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DURING AN INTERVIEW with a US political commentator, Irish former MMA fighter Conor McGregor repeated debunked claims that foreigners in Ireland are exempt from traffic rules.
McGregor and the host, Tucker Carlson, agreed that these false claims were evidence the government is trying to wipe out Irish people.
Videos of the claims made in the interview have been viewed millions of times across various social media platforms.
The interview, which was published on YouTube on Friday, was filmed in a Dublin venue owned by the Freemasons. The secretive social club later said they would not have accepted the booking if they had known who would use the space, and that they would now donate the fee to charity.
The video comes after a trip by Carlson to Dublin which also involved meeting with anti-immigrant figures in Dublin, as well as a visit to McGregor’s pub in Walkinstown. The tour appears to be the latest demonstration of links between the American MAGA movement and McGregor, who also recently met US President Donald Trump.
Carlson and McGregor discussed many significant claims during the interview last week.
These included the idea that the Irish government was trying to enact a “genocide” against the Irish people — a claim popular among adherents of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, though in this case it was prompted by a discussion on traffic enforcement.
“The traffic corps of An Garda Síochána is one of the most successful divisions in the Gardaí — in our police force — for convictions,” McGregor told Carlson.
“It has caused untold stress unto the people of Ireland. I wonder the amount of suicides and the amount of lives lost and families destroyed over the stress of the traffic corps institution with — you know, you get caught for driving without tax, or no NCT.”
McGregor would return to this particular claim more forcefully later, saying “lives have been lost due to the stress caused of this branch in An Garda Síochána”.
McGregor gave no sources for this claim and the crisis helpline charity The Samaritans ask that speculation about the cause of suicides be avoided on social and mass media.
In a statement to The Journal, the HSE wrote: “The HSE National Office for Suicide Prevention is not aware of any data or research (nationally or internationally) that indicates a causative link or association between traffic enforcement measures and suicide in Ireland.”
(Help is available for those at risk of suicide. A list of resources is available here).
McGregor’s comments were also condemned by the Gardaí, who were often the targets of McGregor’s ire.
“It’s all a money racket,” McGregor continued. “For minor traffic violations you’re put through the wringer.
“In this day and age — and this is why it’s so infuriating — we’ll keep calm with it, but it’s why people in Ireland are waking up, because everyone has felt it in some shape or form, the stress of having to make sure that you’re above board on this money racket — is what it is. It’s not to keep you safe.”
McGregor was quick to echo claims that Irish people are treated worse than non-citizens — claims that are regularly made in anti-immigrant groups, and regularly debunked.
Similar claims are made throughout Europe, frequently targeting Ukrainian refugees, and often traced back to Kremlin propaganda campaigns.
In particular, McGregor said that traffic violations didn’t apply to non-Irish people.
“In this day and age we’ve got our new visitors to the island who get fully exempt from driving without tax, insurance, NCT, and even on Irish reg plates,” McGregor said. “Free as a bird, right through.”
These claims are misleading and have previously been debunked by The Journal.
All drivers in Ireland have to adhere to the rules of the road and have a valid license and insurance, regardless of where they are from, and all cars registered in Ireland have to follow road worthiness rules and be taxed.
However, “Revenue can grant your vehicle exemption from registering in Ireland if the vehicle is both taxed and registered abroad,” which is the case for some vehicles, e.g some Ukrainian cars may pay tax in Ukraine.
Until a High Court case changed the law in 2021, asylum seekers in Ireland were unable to apply for Irish driver’s licences.
It’s unclear what McGregor’s complaint about Irish registration plates is: cars that use Irish roads are not required to have Irish registration plates, and many foreign registration plates can be seen in Ireland.
McGregor continued: “if something happens to your vehicle, and if you’re a nice friendly visitor, or potential new member of our country, you get your vehicle repaired at a cost to the state. It is just ludicrous, and the people of Ireland are rising up to it.”
McGregor’s statement here is misleading and echoes misleading statements recently expressed online and even mentioned in the Dáil.
It is true that government funds can be used to repair cars. However, this is done through Additional Needs Payments (ANPs), which are open to people with an “exceptional need” that they can show they cannot afford.
It is clear that Carlson interpreted McGregor’s statement in the interview to mean that such payments are only available to non-Irish people.
That is not true: they are available to anyone on a low wage or on a social welfare payment, though are considered on a “case-by-case basis”.
“If they’re shaking you down with the armed police, but allowing foreigners a pass,” Carlson summarises, “if they’re paying to fix foreigners’ cars but not yours, they hate you, and they are trying to kill you.
“It’s an attempted erasure of our people,” McGregor agrees, calling it a “genocide”.
(It is unclear what Carlson means when he calls the Garda Traffic Corps “armed police”).
McGregor himself fell foul of the Garda’s traffic policing unit when he received a two-year ban from driving last summer and a suspended sentence for an “appalling” series of dangerous driving incidents in Dublin in 2022 where he jumped a red light, sped in and out of traffic and almost caused a collision.
“Are you taking the piss?” McGregor asked the garda at the scene, who drove at more than 160km/h in an attempt to catch him.
At the time, McGregor had 20 previous convictions between 2011 and 2019: 17 traffic offences, including three speeding offences, two public order charges, and one for assault causing harm.
Since then, McGregor has also been found liable for sexually assaulting Nikita Hand in 2018, with the jury in the case awarding Hand over €248,000 in damages (McGregor is appealing this ruling).
The full interview on Tucker Carlson’s YouTube account has racked up more than 1,408,863 views at the time of writing. On Carlson’s Facebook, it has 453,000 views.
A clip showing McGregor’s comments on traffic offences posted to TikTok had been viewed an additional 298,700 times.
Tucker Carlson is a former Fox News host who was fired in 2023 amid claims of sexism, a hostile work environment and Rupert Murdoch’s apparent concerns about Carlson’s view that the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress was instigated by the US government.
Since then, he has continued to host a series of shows that spread misinformation, ranging from claims that there is a conspiracy to being about a “great replacement” of the American population to claims that the US government has recovered extraterrestrial spacecraft.
Carlson also claims to have been “physically attacked” in bed by a demon, which left him with “claw” scars on his back (though didn’t wake up his wife or dogs).
Prior to McGregor, Carlson’s post-Fox guests have included a Holocaust denier; then-presidential candidate Donald Trump; and a convicted fraudster who claimed to have taken drugs and had sex with Barack Obama.
“Leadership requires killing people, sorry,” Carlson responded in response to being criticised for not challenging Vladimir Putin, who Carlson was the first Western journalist granted an interview with since the invasion of Ukraine.
The death in a Russian prison of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s chief rival, was announced later that week.
With reporting by Tom Tuite.
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