Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday night addressed bigoted remarks made by a former writer for “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and announced he’d be taking a “long-planned” vacation from the show.
The video: Carlson condemned the comments posted anonymously to a public internet forum by Blake Neff, who served as head writer for the show until he resigned on Friday after a CNN investigation.
Here's how @TuckerCarlson addressed his former top writer Blake Neff's resignation for having secretly posted racist and sexist material on an online message board. pic.twitter.com/Kle9kkNygx
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) July 14, 2020
“What Blake wrote anonymously was wrong. We don’t endorse those words. They have no connection to the show,” Carlson said. “It is wrong to attack people for qualities they cannot control. In this country, we judge people for what they do, not for how they were born.”
- But Carlson also slammed people celebrating Neff’s disgrace, calling them “ghouls now beating their chests in triumph at the destruction of a young man.”
- Before closing out his show, the top-rated cable news host said he’d be taking a break from the program to go trout fishing for several days.
What did Neff say? Fox News executives on Saturday issued a memo to employees condemning the “horrendous and deeply offensive racist, sexist and homophobic comments” Neff made to the public forum AutoAdmit over a period of several years.
- CNN Business reported that, as recently as last week, Neff replied to one AutoAdmit poster’s query asking, “Would u let a JET BLACK congo n****er do lasik eye surgery on u for 50% off?” by commenting, “I wouldn’t get LASIK from an Asian for free, so no.”
- In another post last month, Neff commented, "Black doods staying inside playing Call of Duty is probably one of the biggest factors keeping crime down."
- According to Carlson, Neff was “horrified” and “ashamed” by the unearthing of his comments.
