Tucker Carlson says not using racist terms to describe coronavirus is leading to its spread
Published
Citation From the March 11, 2020, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): One of the reasons Americans may have missed the significance of this virus is because, unfortunately, it came enmeshed with politics. On television, talking heads have wasted hours upon valuable hours yammering not about the virus and its potential victims but about how it's racist to tie the coronavirus to China, where it came from. Please. Now is not the time to indulge in the lowest and dumbest kind of identity politics. In times of crisis euphemisms kill. You need accuracy and clear language in the way you talk about the threat. It's essential. And yet, ingrained habits are hard to break. And among our professional class, no habit is more deeply ingrained than seeing the world through the lens of race, which they do. When Congressman Kevin McCarthy tweeted information about the Chinese coronavirus, Ilhan Omar responded this way, "Viruses don't have nationalities. This is racist." Oh, shut up. But on MSNBC they're not shutting up. They give the very same lecture.