Donald Trump ally Tucker Carlson has peddled a wild conspiracy theory that abortion is “probably” the cause of hurricanes.
The former Fox News host appeared on Steve Bannon’s MAGAWar Room podcast on the eve of the election, where he dismissed scientific evidence that the extreme weather event is connected to climate change and instead theorized that abortion is a “consequence” of “human sacrifice.”
“I’m sure I’ll be attacked for saying this, but I really believe it,” Carlson began.
“People are like, ‘oh, well, we had another hurricane, it must be global warming.’ No! It’s probably abortion, actually.”
“You can’t kill children on purpose,” he added. “You can’t participate in human sacrifice without consequences.”
Carlson appeared on the podcast a week after Bannon was released from prison after serving time for two counts of contempt of Congress relating to his refusal to comply with the House committee investigating the January 6 riots at the US Capitol.
The comments come after two deadly hurricanes Helene and Milton wreaked havoc across parts of the US southeast. Hurricane Milton was the Gulf’s strongest late-season storm on record, and the strongest hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico since Hurricane Rita hit in 2005.
Climate change has contributed to the problem, causing hurricanes to bring more intense rainfall and increased storm surge from rising seas. For every one degree of global warming, the air can hold an extra 4 percent of moisture, according to nonprofit Climate Central.
The organization World Weather Attribution, which was initially funded by Climate Central, said that the burning of fossil fuels made increased sea surface temperatures during the track of Helene between 200 to 500 times more likely than they would have been otherwise.
Carlson has become a key player in the Trump campaign’s bid for reelection. The right-wing pundit has interviewed the former president a number of times and spoke at his Madison Square Garden rally last weekend, where he falsely described Kamala Harris as “Samoan-Malaysian.”
“It’s going to be pretty hard to look at us and say ‘You know what? Kamala Harris, she got 85 million votes because she’s so impressive as the first Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ, former California prosecutor ever to be elected president,” he told the crowd.
Carlson then sat down with Trump last Thursday at a campaign event in Glendale, Arizona, where the former president referred to former Republican representative Liz Cheney, who has endorsed Harris, as a “radical war hawk.”
“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay?” Trump said. “And let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
