Tucker Carlson rant claims cat cafes are worse for America than white supremacy

The host also claims Barack Obama was a more substantial threat to the nation

Fox News's Tucker Carlson continued to downplay the threat posed by extremist conservatives on a recent episode of his show, suggesting that "cat cafes" were more dangerous to the health of the country than white supremacists.

During his show on Tuesday, Mr Carlson openly questioned "does anyone in power really believe something called 'white supremacy' is the single greatest threat America faces? No of course not, no one thinks that."

Mr Carlson is lying to his audience. Data collected by the FBI describes white supremacists in the US as a "top threat" facing Americans, and Mr Carlson is aware of that report.

“The top threat we face from [domestic violent extremists] continues to be those we identify as Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (RMVEs), specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race,” FBI director Chris Wray said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in March.

Mr Carlson then claimed that Black lawmakers like Susan Rice and former President Barack Obama "know it isn't true" and accused them of being the "architects" of the alleged lie.

"They understand perfectly well what actually threatens America because they've seen it up close. It's the culture that produced them," Mr Carlson said.

He suggested that "the decadent rich people from their class at Harvard," were the ones threatening America. Mr Carlson's distrust of the elites is hypocritical, considering he grew up in one of the ritziest parts of San Diego, his childhood home overlooked a tennis club, and he spent most of his youth in boarding schools.

He didn't stop there.

"It's the gender studies party at Cornell. It's the cat cafés in Austin and Asheville. It's the Monday editorial meetings at the Atlantic magazine," he ranted. "Those are the people who actually detest the country. They're the ones working through the night to destroy it."

Mr Carlson suggesting that liberals - and apparently people who like cats - are out to destroy America in a blaze of pronouns and sneering editorials is pretty standard Fox News fare.

However, Mr Carlson could have made that point without downplaying the threat the nation faces from white supremacists. He did not. He intentionally used his rant to assure his readers that other conservatives they know who might be racists or bigots are not the real threat to the wellbeing of their country.

Though Mr Carlson has long been crticised for his rhetoric on issues regarding race, he has increasingly defended white supremacists since the Capitol riot on 6 January.

Last month, Mr Carlson essentially endorsed the "Great Replacement" theory on-air, which is a theory bandied by white nationalists and other conservative extremists that claims Democrats - or other liberals - are trying to fill the country with immigrants from "third world countries" to replace the white people as the nation's majority voter demographic.

The belief has been at the root of violent racist attacks and mass murders in the US and around the world.

"I know that 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 — the voters now casting ballots — with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World," Mr Carlson said. "But they become hysterical because that's what's happening, actually. Let's just say it. That's true."

Jonathan Greenblatt, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, called Mr Carlson's segment an "open-ended endorsement of white supremacist ideology," and called on Fox News to fire him.

Prior to that, Mr Carlson defended the Capitol insurrectionists, and claimed that there was "no evidence that white supremacists were responsible for what happened on 6 January."

Mr Carlson's show is consistently the most watched cable news show in the US.