Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson argued that MS-13, an organization he described as a “mostly immigrant street gang” a bigger threat to public safety than ISIS.
Carlson offered examples of MS-13 violence and pointed out that while there are likely a “few hundred” active ISIS members in the United States, there were 6,000 members of MS-13 domestically and 30,000 abroad.
Transcript as follows:
It’s fair to say, ISIS is the new global gold standard for offal. Combined the Orlando, San Bernardino and Chattanooga terror attacks, and the groups is responsible for at least 68 deaths here in the U.S. over just the past three years and that is bad. On the other hand, it’s nothing compared to MS-13. That organization, a mostly immigrant street gang is a far greater threat to your life than ISIS is. It’s the numbers.
It’s not just the body’s pile up in smaller numbers and the coverage isn’t a splashy when they’re covered at all because often they are not. Besides the four killings you just heard about in New York today, there’s Raymond Wood. He’s the Lynchburg teenager apparently murdered and left by the side of the road two weeks ago by a group of MS-13 members. All of them were here illegally by the way.
There Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens, a pair of teenage girls butchered with machetes by MS-13. They’re walking off from school in Brentwood, New York. We could go on and on and on. And in the future editions of the show, we will. But killing is not the end of the problem with MS-13, its members have been caught running child prostitution rings, they’ve been contacted by Mexican drug cartels, and paid their operations. And of course, they engage in the usual extortion, drug trafficking and human smuggling.
But unlike ISIS, MS-13 makes it hard to live in certain neighborhoods here in this country. Also unlike ISIS, there are a lot of them. ISIS may have a significant pass of supporters in the U.S. and a lot of a suspected does but true active ISIS members — pretty small, maybe a few hundred and most. MS-13, by contrast, has approximately 6,000 members according to the government in this country. And they’re supported by more than 30,000 abroad. Yes, abroad.
Because MS-13 is fundamentally a foreign threat. Now, the administration is using a lot of firepower to defeat insurgents in the Middle East right now and good for them. But what about the insurgency right down the road from you here in America? Because that’s exactly what it is.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor