On his FOX News program, Tucker Carlson said the official story that people will be told of the Jussie Smollett saga is that a hate crime may not have occurred in this specific case but hate crimes overall are common and on the rise.



"So this is the new official story, the one you are going to be hearing for a long time, the one your kids will be learning about in school and it's this," Carlson said Friday. "A specific hate crime may not have happened in this case, but hate crimes overall are incredibly common and the incidence of them is rising, so the lesson of Jussie Smollett isn't to be more skeptical of hate crimes, but to be more credulous."



"CNN wants that to be your take away from the whole thing. It doesn't matter that its anchor slandered and defamed almost half the country over a lie. There is a much more important point here, listen," he said.











"Hate hoaxes are so common that you could write a whole book about them and people have, it's all public," Carlson said. "You ought to look it up. Spend an afternoon reading the stories before they get scrubbed off the internet. It's an education. You will never believe CNN again. Trust me."





TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: Well, when Jussie Smollett's hoax was still being investigated by the police, "The New York Times" and other media outlets suggested that it was a quote, "conspiracy theory" to suspect that his claims might not be true. The message was, "Shut up and believe it or else you're a bad person if not clinically insane."



Now, as is so often the case, the few people who were willing to think for themselves turned out to be absolutely right. The press is scrambling to explain how exactly did that happen? How could reporters who are literally paid to be skeptical have fallen for such an obvious lie? It's not an easy question to answer. It's far easier just to pretend the whole thing never happened and that's what some are doing.



Jeff Bezos' "Washington Post" for example, carries the almost amusingly pompous slogan, "Democracy dies in darkness." It's right on the masthead. And yet, just yesterday, "The Post" did its best to add to that darkness. The newspaper refused to run a single news story about Jussie Smollett's hoax. If you got your news from "The Washington Post," you would still believe that Smollett was attacked by white racists for the crime of opposing Donald Trump.



MSNBC did pretty much the same thing. Once Smollett was arrested, the channel did not even cover the story in prime time. Other journalists have decided that Smollett cannot be guilty, he simply can't be. Somebody must have set him up, probably from the racist Chicago Police Department. In other words, if the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit.



(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)



SYMONE SANDERS, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, CNN I think we need to see some of the evidence. I think it's very concerning that all of these leaks came from the Chicago Police Department. So frankly, all we have is leaks from the Chicago Police Department, now what they said in this press conference and what Jussie Smollett and his team have said.



ZACH STAFFORD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, THE ADVOCATE: This Police Department did in 2016, openly through their union, support Donald Trump. So to have a police department that hasn't been as cooperative as they have been in this round, do not openly give information, do openly lie and mishold information in cases and then to know that they are openly -- have openly supported Donald Trump of the 2016 election, a lot of activists on the ground are saying, "Wait, what's going on here? Who do we believe out of these two suspect people?"



(END VIDEO CLIP)



CARLSON: So was it a racist conspiracy from the Chicago Police Department? That's a little far even for a lot of people on cable news. So those people can say that yes, perhaps Jussie Smollett's claims weren't entirely factually true, but so what? They could have been.



Actual Trump supporters may not have assaulted him on the street in Chicago, but they would have it if they could have.



(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)



MISCHELLE TURNER, CONTRIBUTOR, CNN: If it is true, didn't he in fact attempt to paint MAGA supporters as these racist and homophobic people?



TIFFANY CROSS, CO-FOUNDER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, THE BEAT DC: But Mischelle, I have to respectfully disagree, I think MAGA supporters have painted themselves as that. I mean, when you look at footage, when you hear things they say, this is the honest to goodness truth and we have to be bold enough to call that out.



(END VIDEO CLIP)



CARLSON: So this is the new official story, the one you are going to be hearing for a long time, the one your kids will be learning about in school and it's this. A specific hate crime may not have happened in this case, but hate crimes overall are incredibly common and the incidence of them is rising, so the lesson of Jussie Smollett isn't to be more skeptical of hate crimes, but to be more credulous.



CNN wants that to be your take away from the whole thing. It doesn't matter that its anchor slandered and defamed almost half the country over a lie. There is a much more important point here, listen.



(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)



DON LEMON, ANCHOR, CNN: This is an America where hate groups, hate crimes are on the rise.



VAN JONES, ANCHOR, CNN: The reality is, there has been a rise in hate crimes. There has been a rise in intolerance.



CHRIS CUOMO, ANCHOR, CNN: We know that hate crimes are on the rise, a lot of people don't want to accept that, they want this to be trumped up.



(END VIDEO CLIP)



CARLSON: So the problem with what you just heard is, it's a crock, it's totally false. In fact, it's provably untrue. Anyone who says otherwise like the people you just heard is either intentionally misleading you or doesn't understand the numbers and that would include most journalists.



Type in the phrase "hate crimes" into Google and you will see story after story claiming that thousands of these atrocities take place every year in our country and the incidence of them is rising.



A story in Vice News yesterday for example claimed that in 2017, there were 7,175 hate crimes in America. Now, reporters almost never do their own statistical analysis for stories like this. They tend to be bad at math. In fact, that's why they are journalists in the first place and not in private equity making real money.



So instead, reporters take their numbers wholesale from partisan activists who pose as researches or from holy fraudulent organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center. These groups use moral panics to gin up fund- raising. They get rich doing it, so of course, they continue. The problem is there aren't that many hate crimes occurring in the country, it's just not a very hateful place so they have to make them up. How do they do that? They do it, and this is key, by counting accusations as crimes.



An accusation is not the same thing as a crime, it's not even close. So if I accuse you of committing armed robbery that does not need that robbery occurred. You have to be convicted of it and once you are, I can count what you did as a crime. Otherwise, it's just something that you said, it doesn't mean anything.



In real life, hate crimes are rare, consider the numbers from California, it's by far our biggest state. Nearly 40 million people live in California. Its demographics have changed dramatically in recent years. So if hate crimes were an epidemic, you would expect to see an awful lot of hate crimes in California, but you don't.



In 2017, in the state of California, they convicted a total of 65 people for committing hate crimes, that's out of 39.5 million people. In other words, far more people got face tattoos or died while taking a shower than committed hate crimes, 65 hate crimes. And by the way, that number has fallen, not risen. In 1996, California recorded 87 hate crimes. So that's the growing epidemic that Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo were just telling you about. They are lying. It's a fraud.



Hate hoaxes by contrast are common. The media spends a lot of time denying that which is your first tip that it's real. Just this morning, "The New York Times" wrote a headline that began "Hate Crime Hoaxes Are Rare."



"Rolling Stone" whose most famous story ever was a hoax, assures us that quote, "False reports of hate crimes are exceedingly rare." All the rest of the newsroom lemmings nod their heads in agreement, "Um, yes, don't believe your eyes, this stuff never happens." But it does happen, in fact, it happens regularly.



Indeed, the higher the profile of the hate crime, the more likely it is to be fake. Those racist messages at the Air Force Academy, you might have read about. The General who runs the place gave an anguished response speech that seemed sincere and it went viral. But the whole thing was fiction. The fake victims did it to themselves.



How about those three University of Albany students who were attacked by white supremacist on the bus a few years ago. Hillary Clinton immediately weighed in, of course, she was deeply outraged, "This is America," she said. It turns out the three students were the dangerous ones themselves. They had attacked a woman and then invented a hoax to cover their tracks.



Threats to Jewish Community Centers were a huge story in 2017. The press suggested they were the work of some deranged anti-Semitic Trump supporters, assuming that's not redundant in the view of the press.



Once again, totally fake. An Israeli teenager did it. And so on and on and on. In the space of a single month, November 2016, there were at least 13 well-publicized hate crimes that turned out to be hoaxes - thirteen. That was also the month that Trump got elected, which tells you what's really going on here. Hate hoaxes are politically useful and that's why people continue to stage them.



We can go on about this and give you many more examples starting with the Covington story just last month. There are lots and lots of examples. Hate hoaxes are so common that you could write a whole book about them and people have, it's all public. You ought to look it up. Spend an afternoon reading the stories before they get scrubbed off the internet. It's an education. You will never believe CNN again. Trust me.