Tucker Carlson doubles down on voter 'replacement' comments after ADL calls for his firing

After Fox Corp. defended Tucker Carlson over calls for his firing last week, the Fox News Channel host doubled down Monday on comments about voter replacement that started the controversy.

In an unusually long, 20-minute monologue that opened "Tucker Carlson Tonight," the host of Fox's most-watched program called his critics "the usual chorus of hyper-aggressive liars" and said Democrats support mass immigration because it increases their electoral advantage and power.

He said Democratic political hopes are based on demographics: "In order to win and maintain power, Democrats plan to change the population of the country."

The Anti-Defamation League last week called for Fox News to fire Carlson, saying he "embraced a foundational theory of white supremacy," the“great replacement” theory, during an appearance on "Fox News Primetime" Thursday.

The replacement conspiracy theory holds that people of color are replacing white people in the West, enabled by Jews and progressive politicians.

“Mr. Carlson’s attempt to at first dismiss this theory, while in the very next breath endorsing it under cover of ‘a voting rights question,’ does not give him free license to invoke a white supremacist trope,” wrote ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.

On the Thursday show, Carlson said “the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate of voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World." He added that he had “less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate.”

Dismissal urged: Fox News should fire Tucker Carlson for pushing white-supremacist theory, ADL says

In a letter sent Sunday to the civil rights group and shared with the Associated Press, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch defended Carlson, saying he had “decried and rejected replacement theory" when he said during the Thursday evening segment, “White replacement theory? No, no, this is a voting rights question.”

The ADL argued in a reply sent Monday to Murdoch that Carlson used white-supremacist language even if he claimed he didn't.

In his Monday monologue, Carlson went on to say that movement within the country of U.S. citizens has switched some states' allegiance from Republican to Democratic. He mentioned arrivals from New York turning Vermont blue and Massachusetts residents doing the same as they move to New Hampshire, bringing "their bad habits with them."

He then expanded that theory to people coming from other countries to the U.S.

"It is immigration from other nations, more than anything else, that has driven political transformation," he said. "Our leaders have no right to encourage foreigners to move to this country in order to change election results. Doing that is an attack on our democracy."

He said Democrats see foreign immigration as a means to increase electoral advantage. "Mass immigration increases the power of the Democratic party. Period. That's the reason Democrats support it. It's the only reason," he said.

The ADL, in its communication with Fox's Murdoch, also listed numerous instances Carlson has used anti-immigrant language in the past, including blaming immigration for making the U.S. “poorer, and dirtier, and more divided," and questioned whether white supremacy was real.

Murdoch noted in his response to the ADL that the organization had once honored his father, Rupert Murdoch, with a leadership award. The ADL's Greenblatt replied that the award was granted “over a decade ago, but let me be clear that we would not do so today, and it does not absolve you, him, the network, or its board from the moral failure of not taking action against Mr. Carlson.”

A Fox spokesperson declined to comment on the ADL's Monday letter.

Contributing: Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tucker Carlson doubles down on voter comments after Fox's support