Carlson had a banner during the show that read, “Kevin McCarthy hates people like you and this show.”
In the segment, Tucker Carlson added, “Unless conservatives get their act together right away, Kevin McCarthy … is very likely o be speaker of the House in January. That would mean we will have a Republican congress led by a puppet of the Democratic Party…”
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) April 27, 2022
Carlson did not stop there, according to Newsweek.
“So you wouldn’t know any of this unless it was leaked. And you can start to see why the people in charge oppose transparency and fervently support censorship, on both sides,” Carlson said.
“Why? Because the more you know about them, the less satisfied you’re likely to become with their leadership,” he said.
The report in The New York Times claimed McCarthy said comments by Gaetz at the time were “putting people in jeopardy.”
“And he doesn’t need to be doing this. We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else,” the report quoted McCarthy as saying, before indicating that Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana also voiced concerns about Gaetz.
On Tuesday night, Gaetz called McCarthy and Scalise “weak men.”
“While I was protecting President Trump from impeachment, they were protecting Liz Cheney from criticism,” he said.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
