CNN host skewers Tucker Carlson for sugarcoating racism: 'It's not a hoax when you have a body count'

CNN host John Avalon took on Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who recently called white supremacy a "hoax."

Following the racist mass shooting in El Paso, Carlson insisted to his audience that it was wrong to focus on white supremacy, calling it a "hoax."

"Do you hear that?" CNN's Avalon asked on Sunday. "That’s the deafening silence from Fox News and its board of directors following the false claim that the white supremacy problem in this nation is a hoax."

"Here is a fact," Avalon continued. "Since 9/11, there have been more murders by white wing extremists in America than Islamic terrorists. If you judge a comment by the company it keeps, Tucker’s message was praised by the former KKK leader David Duke."

Avalon wondered how much of Carlson's former "preppy persona" was an indication that he had white supremacist tendencies.

"I’m not sure that is a persona," CNN's S.E. Cupp replied. "That is how he was. That’s how he grew up. He went to prep school."

"What you do with the camera, what you do with the microphone you are accountable for," Avalon insisted.

White nationalism expert Jane Costin said that the white supremacy movement should not be judged by the number of people who followed it.

"You know, the number of people involved should not be how we consider or view the impact of white nationalist terror," she explained. "The people who were murdered by a white nationalist terrorist who drove more than 600 miles to target Mexicans, in his own words, that happened, you know, burials are still taking place and it is absolutely inconceivable to me to be having this entire conversation that’s rooted in whether or not white nationalism is real when we see the body count that it’s caused."

"That’s exactly why it appropriately sparked a firestorm," Avalon agreed. "It is not a hoax when you have a body count."

Watch the video below from CNN.