On Thursday, Tucker Carlson launched into an attack on the documentary “God & Country,” which he pointed out was produced by Rob Reiner, before Carlson later noted that he hasn’t seen the film. It was released in theaters in February.
“Nobody hates Christians more than longtime Hollywood actor and producer Rob Reiner,” Carlson claimed early in the segment. “Amazingly, he’s just produced a documentary about how faithful Christians are the enemy, if you can believe it.”
Carlson then played the documentary’s trailer, which argues against Christian nationalism and the connection of Christianity with politics. It opens with commentator David French, a former Republican, arguing that Christians should be “a countercultural example” but are instead “leading the charge of malice and division.”
Ahead of the clip, Tucker called French “a fake Christian.”
After the trailer played, Carlson bursts into laughter, exclaiming, “Rob Reiner, lecturing us on what Jesus really wanted!”
You can watch the full trailer here:
The far-right anchor went on to attack many of his usual targets, including MSNBC and Vice President Kamala Harris, before introducing his guest for the segment: Megan Basham, reporter for the conservative Daily Wire. Basham has a book coming out in July, titled, “Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda.”
During the interview, Carlson noted that he had not watched Reiner’s documentary.
“There’s been a very deliberate effort” to “remove” evangelical Christians, Basham asserted, adding, “this film is part of it.”
“It is over the top,” Basham argued. “I’m not going to do it the justice of pretending like it presents anything like a coherent intellectual argument. It doesn’t. What it essentially does is say, here are bad, scary Christians.”
Basham takes issue with the film’s presentation of Christians including Rev. Billy Graham and former Vice President Mike Pence alongside events such as the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and the Unite the Right rally, which she notes was led by a self-described atheist, Richard Spencer. The film argues that the connection of conservative Christianity with conservative politics helped to lead to these events.
“I mean, I’m hardly a theologian — have no interest in becoming one — but I think we can say conclusively, if you’re pro-abortion, you’re not a Christian,” Carlson posited. “I mean, I think it’s kind of that simple, is it not?”
Basham appeared briefly taken aback by Carlson’s claim, but added that she agrees. She also criticized the film’s discussion of why conservative Christians began to emphasize the issue of abortion following the desegregation of schools in the 1960s, adding, “that’s how unserious this film is.”
“Everybody knows Rob Reiner, so everybody’s talking about this particular film,” Basham said. She went on to criticize the politics of Russell Moore, editor of Christianity Today and former Baptist minister, who appears in the film.
Carlson criticized Moore as well, arguing, “He didn’t like Trump — and from my perspective, totally fine. You don’t have to like Trump to be a Christian, of course.”
But, he added, “It seems from my outsider’s perspective very much like he is paid to subvert American traditional Christianity on behalf of the Democratic Party. He seems like he’s betraying his fellow Christians for money. But maybe I’m just being unfair.”
You can watch the full segment and decide for yourself if Tucker Carlson is being unfair about the documentary he didn’t watch, “God & Country,” at the top of this page.
