Last week, Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson aired “American Dystopia,” a weeklong special on homelessness in San Francisco. Framed as shining a spotlight on a city with a large and highly visible homeless population, “American Dystopia” was just another chance for Carlson to further Fox News’ quest to attack the homeless and the liberal politicians who supposedly enable them. Over the course of the week, Carlson repeatedly criticized San Francisco and California lawmakers for not criminalizing homelessness while interviewing law enforcement officials, business owners, and privately hired police he brought on to complain about the issue.

Each part of the special had a different focus, but they all carried the same theme: Democrats are turning cities into filthy dumps -- and if you aren’t careful, your city will be next. Carlson used a conveniently vulnerable population as a bludgeon against Democrats, urban areas, and the “coastal elites.” When the narrative collided with reality, Carlson and his team left out important context and information that would cast doubt on their fearmongering. And by painting liberal cities as crime-ridden hellholes, Carlson transparently tried to further the fraught, rural-urban political divide ahead of the 2020 election.

In fact, San Francisco’s homeless population has actually decreased since 2004, “when the city launched a series of long, intensive and only partially successful efforts to put every street person under a roof.” Now, San Francisco lawmakers are seeking to implement policies directed at addressing the housing crisis affecting lower- and middle-income residents of the city. But rather than discussing these efforts, Carlson opted to play invasive footage of homeless people while commenting in disgust as his production crew filmed them defecating or administering drugs in public; one man shouted expletives at the camera crew for filming him but they continued.

Carlson and Fox News relentlessly focused on homelessness throughout 2019, generally covering the issue in a dehumanizing way, referring to homeless people as “drugged-out zombies,” and describing the cities in focus as “almost Third World in their decay” and facing “a complete breakdown of the basic needs of civilization.” A Media Matters analysis revealed that over the course of the year, nearly 300 Fox segments mentioned homelessness.

This continued coverage appears to have influenced President Donald Trump, who is known to treat Fox News personalities as presidential advisers. In September, The Washington Post reported that Trump “has ordered White House officials to launch a sweeping effort to address homelessness in California.” And in the final weeks of 2019, Trump tweeted about the issue multiple times, sometimes attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for supposedly not doing more to address homelessness. According to Media Matters’ Matt Gertz, at least five of those tweets directly echoed Fox News segments.

Despite the dramatic overtures, uninvited harassment of the destitute, and high-definition shots of fecal matter, Carlson’s latest man-on-the-street “investigation” offered little of substance. Here’s our review:

Part one

Carlson began his series by declaring, “It’s hard to wreck a place as beautiful as San Francisco, but they have effectively done it.” “Civilization itself is coming apart,” he warned, including “on the city’s sidewalks, which are littered with junkies and feces and dirty needles. The jewel of our Pacific coast is now filthier and more chaotic than downtown Mumbai, India. Literally.”

After issuing a graphic content warning, likely because of the crew’s apparent obsession with filming feces, Carlson reminded his audience of the purpose of this project: “As you watch it, remember this: This is what they would like to do to your neighborhood.” As his Fox production crew played footage of drugs and feces, Carlson narrated for his audience: “Addicts do drugs on the sidewalk. Homeless people defecate in the street.” He talked about seeing paramedics saving a man “who had just overdosed on the sidewalk,” adding that “such scenes are becoming common in San Francisco.” Carlson also declared at one point that “we filmed drug dealers selling drugs in broad daylight.”