Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson shows up for anti-amnesty protests in Spain

There were renewed protests outside the national headquarters of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) in Madrid on Monday, just hours after this party formally filed a bill in parliament that will grant amnesty to hundreds of people involved in the illegal secession attempt of 2017 led by separatist leaders in Catalonia.

On the 11th day of protests on Ferraz Street, there was a new face among the crowd: Tucker Carlson, the American conservative political commentator who was fired in April of this year from Fox News, and who was seen on Monday in the company of Santiago Abascal, the leader of Spain’s ultranationalist party Vox. Carlson, known for spreading far-right ideas and conspiracy theories, hosted one of the most watched cable news shows until its cancellation, then moved to social media, where he now hosts Tucker on X on the site formerly known as Twitter.

Asked by a local reporter from OkDiario about the reason for his presence at the protest, Carlson said he was attending the rally to give visibility and support to the demonstrations. “The world is not seeing it enough and that is why I wanted to come, because it’s not getting the coverage it deserves,” he said. “Anybody who would violate your Constitution, potentially use physical violence to end democracy is a tyrant, is a dictator. And it’s happening in the middle of Europe, so we thought it deserved more coverage than it’s getting.”

There were people of all ages at the protest on Monday, which comes on the back of massive nationwide demonstrations held a day earlier and called by the mainstream conservative Popular Party (PP). Demonstrators once again slammed acting prime minister Pedro Sánchez for what they see as him “buying” his way back into office, because in exchange for the amnesty, Catalan separatist lawmakers sitting in Spain’s Congress of Deputies will back his bid to form a government following inconclusive elections in July that did not give an absolute majority to any party. The two-day parliamentary session to get Sánchez invested into office will take place on Wednesday and Thursday.

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