Tucker Carlson Accuses Trans Community of Targeting Christians – Rolling Stone

For the second night this week, Fox host Tucker Carlson accused the transgender community of targeting Christians with violence. The host has escalated his attacks on trans people in the aftermath of a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, in which three third-grade students and three adults were killed.

Authorities identified the shooter as Audrey Hale, a transgender man. Even though acts of mass violence by transgender individuals are an extremely rare occurrence, Carlson has laid the blame for Hale’s actions on the transgender community as a whole. 

“Transgenderists hate Christians above all, because Christians refused to join every other liar in our society and proclaim that transgenderists are Gods with the power to change nature itself,” Carlson told viewers.

“For that refusal,” Carlson continued, “that unwillingness to bow down and worship a false idol, in this case of transgenderism, they were murdered.” 

Carlson is at this point guessing at the shooter’s motives. Authorities have yet to release information regarding the motive of the shooting, but they have indicated that Hale was a former student at the targeted school. Investigators did recover a manifesto from Hale along with materials indicating his planning of the attack. “We’re investigating all the leads, and once we know exactly, we will let you know,” Nashville Police Chief John Drake told reporters on Monday.

This case presents a unique question for authorities given that most mass shooters who produce manifestos make them public themselves. Simply circulating a mass shooter’s words and self-justification without proper context can serve to amplify their beliefs and views. But the process being followed by investigators has drawn Carlson’s ire. 

The host accused the U.S. Attorney General and several federal law enforcement agencies of intentionally hiding the manifesto and the shooter’s motive because “the transgender lobby, which has far more power than you do, has pressured politicians to keep it hidden.” 

Carlson’s proposal is meant to instill a belief in viewers that transgender people harbor an innate thirst to violently lash out, but even Tucker’s own monologue unintentionally contradicts his claim. “If you wanted to stop murder you would focus on the people who are committing murder, not on the hundreds of millions of your neighbors who are not,” Carlson said. “The first thing you would do is study what murderers have in common.” 

Tucker won’t tell his viewers this, but the reality is that while mass shootings like the one committed by Hale are disturbingly common in the United States, his gender identity makes him an outlier amongst the demographics of perpetrators.