Lachlan Murdoch, the CEO of Fox News’ parent company, is standing by Tucker Carlson after the Anti-Defamation League called for Carlson’s firing over his comments last week that Democrats were trying to “replace the current electorate” with “more obedient voters from the Third World.”
In a letter to the ADL’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, Murdoch said he disagreed with Greenblatt’s assessment that Carlson was promoting and embracing “replacement theory,” a racist and white supremacist notion that white people are being replaced and disenfranchised by nonwhite people.
“A full review of the guest interview indicates that Mr. Carlson decried and rejected replacement theory. As Mr. Carlson himself stated during the guest interview, ‘White replacement theory? No, no, this is a voting rights question,’” Murdoch wrote.
The Fox Corp. CEO also noted that the ADL had previously honored Rupert Murdoch with an award and that Fox continued to support the mission of the ADL.
But in a scathing response shared publicly on Monday, Greenblatt said supporting Carlson’s “embrace of the ‘great replacement theory’ stands in direct contrast to that mission.”
“As you noted in your letter, ADL honored your father over a decade ago, but let me be clear that we would not do so today, and it does not absolve you, him, the network, or its board from the moral failure of not taking action against Mr. Carlson,” Greenblatt wrote in response to Lachlan Murdoch. “I don’t know which experts you consulted in your review, but, as your letter rightly pointed out, we are the experts.”
Greenblatt said attempts to disguise Carlson’s arguments as a “voting rights” issue was essentially an “underhanded endorsement of white supremacist beliefs while ironically suggesting it’s not really white supremacism.”
The ADL executive also listed, in bullet points, seven other times Carlson sided with “white supremacist ideology,” including when Carlson said immigrants made the U.S. “dirtier” in 2018 and when he said white supremacy was “not a real problem” after the El Paso mass shooting in 2019.
“Carlson did not accidentally echo these talking points; he knowingly escalated this well-worn racist rhetoric,” Greenblatt wrote. “At a time of intense polarization, this kind of rhetoric galvanizes extremists and lights the fire of violence. As a news organization with a responsibility to the public and as a corporation with a responsibility to its shareholders, it is time for you to act.”
A spokesperson for Fox Corp. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read the ADL’s full response here.