F You Tucker...

Tucker Carlson suggested immigration makes America “dirtier.” It cost him an advertiser.

Pacific Life, a life insurance company, pulled out after Carlson’s latest anti-immigration rant.

By German Lopez

An advertiser has pulled out of Fox News after host Tucker Carlson suggested that immigrants make America “dirtier.”

During a monologue on Thursday, Carlson claimed that “you never hear” anybody make an economic case for “mass immigration” — which is simply not true — then went on to blast politicians and pundits, including current House Speaker Paul Ryan and incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), for supporting more immigration into the US.

“Our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this,” Carlson said. “We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided. Immigration is a form of atonement.”

After the segment ended, the show cut to a commercial for Pacific Life, a life insurance company — and Carlson’s critics pushed the company on Twitter to condemn what Carlson said.

On Friday, Pacific Life responded. It said that it “strongly” disagreed with Carlson’s remarks and that it will pull its ads from Carlson’s show “in the coming weeks as we reevaluate our relationship with his program.”

This is far from the first time that Carlson has said something controversial. Previously, for example, he made a lengthy case against diversity — suggesting that it makes the US and its institutions weaker. But it’s rare that companies feel forced to pull their ads due to such remarks.

Earlier this year, Fox News host Laura Ingraham saw several advertisers pull out of her show after she mocked David Hogg, a Parkland, Florida, school shooting survivor and activist, for his college rejections. In recent years, advertisers also ditched Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly’s Fox shows after controversies.

In response to the Carlson situation, a Fox News spokesperson told the Hollywood Reporter, “It is a shame that left-wing advocacy groups, under the guise of being supposed ‘media watchdogs’ weaponize social media against companies in an effort to stifle free speech. We continue to stand by and work with our advertisers through these unfortunate and unnecessary distractions.”

It’s easy to read these advertiser pullouts as political stands. Pacific Life, for one, suggested that it’s supportive of “the diversity of our great nation” in its statement.

But advertisers also want to avoid linking their companies or products to anything that’s controversial or racist. As Erik Wemple noted at the Washington Post, “Though the Erik Wemple Blog isn’t a big fan of advertiser pressure campaigns, we’d never want to place a spot for the Erik Wemple Life Insurance Blog in proximity to Carlson’s programming, which veers into bigotry as a matter of reflex, not to mention audience appeal.”

Whatever the reason, Carlson’s show will lose out on at least some advertising money as a result of his remarks.