Tucker Carlson criticises US ambassador
August 24th, 2023News outlets carry extensive reports on Tucker Carlson’s address in front of a thousand-strong audience in Budapest. An opposition-leaning website describes the US conservative political commentator as a journalist who has lost all credibility.
This has been Tucker Carlson’s second visit to Hungary. In 2021, he made a video report defending the Hungarian government against criticism by American liberals and also broadcast an interview with PM Orbán on Fox News (see BudaPost, April 11, 2021). This time, Prime Minister Orbán gave an interview to Carson again and posted a photo of the two of them and a TV camera with the subtitle: ‘Something is up’.
Mandiner features three reports on its opening page about Carlson’s presence at the ‘afterparty’ of MCC Feszt, the Summer Festival of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (see BudaPost, August 2). One of the three posts contains extensive quotes from Carlson’s address about US ambassador David Pressman whom he condemned for lecturing the Hungarian government instead of promoting communication between the two countries. He said that under normal diplomatic protocol, Mr Pressman should be immediately dismissed.
Telex also reports excerpts from Carlson’s speech while characterising him as a TV host ‘famous for promoting conspiracy theories and for his racist remarks’. The liberal website asserts that Carlson, the most popular TV host at Fox News was dismissed in April because his false allegations about electoral fraud in 2020 resulted in a costly, ‘gigantic slander trial’. Telex describes Carlson’s Twitter (now X) page as ‘swarming with Russian propaganda and UFOs’.