Fox News host Tucker Carlson has insisted that white supremacist violence is not a pressing issue in America. But such a declaration doesn’t seem to have stopped actual white supremacists in several instances of apparent domestic terror plots that have been thwarted by authorities in just the past two weeks.
On the August 6 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight — broadcast just days after a suspected gunman killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, and after the gunman allegedly posted a white nationalist manifesto online — Carlson declared that it was a “lie” that white supremacy is even an urgent problem in America. “If you were to assemble a list, a hierarchy of concerns of problems this country faces, where would white supremacy be on the list?” Carlson asked rhetorically. “Right up there with Russia, probably. … Just like the Russia hoax, it's a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power. That's exactly what's going on.”
Since that statement, however, multiple suspects have been arrested on charges related to plotting attacks motivated by white nationalism:
These arrests come at the same time as a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that only 36% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the recent shootings in both El Paso and Dayton, OH, which stands in stark contrast to the past approval numbers of other presidents’ handling of mass tragic events (Barack Obama’s was 74% after the Tucson, AZ, shooting in 2011, George W. Bush’s was 87% after 9/11, and Bill Clinton’s was 84% after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995).
The poll also shows a stark partisan divide on whether Americans are worried about another mass shooting or other attack by white nationalists. While current events would seem to point to an obvious answer of “yes” (regardless of what the causes and possible solutions might be), the internals of the poll -- posted on Twitter by CNBC’s John Harwood -- showed that only 24% of Republicans actually said so, compared to 82% of Democrats and 58% of independents.
