MSNBC’s Chris Hayes lays out the connection from former Tucker Carlson writers’ racism to Trump
Hayes: “Because in America, 2020, the racist losers who trade vile jokes on internet forums … they're basically running the country.”
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From the July 13, 2020, edition of MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes
CHRIS HAYES (HOST): The 8 p.m. host on Trump TV is Tucker Carlson, and he wants you to believe the concern about white supremacy in America is a hoax, which is very convenient for a guy whose show has been dabbling in it for years. The truth, of course, is that white supremacy is alive and well in this country, on TV and in certain corners of the internet where racists get together and post racist stuff.
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The author of that was not just some random racist. As CNN's Oliver Darcy revealed, that post was written under a pseudonym by this guy, Blake Neff, seen here in a Washington Post dating column in which he was identified as a proud Trump supporter. Blake Neff was also until last week the top writer on the Tucker Carlson television show on the Fox News channel. And what Darcy exposed is that Neff has been a racist and sexist online presence for years, hanging around in shady online forums, taking part in disgusting and offensive discussion topics.
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That kind of exchange is the whole point of forums like that. It's where horrible racists get together to be horrible racists -- and they are the people who Tucker Carlson says you should not worry about because white supremacy is not a real concern. But Blake Neff is not just some random loser who posts on racist message boards with his racist friends. He was Tucker's top take writer until last week. In fact, listen to this. Neff once posted to the Dartmouth alumni magazine, Anything Tucker Carlson is reading off the teleprompter, the was first written by me.
Anything Tucker Carlson is reading off the teleprompter was first written by a guy who we now know has been posting bigoted remarks for years.
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After his racist posts were exposed, Blake Neff resigned and Fox News leadership condemned his bigotry, the online bigotry, not the Tucker scripts. Fox said they had no idea what Neff was doing. But, really come on. It was the least surprising news in the world.
This guy worked for Tucker Carlson, the co-founder of a website called the Daily Caller, which has published work from people with at least ten people with ties to white nationalists. It can literally be hard to keep track of all of them because the dark corners of the white supremacist internet are where many future Daily Caller writers first hone their craft. One of them just, for instance, was the organizer of that Charlottesville rally where white nationalists chanted slogans including "Jews will not replace us." Another was Blake Neff, who was a writer for yes, of course, you guessed it, The Daily Caller before Tucker brought his talents to Trump TV. And his work has helped lead to rave reviews for Tucker by racists. He's been celebrated by people like former KKK leader David Duke. And his show is the subject of admiration on white supremacist websites like The Daily Stormer. It surely didn't hurt that Tucker has, in his body of work, credited white men for creating civilization, called Iraqis "semiliterate primitive monkeys."
So you have a guy who had a racist writing his scripts for years; who founded a publication that employed multiple people with ties to white nationalism; who's been praised again and again by the most outspoken racists in the country, who love his show; a man who's hemorrhaged advertisers over the year, because on his show he sounds just like Blake Neff.
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HAYES: Fox knows what it's selling, as does Tucker Carlson. And the president, of course, knows what they're selling — because he loves it all, he's constantly tweeting clips. Because in America, 2020, the racist losers who trade vile jokes on internet forums are the people who write the words the talking heads say into a camera — and that the president then tweets out. Those people who write that kind of stuff on message boards, they're basically running the country.