The U.S. Marine Corps is walking back a social media post attacking Fox News host Tucker Carlson over criticisms he made against military leadership last week.
On Thursday, Carlson questioned the Pentagon’s priorities after it announced the creation of flight suits for pregnant women amid escalating tensions between China and the U.S. The II Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) Information Group (IG) responded to Carlson on Friday in a series of since-deleted Twitter posts.
“What it looks like in today’s armed forces @TuckerCarlson. Get right before you get left, boomer,” the II MEF IG posted along with a photo of a female soldier carrying another, according to The Washington Examiner. In another post responding to a critical Twitter user, the unit’s official account said, “come back when you’ve served and been pregnant.”
The U.S. Marine Corps later walked back the posts after taking heat for launching “political attacks” against a civilian and media figure.
“The unit is currently reviewing their internal procedures for social media posts. While the post was intended to show support for women in the military, it was not executed according to the standards of decorum expected on the Marine Corps’ social media platforms,” a spokesperson for the Marines told the Examiner.
On Sunday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) demanded a meeting with the commandant of the Marine Corps over a string of military officials and accounts attempting to “intimidate” Carlson. Cruz sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin condemning the “campaign” against Carlson. The senator said the campaign “has alternated between being ostentatiously childish and simply outrageous.”
“I am deeply troubled that the commitments you made, and the military’s broader obligation to avoid political endorsements or controversy, are being systematically undermined for the sake of leftwing ideology and political expediency,” Cruz told Austin. “The last week has seen the Pentagon mobilize systematic, public attacks against television host Tucker Carlson that in substance tone and political resonance are inexplicably inappropriate.”
Cruz noted that the command senior enlisted leader of the U.S. Space Command, the sergeant major of the Army, and the commanding general of the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence, have all taken part in the attacks on the Fox News host.
“This spectacle risks politicizing the military after several centuries of efforts to keep military officials out of domestic affairs, undermining civil-military relations by having the military take a side in a contentious cultural dispute, and the perception that military leaders are happily weaponizing the institution against political critics of the sitting administration,” Cruz said. “This kind of behavior, while perhaps typical in a military-controlled Third World country, is completely unacceptable in the United States of America.”
“I cannot imagine how … [the] behavior can be explained, and I am deeply concerned about what it portends for the direction that you and [President Joe Biden] intend to move the military,” he added.
Related: Pentagon Furious With Tucker Carlson For Mocking Military’s Gender Obsession