Fox’s Tucker Carlson raged at “liberals” for what he perceived as their uneven and hypocritical reaction to migrants being flown into Martha’s Vineyard by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
In a segment on his Thursday night program, the right-wing pundit specifically took filmmaker Ken Burns to task over comments the American documentarian had made earlier that day that compared the Florida governor to an authoritarian leader.
“It’s the abstraction of human life,” said Mr Burns about Mr DeSantis sending 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in what’s widely been panned as a political stunt by critics.
Mr Burns made the remarks while appearing on CNN to promote his new documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust, which tracks the American response to the Holocaust before, during, and after the Second World War.
“This is coming straight out of the authoritarian playbook, this is what’s so disturbing about DeSantis is to use human beings to weaponise human beings for a political purpose,” the famed documentarian said to CNN’s Jon Berman, who had earlier in their conversation highlighted how there were similar themes between Mr Burns’ new movie and the actions of Republican governors shipping human beings as “political pawns”.
Mr Carlson, however, did not see the parallels that Mr Burns and Mr Berman were highlighting, and instead took to skewering the pair for what he perceived as a false equivalence of comparing the exclusive vacationing island to the concentration camps used during the Second World War by the Nazis.
“Everything is relative,” he began. “Martha’s Vineyard may be a modern-day death camp, but compared to where illegal aliens usually go, it doesn’t look that bad.”
The next few minutes the Fox News host dedicated to showing side-by-side comparisons of the border communities where migrants are typically held to the more flattering images of the east coast island community that counts celebrities such as the Obamas and Beyonce as holiday residents.
“On your screen you will see images shot recently in America’s border towns - which are completely overrun under Joe Biden’s immigration policy - you will notice, if you look carefully, chaos, violence and filth,” he said before flashing a more flattering image of Martha’s Vineyard that he ironically described as being “hellish”.
“Families eating together on balconies overlooking the water, women doing their shopping in quaint little towns on their bicycles, couples strolling on the boardwalk. Sailboats. It doesn’t look that bad.”
The host then took to panning CBS News for claiming in a Thursday segment how the small island community was not set up to handle the legal and immigration services required by these migrants, unlike larger metropolises – such as Boston, where the migrants reportedly thought they were being flown to.
On that point, the host agreed with the news outlet, noting that the governor’s stunt was intended to highlight this gap in services.
“That’s kinda the whole idea. That’s why DeSantis sent the illegal aliens to Martha’s Vineyard. People who make and advocate for certain policies should, at some point, have to live with those policies, but until now they haven’t had to,” he quipped.
On Friday, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker announced that his state intends to provide emergency relief to Martha’s Vineyard by tapping into state agencies, such as the National Guard and the Massachusetts State Police, as even the Republican official conceded that the island communities were “not equipped” to handle such an influx of migrants.
“The island communities are not equipped to provide sustainable accommodation, and state officials developed a plan to deliver a comprehensive humanitarian response,” said the governor’s office.
“Our Administration has been working across state government to develop a plan to ensure these individuals will have access to the services they need going forward, and Joint Base Cape Cod is well equipped to serve these needs,” said Gov Baker in the statement released Friday.
