A Florida congressman slammed the Anti-Defamation League over the weekend, accusing the organization of racism.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, a conservative Republican who represents Florida’s First Congressional District in the northwestern edge of the state, responded Saturday to accusations of bigotry levelled by the ADL against Fox News host Tucker Carlson and calls for Carlson’s removal.
Gaetz defended Carlson, and called the ADL “racist” in a tweet.
“Tucker Carlson is CORRECT about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America. The ADL is a racist organization,” Gaetz wrote, linking to an article on the ADL’s calls to fire Carlson.
On Friday, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, a former official from the Obama administration, accused Carlson of xenophobia and demanded Fox News drop Carlson from its lineup.
“For @TuckerCarlson, host of one of the most watched news programs in the country, to use his platform as a megaphone to spread the toxic and xenophobic ‘Great Replacement’ theory, is repugnant and a dangerous abuse of power,” Greenblatt tweeted.
In April, Greenblatt accused Carlson of pushing a “white supremacist tenet” which he said “is anti-Semitic, racist and toxic.”
The accusations stem from Carlson’s claims that the Democratic party has used immigration – including illegal immigration – to shift the electorate of the US in their favor.
In a segment Wednesday, Carlson went on to accuse senior Democrats, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, of racism, citing comments by Biden in 2015 lauding data projecting that non-Hispanic whites were expected to become a minority of Americans by 2017.
“Folks like me who are Caucasian, of European descent, for the first time in 2017 we'll be an absolute minority in the United States of America. Absolute minority. Fewer than 50% of the people in America from then and on will be white European stock. That's not a bad thing. That’s a source of our strength.”
On Friday, Carlson defended his claims during an interview with Megyn Kelly on Sirius/XM, saying they had “nothing to do with anti-Semitism” and that Democrats have been explicit in their support for using immigration to reshape the US electorate.
“The great replacement theory is, in fact, not a theory,” Tucker said Friday. “It's something that the Democrats brag about constantly up to and including the President. And in one sentence at that, it's this: rather than convince the current population that our policies are working and they should vote for us as a result, we can't be bothered to do that.”