Tucker Carlson repeated his claim Monday afternoon that a Texas middle school teacher should not face criminal charges after performing a classroom lap dance for a 15-year-old student, reported Media Matters.
The Fox News personality said April 28 on “Outnumbered” that charging the teacher, Felicia Smith, would be “deranged, because there’s no victim here.”
His comments drew a significant response from viewers, and Carlson’s co-host Harris Faulkner, read three comments posted on the program’s Facebook page.
“Tucker is so wrong on this one,” one viewer posted. “What that teacher did is assault and she should lose her job and do jail time.”
Another woman expressed similar views, but a male viewer said he agreed with Carlson.
“Whether it’s fair or not, a double standard does exist,” the viewer posted. “I would be hard pressed to find a 15-to-17-year-old boy that doesn’t dream of being seduced by a hot teacher.”
Carlson said the teacher, in his estimation, was hot “enough,” and noticed the reactions broke down along gender lines in the minuscule sample size offered by Fox News producers.
“The women are upset and the man understands, and here’s the bottom line: A 15-year-old boy is not a 15-year-old girl, and so – I got a lot of mail about this – every man understands this,” Carlson said. “A 15-year-old boy looks at this as, like, the greatest thing that ever happened, and I think for a 15-year-old girl it would be traumatic. That’s just real. I don’t know what to say – I don’t want that to be true but it is true.”
The teacher has been charged with improper relationship with a student after she admitted to performing the four-minute, full-contact lap dance as other students laughed and cheered.
“I’m not saying that all teachers should do lap dances at school,” Carlson said. “I’m just saying when a teacher gets so enthusiastic she breaks out into a lap dance, don’t send her to prison. That’s all I’m saying.”
Watch this video clip posted online by Media Matters for America:
