Fox News should never have approved Tucker Carlson's softball interview with Kyle Rittenhouse

Los Angeles Times

Carlson's sitdown Monday with the teen who was acquitted last week of fatally shooting two men in Kenosha, Wisconsin "was a sickening display of how far we’ve fallen as a nation — media maniacs like Carlson conflating anarchy with patriotism, and the right embracing deadly violence as they once did conservative values," says Lorraine Ali. During the interview, says Ali, "Carlson also cued up Rittenhouse to deny accusations that he’s a white supremacist who was drawn to the protest by his opposing beliefs. Yet Tucker Carlson Tonight — which showed footage from the protests that worked in Rittenhouse’s favor — somehow failed to produce the widely circulated photo of Rittenhouse in a bar with two Proud Boys, wearing a 'Free as F—' shirt and flashing what appeared to be a 'white power' hand gesture. Instead, the show spent much of the hour reiterating the same victim/hero/blameless child lines. Rittenhouse revealed an immense amount of entitlement — and some of the same hubris he displayed on his face during the trial — when recalling how bad his first round of attorneys were for his case. They were not there in his best interest, he maintained, but rather were using him to further their own cause. Carlson nodded." Ali adds: "Next up from America’s most widely watched right-wing ideologue, a documentary about Rittenhouse due out next month, woven from material shot by a film crew embedded with Rittenhouse throughout the trial — despite Rittenhouse’s defense attorney saying he 'didn’t approve' of the production. And Fox should have never approved of this softball interview, either, where a vigilante was coddled by a madman, and humanity was forsaken for ratings. ALSO: Fox News has provided 13 times the coverage of Kyle Rittenhouse than that of the Ahmaud Arbery trial.