In an interview, Tucker Carlson admitted: “I lie.”

The Fox News host was speaking to Dave Rubin. The YouTube host and conservative author asked how Carlson felt about CNN hosts Brian Stelter, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon, who Rubin called “clown people”.

Carlson said: “I guess I would ask myself, like, I mean I lie if I’m really cornered or something. I lie. I really try not to. I try never to lie on TV. I just don’t – I don’t like lying. I certainly do it, you know, out of weakness or whatever.

“But to systematically lie like that without asking yourself why am I doing this? So if these people ask themselves, ‘Why am I doing this?’ And they say, ‘Well, I want to protect the system because I really believe in the system.’”

Carlson, who once worked for CNN, accused the CNN anchors of “lying to defend Jeff Bezos … treating Bill Gates like some sort of moral leader” and putting “your boot on the neck of the weakest people”.

Carlson said he had also “put pictures on the screen to hurt weak people” but only “inadvertently”, and always tried to “punch up”, aiming to hurt those more powerful than him.

“People who punch down are the worst,” he said. “They should have no power whatsoever, in my opinion.”

On Fox News on Monday, Carlson returned to a recent theme: vaccine hesitancy and defending Americans who choose to buy fake proof of vaccination.

Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, has said Carlson’s championing of those who buy fake vaccination cards represents “criminal public endangerment” and will “get people killed, including kids”.

Carlson has not said if he is vaccinated. Fox News encourages vaccines among staff.

Amid a surge in cases caused by the infectious Delta virus variant, the vast majority of hospitalisations and deaths in the US are among unvaccinated people. In the US, more than 660,000 people have died of Covid-19.

On Monday night, Carlson also read out a tweet by Nicki Minaj.

The rapper has said she is not vaccinated but intends to research the shot, and has said people should get it.

However, Minaj also claimed on Monday that a “cousin in Trinidad” would not get the shot because his friend did and “became impotent. His testicles became swollen” and his fiancee left him.

Carlson read the tweet on air, and said: “Seems sensible.”