- Tucker Carlson questioned the motives of the jurors who condemned Derek Chauvin on Tuesday.
- He suggested that their verdict was to avert riots that some feared would follow an acquittal.
- “Can we trust the way this decision was made?” he asked.
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Following the conclusion of the Derek Chauvin murder trial, Tucker Carlson’s response on Tuesday night was to question the jury’s motivation for reaching a guilty verdict.
A few hours earlier, a jury of five men and seven women had unanimously ruled guilty on all three counts against Chauvin in George Floyd’s death.
Chavin was found guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and manslaughter. The verdict came about a year after footage circulated of white police officer Chauvin kneeling for minutes on the neck of Floyd, a black man. Floyd’s death sparked international protests, at times violent unrest, and a national conversation in America about racial injustice.
On Tuesday’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” the Fox News star characterized the verdict not as an impartial decision based on the trial, but rather as the way the jurors said, “Please don’t hurt us.”
It was part of a longer opening monologue that suggested the jury was spurred on by fear of riots by people who would have been angered by a verdict of the innocent.
“Can we trust the way this decision was made?” he asked.
—Nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) April 21, 2021
“Everyone understood very well the consequences of an acquittal in this case,” said Carlson. “After nearly a year of burning, looting and killing by BLM, there was no question about that.”
He continued, “Last night, 2,000 miles from Minneapolis, the Los Angeles police preemptively blocked roads. Why? They knew what would happen if Derek Chauvin got out.”
This thought has been aired elsewhere on Fox News. On Tuesday afternoon in “The Five,” Greg Gutfeld expressed relief at the verdict because, as he put it, “my neighborhood was looted” during the initial unrest after Floyd was murdered.
He withdrew from fellow hosts, saying he “wanted a verdict that would keep this country from going up in flames.”
On his primetime show that night, Carlson set the verdict as open to debate. “Is the officer guilty of the specific crimes for which he has just been convicted?” he asked. “We can all argue about that, and this hour we will.”
Carlson has previously in his show given weight to the discredited theory that fentanyl in Floyd’s system contributed to his death. Chauvin’s defense team also argued this but was refuted in court by prosecution witnesses.
Carlson went on to say that politicians, protesters and media figures tried to “intimidate” the jury.
“No politician or media figure has the right to intimidate a jury,” he said. “And no political party has the right to impose a different legal standard on its own supporters.”
He hasn’t specified in his opening monologue how this happened in Chauvin’s trial, but he has previously accused Democrats of using a double standard in discussions surrounding the Capitol riots and the Black Lives Matter protests last summer.
Both President Joe Biden and Democratic Representative Maxine Waters have been critical for their comments on the trial before the verdict was handed down. Biden noted that there was “overwhelming evidence” for what he called “the correct verdict,” while Waters said directly that she was “looking for a guilty verdict.”
On Tuesday, Carlson suggested that the deadly shooting of the Capitol uprising Ashli Babbitt – a white supporter of then-President Donald Trump – would not receive the same level of criticism as Floyd’s murder for what he called “ political or ethnic considerations. ”
In February, Washington, DC, police investigators advised not to press charges against the unnamed officer who murdered Babbitt, and the Justice Department announced last week that he would not face a federal charge.
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.