Tucker Carlson's Sex-Crazed Pandas

Submission 11,013

Part of a series on Donald Trump-Stormy Daniels Affairs Allegations. [View Related Entries]

About

Tucker Carlson's Sex-Crazed Pandas refers to a series of jokes and references to a report by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who was criticized for reporting on the intrinsic dangers of panda bears' sexual proclivities instead of the FBI raid of President Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen in connection with Donald Trump-Stormy Daniels Affairs Allegations, which happened the day of the panda report.

Origin

On April 9th, 2018, Fox News host Tucker Carlson ran a segment about panda bears.^[1]^[5] During the segment (clip below), Carlson called the animals "aggressive and sex-crazed."

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As the segment aired, people commented on the fact that Carlson was reporting on "sex-crazed pandas" and not the FBI raid on the office and hotel room of President Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, which virtually every other news outlet had reported.^[2]^[3]^[4]

As the segment aired, people on Twitter joked about the segment and posted images of Carlson's report. Twitter^[6] user @davidmackau tweeted a screen capture with the caption, "i am speechless… i am without speech." The post (shown below, left) received more than 2,800 retweets and 10,000 likes in two days. Twitter^[7] user @stealthygeek referenced the other story about Cohen directly tweeting, "Breaking News on… CNN: Cohen raided by FBI NBC: Cohen raided by FBI CBS: Cohen raided by FBI ABC: Cohen raided by FBI FOX: …" The post (shown below, center) received more than 15,000 retweets and 41,000 likes in two days. The following day, Redditor ^[9] ILoveRegenHealth posted the tweet on the /r/PoliticalHumor subreddit. The post received more than 820 points (96% upvoted) and 70 comments in 24 hours.

That night, Academy Award-winning screenwriter and the director of the American comedy film Anchorman tweeted^[8] that the segment was very similar to one in his film. He wrote, "Amazing. We made this joke in Anchorman about fluff news and he’s actually doing it (to cover for Trump)." Within 48 hours, the post (shown below, right) received more than 1,400 retweets and 6,900 likes.

The following day, on the late-night talkshow The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Stephen Colbert mocked Carlson's report and accused him of stealing his "bit."^[10] During the segment, Colbert played a clip from 2011 from his old news-satire series The Colbert Report in which Colbert calls pandas, "Godless killing machines."

Several media outlets covered the response to Tucker Carlson's report, including Uproxx,^[11]^[12] The Daily Dot, ^[13] The Cut^[14] and more.