Tucker Carlson defended Milo Yiannopoulos on his Fox News program after patrons of a New York City bar recently heckled and pressured the alt-right figurehead to leave. The group, which chanted "Nazi scum get out" at Yiannopoulos, were members of the Democratic Socialists of America.
"You may have mixed feelings about Milo Yiannopoulos, many people do," Carlson said on the Monday night broadcast. "But if you're on the left, you really hate him. Like you’ve never hated anybody for some reason as much as Milo Yiannopoulos and the effect is Milo Yiannopoulos can’t even go to a bar without getting driven out by screaming people."
Yiannopoulos, with the help of his former employer, Breitbart, has been accused of bringing white supremacy into the mainstream. A video of Yiannopoulos singing “America the Beautiful” in a karaoke bar while patrons, including the infamous white nationalist Richard Spencer, raise their arms in Nazi salutes, went viral last year.
But Carlson is unbothered by Milo's ties to white nationalist groups: "They claim that the Nazi label is justified because some of Milo's supporters once made a Nazi salute they say, though it’s not clear that Milo saw them do it, whatever."
Yiannopoulos maintains he is not a Nazi or racist. "I have said in the past that I find humor in breaking taboos and laughing at things that people tell me are forbidden to joke about," he wrote in a statement to BuzzFeed News. "But everyone who knows me also knows I'm not a racist. As someone of Jewish ancestry, I of course condemn racism in the strongest possible terms. I have stopped making jokes on these matters because I do not want any confusion on this subject. I disavow Richard Spencer and his entire sorry band of idiots."
He also claimed that his "severe myopia" inhibited him from seeing the Hitler salutes a few feet away.
Watch the broadcast below.
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