Tucker Carlson, the editor-in-chief of the conservative news site The Daily Caller, told TPM on Thursday that a “hungover” editor was to blame for a headline on the site’s “Guns and Gear” section that included the phrase “Kill All The Jews.”
The post, originally headlined, “Kill All The Jews And When That Is Done Kill Those That Refused To Defend Them,” was published on Tuesday.
The article, written by Maj. Gen. Jerry R. Curry, a retired US Army veteran and former assistant to the Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush administrations, argued that Muslim terrorists targeting Jews will soon turn to other groups such as Christians, “just as the Nazis did” during World War II.
“If today the civilized world, led by the United States, doesn’t stand up and speak out for Israel and the world’s Jews, when Islam comes for the Christians, and it will come, there will be no one left to speak for them,” Curry wrote.
Curry’s article has since been given a different headline and a note was added beneath it: “Correction: The original headline on this op-ed was wildly inarticulate and perverted the meaning of the piece. We apologize.”
(The post’s URL still included the phrase “kill-all-the-jews” as of Thursday morning.)
Carlson told TPM that the published headline was spotted by executive editor Vince Coglianese on either Tuesday or Wednesday. Carlson said Coglianese flagged it to him.
“The headline didn’t match the story. It was obviously nothing more than a garbled attempt,” he told TPM by phone. “It was inarticulate, it was idiotic.”
When asked how the original headline ended up on the site, Carlson said one of the site’s editors, whom he declined to name, was likely “hungover.”
“I don’t know. We’ve got over 50 people here. He was hungover or something,” Carlson said.
Carlson said that The Daily Caller got no complaints about the headline, and that it was removed because it was inarticulate.
“I oversaw the correction,” he said. “It violated our first rule in that it wasn’t clear.”
Carlson repeated his suspicion about the editor who oversaw the headline.
“I assume the editor was hungover, but I don’t know,” he said. “I literally have no idea.”
He later told TPM in an email that the original headline was not submitted by Curry.
“That headline was not written by the author of the piece, but by our editor, whom we have executed, ISIS-style, for his misdeed,” he wrote.
A staffer at Media Matters tweeted a screenshot of the original headline on Wednesday:
WTF Daily Caller pic.twitter.com/CxrA4TI6rC
— Timothy Johnson (@timothywjohnson) February 18, 2015
This post has been updated.
