(USA Features) Fox News host Tucker Carlson blasted the Los Angeles Times over an op-ed for taking a racist shot at leading California GOP gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder as he has drawn within a statistical margin of error of unseating Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in a recall election next month.
Carlson was referencing a piece calling Elder, who is black, the “black face of white supremacy.”
“Elder’s father, who was a janitor, was black. So was Elder’s mother. So were 80 percent of the people in their neighborhood and by all appearances, Larry Elder seemed black too,” Carlson said.
“Little did they know that this child of South Central, apparently an African-American in good standing was in fact a secret agent working on behalf of global white supremacy,” he quipped.
Recent polling data show that while most Californians want to retain Newsom, the number who say they want to replace him is within the margin of error. If he loses the recall vote, the next-biggest voter-getter becomes governor, and that could be Elder, given his rise in the polls over the past several days.
“Larry elder could actually win. So no wonder the ‘L.A. Times’ is so upset. No wonder they dispatched a crack investigative team to discover he was secretly a white supremacist,” Carlson suggested.
The column was written by Erika Smith, who is also black, as she voiced opposition to Elder’s largely conservative policies, though he has said liberal solutions have been catastrophic for blacks in the state.
“The question is: Can Larry Elder win anyway? We’ll find out in three weeks,” Carlson continued. “If Elder’s elected, he’ll be not only the first Black governor of California but also the most popular statewide official in recent memory.
“That’s the interesting thing. For a purported democracy, California has a long history of electing people that polls show just about everyone who actually lives there actually hates,” he continued, going on to mention some of the state’s long-serving Democratic lawmakers.
“It’s an awfully strange kind of democracy that way. Dianne Feinstein, for example, has represented California in the U.S. Senate for nearly 30 years. And yet her approval rating is just 35%. Somehow she keeps her job anyway. Kamala Harris did the same thing. When Harris ran for president, only seven percent of California’s Democratic voters said they supported her. Makes you wonder how Harris got elected in the first place, to anything. But don’t ask. A question like that would be what we call the ‘big lie.’ Shut up and accept it,” he said.
After explaining the history of California’s recall election laws, Carlson went on to play a clip of Newsom appearing to make a desperate appeal to Democratic voters in his state to turn out as Elder’s status rises.
“That, ladies and gentleman, was a cry for help. And guess who heard him? The media in California. They work for him, so they immediately got to work. Here’s an actual line from a story produced by the so-called ‘news division’ of the LA Times,” Carlson said, adding that electing Elder may be the last chance to “save California,” which he said all Americans should want because it’s the country’s biggest state and one of the most important.
“But it’s also about something bigger than just one state. This recall is a test for democracy. The question is: Do elections still have meaning? Are voters allowed to choose their own leaders? Or does the LA times get to do that? Does the party apparatus get to do that? Do we have any power at all as citizens? Or are they going to steal it from us?” Carlson said.