In an on-air response to an article attacking him and the network, Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson flipped the tables on The New York Times Thursday night when he called out the liberal paper for “screwing up coronavirus stories from day one.” And he also rubbed their nose in their ridiculous China and virus articles dating back to January.

The segment was a response to a Times article titled, “Alarm, denial, blame, the pro-Trump media’s coronavirus distortion,” where the paper accused Carlson and Fox News of, among other things, protecting President Trump by unjustly blaming China for the global pandemic (click “expand”):

In the telling of The New York Times, coronavirus coverage on this show and elsewhere followed a certain pattern. The pattern they told us went this way: “Step one: Blame China.” According to The New York Times: "When the virus ravaged China, some pundits on the right warned that the country couldn’t be trusted to contain the outbreak or share accurate information about where it originated." Can you believe they thought that way? Where they get that idea? Because it’s true. But The New York Times doesn’t admit that. Then, step two, playing down the risks followed by step three, share survivor stories to show the virus wasn't so bad. And finally, step four, blame the left.

“Now, as you’re aware of from watching this program and from living in this country, whatever these people accuse you of doing is 100 percent of the time exactly what they're doing themselves. And that of course was the case here,” Carlson declared after giving the rundown of The Times article. He turned The Times’ four-step formula around and embarrassed them with their own headlines.

According to Carlson, the first step was to “blame racism.” “Here are two New York Times headlines from the early days of the outbreak, quote, ‘An outbreak of racist sentiment as coronavirus reaches Australia,’” he read. “In other words, people’s bad opinions are worse than a pandemic. Here’s another, ‘In Europe, fear spreads faster than the coronavirus itself.’”

Where The Times accused Fox News of playing down the seriousness of the virus, Carlson pointed out that that was something the Times had done in step two. “On January 29, the paper warns you to, ‘Beware of the pandemic panic.’ Calm down, ladies and gentlemen! A week later they asked, ‘Who says it's not safe to travel to China?’ Book a ticket to Wuhan, racist,” Carlson mocked.

For step three, Carlson pointed out how the paper had taken to politicizing the virus by insisting it should be called “Trumpvirus” and by arguing “the road to coronavirus hell was paved by evangelicals." “Yeah, that’s right. A pandemic that emerged from an atheist country is really the fault of Christians, says The New York Times. That tells you a lot about where they are,” he said.

The fourth and final step was to blame Fox News. He reminded folks that, “This show was telling you about the dangers of this disease way back in January, when The Times was still wondering if it was racist to even know it existed and encouraging you to travel to Wuhan on vacation.”

Carlson wrapped up the segment with the ridiculous interview New York Times writer Donald McNeil gave to MSNBC, where he peddled Chinese Communist Party propaganda about there being no new cases in China. McNeil also suggested the U.S. bring over Chinese health care workers to manage the crisis here.

“What a shill. Bring in Chinese doctors to run our hospital[s]. That’s his take. That’s not surprising though, apparently Chinese doctors already run The New York Times,” Carlson concluded.

The transcript is below, click "expand" to read: