Fox News host Tucker Carlson reflected on the life of Queen Elizabeth II and the legacy of the British Empire Thursday evening.

“It’s not easy to maintain your dignity while living in the public eye, most of us could not pull it off for an afternoon. Queen Elizabeth did it for more than 70 years,” Carlson said. “‘I want to ask you all,’ she wrote shortly before her coronation in 1953, ‘whatever your religion may be, to pray for me on that day. To pray that God may give me wisdom and strength to carry out the solemn promises I shall be making, and that I may faithfully serve Him and you all the days of my life.’ For the most part, she did just that.”

Queen Elizabeth II died Thursday at the age of 96, having reigned over the United Kingdom for 70 years. Her husband of 73 years, Prince Phillip, passed away in 2021 at the age of 99.

“It’s hard to believe now, but Britain was not always a regional banking center/refugee camp, it was a real place with a history and a language and a culture and a genuinely remarkable people,” Carlson said. “A country in the north Atlantic the size of Alabama that somehow took over the world and ruled it with decency unmatched by any empire in human history. The British Empire was not perfect, but it was far more humane than any other ever. It’s gone now, barely even remembered. Queen Elizabeth II was the the last living link to a truly Great Britain.”

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“Today on social media, the usual ghouls celebrated her death. ‘May her pain be excruciating,’ a professor wrote on Twitter, may she die in agony,” Carlson continued, showing a tweet from Professor Uju Anya of Carnegie Mellon University. “Know-nothings in the media, including a columnist at The Atlantic and a couple of employees at NBC news, seconded that thought. The British Empire was evil, they wrote, apparently totally unaware of what came after.”

Carlson then described some of the post-colonial regimes that emerged after British rule ended.

“How for example did Africa fare after the British left?” Carlson asked. “Let’s see, Uganda got Idi Amin, who was a cannibal. Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and then became poorest country on the planet under the racist lunatic Robert Mugabe. As of tonight, South Africa is still being run into the ground by an incompetent kleptocrat called Cyril Ramaphosa. So it’s hard to see any of that is an improvement, because it’s not an improvement, sorry Atlantic magazine.”

“The British did give the world the Magna Carta, habeas corpus, free speech. They helped end the transatlantic slave trade as well as the ritual murder of widows in India. The British Empire spread protestant Christianity to the entire world. It published some of the greatest literature ever written and produced the finest manufactured goods ever made anywhere, at any time, including now,” Carlson said. “It was an impressive place run by impressive people. We will see many empires going forward, but we will never see one so benign.”