2020 Candidate Spurns Fox Interview, Then Absolutely Buries Host in Fundraising Email: ‘F*ck Tucker Carlson’

With the number of Democrats running in the 2020 primary almost certain to top 20, it can be extremely difficult for some of the lesser-known candidates to cut through the noise. But one fringe candidate may just have figured out a way.

Mike Gravel, a former senator from Alaska, is going on the warpath against Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, and attention-seeking fashion. In an email blast with the subject line “Fuck Tucker Carlson” (h/t Jordan Uhl), Gravel’s campaign manager David Oks claimed that the ex-senator received an interview request from Tucker Carlson Tonight, but declined. In a scathing letter, Oks explained why:

Fox News pundits have always served as yellow journalists, using xenophobia and white supremacy to sell wars domestically and abroad to please their corporate masters. The network has emboldened white supremacists and is the single entity most responsible for the corruption of our public discourse. Most troubling, though, are the numerous acts of domestic terrorism that have occured as a direct result of their hateful and bigoted rhetoric.

At its heart, this is a campaign about peace. It is for that reason we could not appear on Tucker Carlson Tonight. We cannot, in good conscience, appear on the program of a white supremacist who is responsible for encouraging violence against immigrants, people of color, and the political left. To do so would lend tacit endorsement to his deeply reprehensible views and would reinforce the ridiculous idea that his sham of a talk show is a place for serious debate.

Under Democratic National Committee rules, a candidate needs 65,000 unique donors to qualify for the first debate in June. Somehow, we suspect this email blast will get Gravel a little closer.

[featured photo via Getty Images]