Fox News’ Tucker Carlson rebuked CNN’s Don Lemon on Thursday night for how he covered “Empire” star Jussie Smollett being charged for allegedly filing a false police report.
Smollett was charged Wednesday with issuing a false police report after alleging that two Trump supporters beat him up last month. When news first broke about the charges, Lemon questioned whether or not the actor was at fault for lying about the attack, during an interview on “Good Morning America.”
Carlson took offense to what Lemon said the night before.
WATCH:
“You can talk to me, Don Lemon says, because there aren’t a lot of us out there. Well, here’s the translation, ‘us’ means people who’ve been oppressed the ways Jussie Smollett has been oppressed. Lemon is letting you know he is in that group, too,” Carlson began. (RELATED: Smollett Charged With Disorderly Conduct)
He continued:
Yes, he’s a highly-paid news anchor with his own TV show; yet like Jussie Smollett, Don Lemon is a holy victim. So there’s a mad scramble over who is the victim here. Who is the victim? Well, there is one. What Smollett did was not a victimless crime. There’s no such thing as that. An entire group of people did get slandered by this hoax. People with the wrong political beliefs and the wrong skin color. Smollett and his many defenders savagely attacked these people and are not apologizing for doing it. Instead they are telling you, you hear this everywhere, that the real losers here are the authentic victims of hate crimes who won’t be believed the next time.
“What about the innocent Americans they just poured venom on for two weeks because it matched some bigoted stereotypes they had about middle America? What about them? There’s no mention of them,” Carlson added. “Don Lemon would very much like to keep up those attacks on those people. Attacking them allows him to feel oppressed. That is why when Smollett was finally caught, Lemon reacted in a very puzzling way. He didn’t seem especially concerned that his buddy had lied to further divide the country to hurt America—which he did—no, that wasn’t the real problem. The real problem, according to Don Lemon, is that Smollett’s arrest might discredit the cult of victimhood.”
Carlson then aired a clip of Lemon from Wednesday night saying that he and Fox News’ Sean Hannity would “eat Jussie Smollett’s lunch.” (RELATED: Jussie Smollett On MAGA Hats: ‘I Never Said That!’)
“Yeah, because when you tell the truth about a hate hoax you are the real hater,” Carlson concluded. “What’s the cost of this attitude so floridly on display to our society? What does it do to us?”