Fox News host Tucker Carlson calls transgender children a ‘nationwide epidemic’ in vile on-air rant
Fox News host Tucker Carlson has declared transgender children a “nationwide epidemic”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson has declared transgender children a “nationwide epidemic” as he appeared wistful for a time when accepting families could be thrown in jail.
The prominent Trump cheerleader made the claims on air during a segment on Thursday, laying into an HBO documentary that features young trans children, which he declared “so disturbing it would have qualified as a crime not so long ago”.
In the segment, Carlson parroted a number of false anti-transgender talking points as he spuriously attempted to link the clip of a four-year-old child with puberty blockers – which, as the name suggests, are not given to children until they reach puberty.
Tucker Carlson claims trans kids existing is ‘epidemic of child abuse’
Carlson claimed: “Across the country, many small children are being given puberty blockers and irreversibly damaging their bodies.
“Of course some of them later regret it. It’s grotesque. If you say that out loud, you’re punished. Target will ban your book. You’ll have trouble getting a job.
“This isn’t just one parent abusing a child on TV, this is a nationwide epidemic and everyone is too embarrassed to mention it. You’re not allowed to say so.
“The Democratic Party is four-square behind it, and Joe Biden has announced that biological men should be allowed access to women’s locker rooms in public schools across the country.”
Carlson went on to discuss the story with the definitely very serious and legitimate news pundit Matt Walsh, a man who has previously compared trans people to lizards, insisted that no “self-respecting grown adult men” would use emojis, and argued that the very existence of trans women serves to “cheapen womanhood”.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson has declared transgender children a “nationwide epidemic”
Fox News host’s diatribe was peppered with inaccuracies
We’re not sure exactly where to start with fact-checking the avalanche of mistruths during the segment, but, for what it’s worth, puberty blockers have been in use for decades, are a reversible treatment, and there is no evidence whatsoever that they cause “irreversible damage”.
Carlson’s claims that treatment is often regretted is helpfully contradicted both by objective reality and by other anti-transgender activists, who have started to complain that puberty blockers “set kids on a particular path” because regret rates for the treatment are so low.
