Ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson claims to believe that “demons” were responsible for the discovery of nuclear technology.
In an interview on the War Room podcast with former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, Carlson stated not only that “nuclear weapons are demonic” but that “human forces” were not responsible for the technology’s discovery.
“I’ve never met a person who can isolate the moment where nuclear technology became known to man,” Carlson says. “So where did it come from exactly?”
“It’s very clear to me that these are demonic,” he added. “These are evil.”
In reality, the history of nuclear technology is well known. As outlined by the World Nuclear Association, ionizing radiation was first discovered by German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895.
As the decades went on, more discoveries were made. By 1938, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann became the first to recognize that bombarding the uranium atom with neutrons caused it to split. Known as nuclear fission, the development led to widespread interest among scientists in Russia, the U.K., and the U.S.
After just a few short years of intense research, the U.S. launched the Manhattan Project to prove nuclear fission could be harnessed into a weapon of war. The first atomic device was successfully detonated on July 16, 1945, in a New Mexico-based test code named “Trinity.”
Given the technology’s thoroughly understood history, as well as Carlson’s assertion that demons invented it, the remark was quickly met with condemnation on social media.
“As someone who cares about the history of science, and as the grandson of someone who worked (in a very minor capacity) on the Manhattan Project, and just as someone who knows how to read: This statement is unfathomably ignorant,” X user Adam Keiper wrote.
In remarks to the Daily Dot, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and member of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, described Carlson’s remarks as “abso-fucking-lutely insane.”
“The process that led to the understanding of nuclear fission in the early 20th century was extensively documented in open scientific publications at the time and there were several Nobel prizes awarded for various discoveries,” Dr. Lewis said.
Incredibly, the controversial remark is not the first time Carlson has blamed demons for his lack of understanding.
In a clip posted to YouTube last week, Carlson told a documentary filmmaker that he was “physically mauled” by a demon a year and a half ago while sleeping.
Carlson went on to say that the alleged attack left him bleeding in bed and that scars caused by “claw marks” are still visible, although the filmmaker did not ask Carlson to show them.
Carlson’s content has become even more conspiratorial since his time at Fox News, where he was let go in the wake of a lawsuit that saw the media outlet fork over $787 million after spreading false claims about the voting company Dominion Voting Systems and the 2020 election.
This post has been updated.
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