Fox News host Tucker Carlson called Democratic Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth “a fraud” and “a callous hack” after she reportedly refused to appear on his show without an apology for Carlson’s previous criticism of her.
The senator apparently objected to a segment on Carlson’s show in which the host criticized Duckworth for savaging President Donald Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech as a tribute to “dead traitors” and suggesting it was time to “listen to the conversation” about taking down statues of President George Washington.
“We played that for you last night and we noted how grotesque it was,” Carlson said about Duckworth’s seeming willingness to remove Washington’s statues. “Only someone who hates the country would suggest ripping down monuments to its founder,” he said. (RELATED: New York Times Ripped For Describing Trump’s Mount Rushmore Speech As ‘Dark And Divisive’)
Carlson noted that Duckworth’s did not deny his criticizing but instead “questioned our right to criticize her at all since she was once injured while serving in the Illinois National Guard. That’s what passes for an argument in modern identity politics: they don’t address the points that you make; they question your right to make them at all.”
The Fox News host pointed out that, like Duckworth, Washington “also served in the military … George Washington paid his dues. He was as we might say today a combat veteran … [and] was a genuinely great man,” but to Duckworth, Carlson argued, “Washington was just some old white guy who needs to be erased.”
He invited Duckworth to debate the issue on show but was informed by her office that “before even considering our request, we must first issue a public apology for criticizing Tammy Duckworth.” Carlson described Duckworth as someone who “is too afraid to defend her own statements on a cable TV show: what a coward.” (RELATED: Leo Terrell: ‘Embarrassed To Be A Democratic’ After DNC Plays ‘Race Card’ With Mount Rushmore)
U.S. presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln are sculpted on Mount Rushmore National Memorial in the Black Hills region of South Dakota, U.S. in this U.S. National Park Service photo taken on April 12, 2013. Courtesy NPS/Handout via REUTERS
“Tammy Duckworth is also a fraud,” Carlson insisted, recalling how the lawmaker refused to investigate “the widespread mistreatment of sick veterans” at a Veterans Affairs hospital and ignored whistleblowers.
“This is the person lecturing the rest of us about her moral authority as a veteran. Spare us. Tammy Duckworth is a callous hack who ignored the suffering of actual veterans when it actually mattered. She has no moral authority, she is just a politician like the rest of them,” Carlson said, asking, “How can you lead a country that you despise?