Tucker Carlson should stop pretending he cares about the women and men in uniform
This earned Carlson, who has never served a day in uniform, a well-deserved upbraiding from the Defense Department. There are 232,000 women serving on active duty, constituting 16.5 percent of the total force, and they routinely go into harm’s way. Indeed, recruiting and retaining women is essential to maintaining the U.S. military’s edge over China and other potential adversaries. Carlson’s sexist comments make that harder given how many troops watch Fox News. (It is routinely on in military gyms and chow halls.)
Defense Department spokesman John Kirby pledged that “we absolutely won’t … take personnel advice from a talk show host.” The Pentagon news site carried an article headlined: “Press Secretary Smites Fox Host That Dissed Diversity in U.S. Military.”
Many individual service members echoed Kirby’s outrage. My favorite example was a tweet from a Marine Corps veteran:
Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, brother of whistleblower Alexander Vindman, suggested that Fox News be taken off the American Forces Network and TV sets in military common areas. “This is bad for morale, good order and discipline,” he tweeted.
Carlson can dish out criticism but not take it. He spent the next night whining about how the Defense Department shouldn’t attack him — which he described as declaring “war on a domestic news operation.” (Wonder where he was when President Donald Trump was calling the media the “enemy of the people.”)
Has Carlson finally gone too far by taking on an institution revered by the country? It would be nice to think so. Sen. Joe McCarthy, after all, famously crashed and burned after he accused the U.S. Army of being a hotbed of subversives. “Have you no sense of decency?” demanded the Army’s lawyer, and McCarthy was finished.
Sadly, I don’t see that happening in this instance. The populist right has already made clear that its supposed devotion to the armed forces is entirely transactional: They will claim to be supporting the men and women who keep us safe if by doing so they can score points against the “libs.” But if the armed forces are an obstacle to their ruthless quest for total power, then they have no compunctions about turning on the troops.
Trump shows how the game is played. “I will always protect our great warfighters,” he claimed, yet he routinely insulted them. He accused troops in Iraq of stealing money, denied that John McCain was a war hero because he was captured, allegedly described soldiers who died in combat as “suckers and losers,” and reportedly called senior generals and admirals “a bunch of dopes and babies.”
The worst offenses that Trump committed against the armed forces were to pardon war criminals and to send troops to attack peaceful protesters. Those actions subvert the core professionalism of the military, which sees itself as an apolitical institution that follows the rule of law. Little wonder that public faith in the military eroded under Trump.
Of course, Trump knows nothing of the military or its ethos. He viewed the armed forces as if they were a MAGA militia. “I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad,” Trump threatened his critics in 2019.
Yet there has been no backlash on the right against Trump despite all the ways that he and his followers have abused the armed forces. Likewise, there is no evidence of any right-wing backlash against Carlson for turning the military into collateral damage in the cultural wars.
Instead, right-wing author J.D. Vance, of “Hillbilly Elegy” fame, attacked military leaders for being too “woke” — a ludicrous charge to make against an overwhelmingly conservative officer corps. Expect to see more anti-military sentiment on the right now that the Defense Department is under a Democratic administration. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.) are defending Carlson and attacking the military. Expect to see more anti-military sentiment on the right now that the Defense Department is under a Democratic administration.
Tucker and Trump should stop pretending that they give a damn about the men and women who serve America. All they care about is self-promotion. They will happily sacrifice the troops on the altar of their own ambition — and their followers won’t care.
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