The Fox News host made headlines on Tuesday when he said that he and his team struggled to find a website for the pro-Trump movement that the FBI has called a domestic terrorism threat.
The conspiracy theory has also been linked to several murders and death threats against politicians. The movement was also heavily involved with the Capitol riot on January 6 in Washington D.C.
“We spent all day trying to locate the famous QAnon, which, in the end, we learned is not even a website. If it’s out there, we could not find it,” Carlson began on Tuesday night’s installment of Tucker Carlson Tonight.
In an apparent mocking of CNN’s coverage of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has supported QAnon in the past, Carlson added: “Then, we checked Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter feed because we have heard she traffics in disinformation, CNN told us, but nothing there.”
He continued. “Next, we called our many friends in the tight-knit intel community. Could Vladimir Putin be putting this stuff out there? The Proud Boys? Alex Jones?”
“Who is lying to America in ways that are certain to make us hate each other and certain to destroy our core institutions?” Carlson concluded. “Well, none of the above, actually. It wasn’t Marjorie Taylor Greene. It was cable news. It was politicians talking on TV, they’re the ones spreading disinformation to Americans. Maybe they are from QAnon.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger has criticized Carlson for claiming he couldn’t find the movement online, calling it a “whitewash” and that the host is “pleading ignorance.”
However, this is not the first time Carlson has spoken about QAnon.
Carlson again made headlines at the end of January this year when he defended QAnon believers on his show.
The reactionary anchor railed against the idea that QAnon was a “real threat” and mocked journalists’ reporting on the movement in the weeks following the January 6 insurrection.
“There’s a clear line between democracy and tyranny, between self-government and dictatorship. And here’s what that line is. That line is your conscience. They cannot cross that. Government has every right to tell you what to do. No democratic government can ever tell you what to think. Your mind belongs to you, and it is yours and yours alone,” Carlson said in one of his monologues on January 26.
He added: “Once politicians attempt to control what you believe, they are no longer politicians, they are by definition dictators. And if they succeed in controlling what you believe, you are no longer a citizen. You are not a free man. You are a slave.”
Carlson made this point in an effort to condemn Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) for introducing a bill that would ban QAnon supporters and other conspiracy theorists from obtaining federal security clearances in government—which Carlson believed was a step too far.
He also claimed that Democrats are responsible for “ludicrous conspiracy theories” of their own, including one that “Vladimir Putin secretly controlled the federal government.”
Carlson went on to mock The New York Times op-ed columnist Tom Friedman, who told CNN in an interview he was worried about the threat QAnon posed to America.
“Ooh Mr. Tom Friedman thinks this is all very frightening,” Carlson mocked at the time.
Correction: This article was updated to reflect Carlson’s apparent mocking of CNN’s coverage of Marjorie Taylor Greene.
