Tucker Carlson Tonight fill-in host Brian Kilmeade on Thursday engaged in some blatant fear-mongering regarding one of the components of the Inflation Reduction Act, warning that an increase in funding to the IRS would translate to government agents “hunt[ing] down and kill[ing]” modest earning Americans who don’t pay the required amount.
The legislation, which passed the Senate over the weekend and now awaits a vote in the House, would allocate $80 billion to the IRS for hiring more agents, improving technology, and for enforcement, including of tax payments on cryptocurrencies. Republicans reacted to its passage in the upper chamber by making misleading and false claims. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), for instance, said that 70,000 agents will be armed because of it, when in fact the number of armed agents was just over 2,000 last year, according to an Associated Press fact check.
Kilmeade, like Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX), invoked militaristic imagery to describe the IRS workforce, calling it an “army” of President Biden.