Washington Free Beacon reporter Bill McMorris appeared Monday night on Fox News to discuss the phenomenon of "fake news" stories and how some liberals continue to perpetuate them on social media.
Prior to the segment, Carlson talked about the shooting that occurred at a D.C pizzeria on Sunday afternoon. Alleged gunman Edgar Maddison Welch cradled an AR-15 assault-style rifle at the Comet Ping Pong restaurant, which fell victim to a fake news story before the 2016 election linking Hillary Clinton, her campaign chairman, and the owner of Comet to an alleged sex-slave conspiracy, the Washington Post reported. Welch fired multiple shots in the restaurant, but there were no injuries.
Carlson began the segment by asking McMorris what "fake news" stories are and who practices them.
"Fake news is whatever people living in the liberal bubble determine to be believed by the right," McMorris said.
"Right," Carlson said.
"It's obviously the reason that Donald Trump won the elections and this just happens to be a nice convenient thing that happened to a nice D.C. establishment and, of course, it's based on a complete hoax," McMorris added.
Carlson said that the Comet shooter was over the top and it was "outrageous" for him to carry a rifle into the restaurant, but he asked McMorris whether it was weird to hear journalists arguing for suppression of views even if they believe them to be wrong or they can prove they are wrong.
McMorris agreed and discussed how the First Amendment has historically affected journalism.
"The First Amendment has often threatened journalistic establishments interested in preserving a monopoly on access to information, so we've seen it time and again from the positions of opposition newspapers during the Adams Administration through today with the proliferation of blogs," McMorris said.
McMorris referenced Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and his proposal to regulate the First Amendment with the law to clarify what a journalist is, which prompted Carlson to sarcastically joke about Schumer being the right person to decide who is a journalist and isn't/
Carlson encouraged his viewers to read many of the fake news stories from the New York Times that McMorris had highlighted in his article last month.