Once again, Tucker Carlson is lying about why George Floyd died

Written by Nikki McCann Ramirez

Published

On February 10, Tucker Carlson claimed that Black Lives Matter (BLM) had exploited the death of George Floyd to radically alter the United States and that “there was no physical evidence that George Floyd was murdered by a cop. The autopsy showed that George Floyd almost certainly died of a drug overdose, fentanyl.” 

This is not true: Two autopsies concluded that Floyd’s death was a homicide and that he "experienced a cardiopulmonary arrest while being restrained.”

From the February 10, 2020, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST):  The question is why would they lie about this? For an answer think back to last spring. Beginning on Memorial Day, B.L.M. and their sponsors in corporate America completely changed this country. They changed this country more in five months than it had changed in the previous 50 years. 

How did they do that? They used the sad death of a man called George Floyd to up-end our society. Months later, we learned that the story they told us about George Floyd's death was an utter lie.

There was no physical evidence that George Floyd was murdered by a cop. The autopsy showed that George Floyd almost certainly died of a drug overdose, fentanyl. 

But by that point the facts didn't matter. It was too late. Cities had been destroyed, along with the fabric of this country itself. Scores of people had been killed. Democratic partisans used a carefully concocted myth, a lie, to bum-rush America into overturning the old order and handing them much more power. It worked flawlessly. So why wouldn’t they do it again?

The false claim about his cause of death has been circulating in far-right media since August, when an autopsy released by Hennepin County noted that there was fentanyl present in Floyd’s system at the time of death. Importantly, and absent from Carlson's broadcast, is that the autopsy -- and a second one -- concluded that the death was a homicide not caused by an overdose.

Carlson has made this claim in the past, insistent that the nation has been tricked into believing that the police officers were responsible for Floyd’s death despite 8 minutes and 46 seconds of footage that shows exactly that.

From the August 4, 2020, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): On Memorial Day weekend of this year, a man called George Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis, and America has not been the same since. It may never be the same. In the months following that incident, Floyd's death has been used to justify a nation-wide convulsion of violence, destruction, looting, and in some cases killing. And all of that in addition to unprecedented levels of political upheaval, the wholesale reordering of our most basic institutions. Floyd's death changed everything. It was a pivot point in American history. No matter what your side you're on, that is very clear at this point. So with all of that in mind, the significance of the event in mind, it's striking how little we really know months later about how exactly George Floyd died.

For Carlson, an officer killing a person by crushing their windpipe becomes justified if the victim happens to have drugs in their system.

Calrson has made an intense effort to poison his audience against those advocating for racial justice regarding Floyd and other victims of police violence, framing the movement and its supporters in extreme and deliberately misleading ways.