Tucker Carlson Takes Swipe at Ben Shapiro’s ‘Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings’ Slogan: ‘He Changed His Views on That Recently’

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson took a swipe at Daily Wire editor Ben Shapiro on Wednesday, remarking that Shapiro had “changed his views” on his former catchphrase.

During a speech in Las Vegas, Carlson said, “It takes a very rare person to lie in the way that we’re being lied to, and it takes a very rare moment to see lying at this scale, but the final fact that makes this moment different is that they’re not just lying, they hate the truth. They’re offended by things purely because they are true! Even when they don’t possibly threaten anyone.”

Carlson then cited a Media Matters piece which “attacked a guy for suggesting that our historical timelines were wrong and there had in fact been advanced civilizations in earlier moments in time, and that they had been eliminated somehow through climactic events, through natural disasters, and that we’re not aware of them in any detail.”

He continued, “Media Matters was offended. Now, why were they offended? They were offended purely because it was true. That is across the board the case.”

Carlson then said:

I can’t think of a single case where someone was destroyed for telling the truth— for lying, rather. For lying, there’s no penalty for lying. If they had lied, if they had repeated whatever dumb slogan they were told to repeat — “we’re in a climate crisis,” “diversity is our strength” — or whatever, whatever the approved script is, if they had just read it like a good little robot, they would’ve ascended the ladder at NBC News. They wouldn’t be living in their weekend house. But they didn’t. What they did was they told the truth, and that is the case everywhere.

And if you don’t believe me, look back, and do it when there’s no one else around because everyone’s afraid even to have unapproved thoughts now, but go through like the last fifteen famous people who were cancelled for saying the wrong thing, and ask yourself, is the thing they said wrong? You may not agree with it, it may offend you. Some of the things people get cancelled for are kind of offensive in my opinion, but that’s not the measure. The measure, always and everywhere, has to be in a free society, in an honest society, in a decent society: is it true? Truth has to be a defense, and it used to be our first defense.

The former Fox News host went on to take a jab at Shapiro, commenting, “In fact, there was a guy who used to say, ‘Facts don’t care about your feelings.’ He changed his views on that recently, but that remains true. The facts matter most, and even more important than the facts, the truth of the facts. What do they mean? That’s the most important thing.”

The dig appeared to be a reference to Shapiro’s recent feud with Daily Wire personality Candace Owens.

Shapiro repeatedly and publicly attacked Owens, his employee, for criticizing Israel and for taking a different stance to him on the topic of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza.

“You have been acting unprofessional and emotionally unhinged for weeks now,” protested Owens to Shapiro this month, after Shapiro told her to “by all means quit.”

Following the feud, Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing said that while neither him nor Shapiro had the power to fire Owens, they would not fire her even if they could because “Candace is paid to give her opinion, not mine or Ben’s.”