CNN analyst criticizes Tucker Carlson's denial of white supremacy: “He doesn't know what he's talking about”
Phil Mudd: “We have to spend more resources on” countering white supremacy
Published
Citation From the August 7 edition of CNN's New Day
JOHN BERMAN (CO-ANCHOR): I'm going to read a little bit more of what Tucker Carlson said, and this has to do with law enforcement. And I don't want to overdo what he said and I don't want to give it too much credence here but he said, "white supremacy is not a real problem in America. The combined membership of every white supremacist organization in this country was able to fit inside a college football stadium." From a law enforcement, from a counterterrorism perspective, what do you think when you hear that?
PHIL MUDD (CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST): Well I guess Al Qaeda was a hoax because I'm supposing the number of real Al Qaeda cases we had in this country could fit inside a football stadium, but America told us you will spend all of U.S. government resources chasing them. Mr. Carlson knows cameras. He's never seen a case. If he wants to talk to every director, that is advisers to the White House, every senior director in the White House in the past few years, Democrats and Republicans -- they put out a letter this week, both parties. We should focus more on white supremacists. The FBI agents association. I dealt with them. Not exactly a group of left-wing activists. They put out a notice this week. We have to spend more resources on this. Mr. Carlson can talk to a camera, the man's never seen a case. If he wants to talk about a case, I'll take him on. He doesn't know what he's talking about.
BERMAN: White supremacy is a threat?
MUDD: Yes, of course. I mean, we're not talking about whether it's on every street corner. We're talking about -- if you even have enough people to fit in a football stadium, that's 60,000, they can kill a lot of people. It's about one person doing what we saw in El Paso.
BERMAN: And they have killed a lot of people at this point.