Calling Tucker Carlson an unabashed racist is sort of like calling water wet, or the sky blue, or Donald Trump catastrophic. While trying to fill up his Fox News program with items not involving the tornado of actual news involving Donald Trump, Carlson has retreated to right-wing punditry’s bread and butter—race baiting. The way this goes is to choose stories involving racism and then call people of color racist and hypocritical. It’s a tried-and-true stimulator for a racist and fearful base.
Carlson decided to have Univision anchor Enrique Acevedo on to discuss the responses that people had to watching attorney general—and “zero tolerance” family-separation supporter—Jeff Sessions appearing to dine at Mexican restaurant El Tiempo Cantina.
After an image appeared on the restaurant’s Facebook page saying that it was an “honor” to have served Sessions, people began protesting such tone-deafness.
When the only people defending El Tiempo were white racist trolls, El Tiempo owner Roland Laurenzo tried to put out the fire in a Facebook post that has since been pulled down, disavowing Sessions’ policies.
El Tiempo does not in anyway support the practice of separating children from parents or any other practices of the government relative to immigration. The posting of a photograph of the Attorney General at one of our restaurants does not represent us supporting his positions. The secret service contacted us that a government official was coming to dinner at our establishment and his identity was not know until he walked through the door. The man came to dinner and he was served without us even thinking about the political situations. We were preoccupied with the secret service and catering to their wants and needs. The only thing on our minds was serving great food and giving great customer service. It was posted without review or approval by ownership and this has lead to everyone jumping to conclusions that somehow we are involved in this political matter. We don’t approve of anyone separating parents and children.
Tucker saw this as an opportunity to show how “the liberals” are the real “dividers” in this country, where a person of color cannot serve a white supremacist asshole without people getting all bent out of shape.
Acevedo: I think what people are pointing out, the contradiction of attacking someone’s culture … and then celebrating their food--
Carlson: --It’s American food. What do you think, you own tacos now? Because it sounds like you do. I feel like they’re an American food and I’m going to keep eating them—even though I agree with Jeff Sessions.
Besides not being…true, it’s also an awfully dumb and offensive thing to say. The equation that people in opposition to the racist and inhumane policies of the Republican Party want to allow only Mexican people the right to eat tacos is stupid. It’s the kind of stupid that doesn’t even pass for clever, which is probably why Tucker—and his strangely red face—creates the fakest uncomfortable laugh I’ve ever seen.
Tucker protested, quite a few times too many, about how he grew up on the “border,” and so tacos are his food. Tucker did spend some of his early childhood in San Diego before relocating to the East Coast, but whatever. I know it’s easy to get him mixed up with Emiliano Zapata.