Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said Sunday on MSNBC’s “Inside” that Fox News host Tucker Carlson and others on the network are “very clearly” inciting violence.
Psaki said, “This week, Fox News settled their defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million, a lot of money. It is now the largest defamation settlement in history. Do you think Dominion’s lawyers made a mistake not requiring Fox to acknowledge on air that it lied to its viewers?”
Ocasio-Cortez said, “This was a corporation suing another corporation for material damages. Their job is to go in and get the most money that they can. I think that they did that. They are not lawyers for the American public. I think what is best for the country, what would have been best for the country, would have been to demand that and not settle until we got that, but that is not their role.”
She added, “We have very real issues with what is permissible on air. We saw that with January 6, and we saw that in the lead-up to January 6. How we navigate questions, not just of freedom of speech but also accountability for incitement of violence, this is the line that we have to really explore through law.”
Psaki asked, “Do you think that media organizations or social media platforms should be accountable for being platforms for incitement?”
Ocasio-Cortez said, “I believe that when it comes to broadcast television, like Fox News, these are subject to federal law, federal regulation in terms of what’s allowed on air and what isn’t. When you look at what Tucker Carlson and some of these others folks on Fox do, it is very, very clearly incitement of violence, very clearly incitement of violence. That is the line that I think we have to be willing to contend with.”
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