Fox News host Tucker McNear Swanson Carlson said during his Thursday evening broadcast that it would be clear to Americans that there was nothing "local" about the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests if the demonstrators were from Saudi Arabia.
If the protesters were Saudi nationals, then Americans would call the demonstrations "terrorism," Carlson, who has called white supremacy a "hoax" and "an attack on white people," added.
"If the rioters were Saudi nationals, it would be very clear that there was nothing 'local' about what we're watching," the Fox News host said. "We would understand immediately that it's terrorism. The president would give a primetime address. Within hours, the feds would be hunting these people down and arresting them."
"If the rioters were white supremacists," Carlson continued, "they'd already be in prison facing life."
According to the Fox News host, "the course of the country's future" would be changed if the Department of Justice "rounded up the leaders of antifa" — a leaderless international movement — and everyone caught on camera committing arson and vandalizing a church, then shackled and "frog-marched them in front of cameras like MS-13."
Carlson also insisted that federal law enforcement officials give protesters a "new government-approved title" of terrorists — "not CNN contributors."
"Once they're charged, it's official, in fact. They are literally, as a factual matter, accused terrorists, and that would change minds right away," Carlson said.
He dismissed the confounding factor that if federal officials leveled such a charge, it would constitute a wrongful arrest. Carlson claims he went into journalism after he failed to become a federal intelligence official.
"The people destroying this country are criminals," Carlson said. "Few are brave enough to call them that, so naturally their popularity grows."
Though Carlson implied that President Donald Trump was not beating the "terrorist" drum, the president told Carlson's network colleague Sean Hannity in a virtual town hall which aired the same evening that protesters should, in fact, be classified as terrorists.
"These people are vandals, but they're agitators," Trump said. "But they're really — they're terrorists in a sense."
You can watch the clip of Carlson below via Media Matters:
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