'I’m probably the first unemployed person you ever invited to speak': Tucker Carlson to sold out crowd

Tucker Carlson had a great joke for a sold out crowd in Alabama as he talked about being 'fired' and some other things. The crowd wasn't huge, but it was sold out as 1,189 people showed up to see him speak at the Oxford Performing Arts Center for a fundraiser for Rainbow Omega. Jokingly, Tucker Carlson started off with the epic one-liner saying “I’m probably the first unemployed person you ever invited to speak." Then Carlson said, "It’s funny. I never give speeches because I’m working. When I accepted this speech six months ago or something, I didn’t realize how much free time I would have. One never knows, does one?”

What is Rainbow Omega? It's a facility for adults with developmental disabilities, not some alphabet people thing - don't get them confused. Rainbow Omega is actually helpful to people.

What else did Tucker Carlson say during his speech? Well, here's some quotes thanks to AL.com who posted it in a news story about the former Fox News host:

I accepted for two reasons, one shallow and one a little deeper.  One is, I do love Alabama. I’m not just saying that. We spend a lot of time in rural Maine, which is so close to this culturally, you have no idea. In a great way. The food is not very good in rural Maine. The food here is unbelievable. I’ve spent a lot of time in this state, and part of the reason is you have great hunting and fishing. The real reason is it has everything that I like. It has really nice people. It has amazing food. I have the world’s worst eating habits and here that’s not judged. Fried Oreos? Okay! I love that. I love the lack of judgment.

And I think it’s physically beautiful, the state of Alabama is just beautiful. From the coast, to North Alabama, the whole thing. It’s funny. I was thinking this morning, I’ve lived in the Northeast most of my life, and Alabama’s one of those places that people in New York, for example, used to kind of sneer and go, ‘Alabama.’ I thought this morning I haven’t heard that in a long time. I haven’t been to New York in awhile, I admit. I’m never going again. It’s one of those things.

The perceptions, national perceptions kind of shift very slowly, then you wake up in the morning and everything’s different.  The rest of the country’s view of Alabama is one of those things that just changed completely. Nobody makes fun of Alabama, at all, because they realize actually that’s how you’re supposed to be living. The only way to know what people think about something is to not listen to what they say, I say this as someone who has talked for a living for a long time, ignore the words. Watch what they do. Watch how they live. That’s the only accurate measure of what people really think. Ignore that. Be like your dog, who understands not a single word of what you’re saying but knows exactly who you are.

Are people moving to Alabama? Oh, yeah. I love that. Why are they moving here? They’re moving here because Alabama’s everything that you would want in a place that you live. It has cohesive communities, super-nice people, gentle people, people who care about their neighbors, and it has an abundance of nature, something that we I think undervalue. We went through this weird, kind of mass hypnosis where everyone was convinced we had to move to some horrifying concrete city in order to make a living and forgot that actually you need to see green, or else you’ll go insane. If you’re alienated from God’s creation, you become fundamentally alienated. Nature is the most beautiful thing. Driving around here today, I thought to myself, you think of Alabama, if you don’t live in Alabama, as a place that has a lot of past attached to it. And I thought today, especially reading the numbers about what’s happening in your state, Alabama is not the past, Alabama’s the future.

Photo: Tucker Carlson Leaked Video screenshot