Fox News host Tucker Carlson blasted the Biden administration on Thursday night for using the US military to attack his show after he called out controversial things the Pentagon is doing.
“So we’ve got new hairstyles and maternity flight suits. Pregnant women are going to fight our wars. It’s a mockery of the US military,” Carlson said. “While China’s military becomes more masculine … our military needs to become, as Joe Biden says, more feminine. It’s out of control and the Pentagon’s going along with this. Again, this is a mockery of the US military and its core mission, which is winning wars.”
The Biden administration responded by publishing an attack on the Fox News host that was posted on the Department of Defense’s official website.
“Press Secretary Smites Fox Host That Dissed Diversity in US Military,” the headline of the piece stated, which stated that Carlson was perhaps attempting to compensate for something because he might “feel like” he has “something to prove.”
Carlson issued a blistering response to the Biden administration’s attack, stating, “Finding the most effective military pilots or infantry officers or SEAL teams is not [Biden’s] priority.”
“It’s not even close to his priority. Identity politics is Joe Biden’s priority,” Carlson continued. “It’s all that matters.”
WATCH:
TRANSCRIPT:
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Joe Biden was elected as a moderate who was going to stay the course, return this country to normalcy. It turns out Biden is changing the United States faster than any president ever has in American history. Our job on this show is to pay attention to exactly how Joe Biden is changing it. The New York Times isn’t going to tell you, we think you have a right to know. Now, not every change that Joe Biden makes will matter over time, [despite] all the huffing and puffing, a lot things that presidents do are quickly forgotten. Some of the things Joe Biden promises, won’t happen. Others are just symbolic ring kissing, designed to appease the interest groups that got him elected. But some of Biden’s changes are very real, and they matter very much. Nothing matters more than what Joe Biden does to our U.S. military. Our military is the last functional institution of any size in this country. It’s the last institution most people trust and respect. It is by far the most important. A weak military means no country. Period. So on Monday, when we start Joe Biden pledge to bring in, quote, ‘intensity of purpose and mission to really change the culture and habits of the US military,’ we paid attention to it. Here’s what Biden said.
[START VIDEO]
JOE BIDEN: Some of its relatively straightforward work, where we’re making good progress, designing body armor that fits women properly, tailoring combat uniforms for women, creating maternity flight suits, updating, updating requirements for their hairstyles…
[END VIDEO]
CARLSON: ‘Creating maternity flight suits,’ maybe those suits had been around for a while, we’d never heard of them. But here was the president of the United States promoting them at a press conference. And that phrase stuck out, not because we have some hateful bias against pregnant women flying military jets, we’re pro pregnancy, as we often say, we’re also open minded. Maybe pregnant women make the best pilots. The Department of Defense measures everything. So there’s got to be extensive research on this question. If the Pentagon can show that pregnant pilots are the best, we will be the first to demand an entire Air Force of pregnant pilots. The problem is we’re pretty confident that Joe Biden hasn’t asked to see those numbers. We bet money that Joe Biden never even thought to ask. The rest of us depend on the U.S. military to protect our families and protect the country itself. But Joe Biden doesn’t see it that way. Finding the most effective military pilots or infantry officers or SEAL teams is not his priority. It’s not even close to his priority. Identity politics is Joe Biden’s priority. It’s all that matters. You see this attitude throughout the U.S. government as well as in the corporate world, key positions filled on the basis of physical appearance, without any reference to ability or experience. Now you can get by with that if you’re Citibank, which now cares more about wokeness than about banking. They can explain the result to their shareholders 10 years from now. But it is not fine, if your only job is to protect the United States from people who want to kill the rest of us. That is the worst kind of dereliction of duty. Yet it’s happening right now on an enormous scale. Just this week, the Biden administration announced that the Pentagon will pay for gender reassignment surgery for active duty personnel. How do sex changes in the military make this country safer? That’s not a trick question. It’s not another volley in the culture war. It’s the only question that matters, literally the only question that matters. But no one bothered to ask it, probably because no one can remember why the US military exists. Here’s a reminder, the US military exists to fight and win wars. That’s its only purpose. The US military is not an NGO, it is not a vehicle for achieving equity, it’s not a social experiment, it’s definitely not an employment agency. Nobody has a God given right to work in the military, no one does, and then includes all of us. If you ever hear this show whine that Delta Force is discriminating against punchy 51 year old cable news hosts, you’ll know that we have lost the thread because it’s not about us. It’s about the country. Making people feel valued and included is a good thing, it is not the point of the US military. It cannot be the point of the US military or else we’re done. Now that used to be obvious, the military was the purest meritocracy that we had. If you get them in a go back and listen to some of the speeches that Colin Powell used to give about his experience in the U.S. Army. The military is willing to judge Colin Powell purely on his talents, something that few would do at the time. Powell was smart and capable. And for that reason, in the end, he became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was justly proud of that and so was the country he served. Would Colin Powell’s story be possible today? No, it wouldn’t. Joe Biden is put a man called Lloyd Austin in charge of the Pentagon. Biden plucked Austin from the cynical world of private equity, but you’re not supposed to notice that, you’re supposed to notice only that Lloyd Austin is black. The real headline, however, is that Lloyd Austin is the second defense secretary in a row to have been on the payroll of Raytheon, the massive defense contractor. If you saw something like that happen in a Central American country, you would call it corruption and you would be right. For centuries our military has been self consciously nonpartisan, in a democracy it has to be that way, the military has to be nonpartisan. No country can survive if its Armed Forces become a tool of a specific political party. We know that because it happens all the time all over the world and the consequences are always horrifying. It has never happened here. But Lloyd Austin is openly political. In his first days on the job Austin made the entire armed services submit to a kind of political purity test. Anyone who had views that Lloyd Austin found quote, ‘extreme,’ had to leave. The rest of us watched as this happened, we saw it. Once again, no one said anything. The left approved, the right felt hamstrung because they support the troops. Of course, if you support the troops, you probably should speak up when they’re being abused as they were. Then Lloyd Austin set about accelerating poisonous trends already in progress at the Pentagon, worst of these is the use of irrelevant criteria in hiring and promotion. In order to meet the demands of various Democratic interest groups, the Pentagon has dramatically lowered standards in the services. Now spokesmen officially denied this, but it is true, ask anyone who works there. If you press the spokesman, they’ll tell you that it’s not really a big deal, because traditional standards don’t really measure anything. Well, then why have them in the first place? Why have standards at all? It doesn’t make sense. They’re lying. And they’re lying because they have to lie. Politicians have demanded it. Now, if you dare to point any of this out, they become hysterical. And they become hysterical because they can’t defend their own policies. When people can’t defend what they’ve done, they yell. They can’t even explain what those policies are, at least in public. So they attack. Your politicians like Tammy Duckworth, say that it’s unpatriotic to question the Pentagon. Unless you have served in the military yourself. You haven’t earned that right. Really? Can only cops talk about police brutality? If you haven’t been elected to office, are you allowed to criticize Congress? They’re not making a real argument. They’re trying to silence dissent. Not playing along. Sorry. Every American citizen has a right, maybe an obligation, to know what the military they pay for is doing because our lives may depend on it. Today, the Department of Defense launched a large and coordinated public relations offensive against the show. Pentagon brass issued hostile statements, people in uniform sent out videos on social media. The DOD even issued a news release attacking us. ‘Press Secretary Smites Fox News Host,’ smites, like we’re a hostile foreign power. We suspect this is one war they might actually win, they’ve got a manpower advantage. We could pull you a lot of tape from this today. It took up most of their day and we could Marvel over it. Since when does the Pentagon declare war on a domestic news operation? Can’t remember that ever happening. But we’re not going to do that, we’re gonna pass, because this is bigger than a feud with some flak at the Pentagon. This is genuinely worrisome. The Department of Defense has never been more aggressively or openly political. Tonight, they’re 2,500 American troops stationed in Afghanistan and they remain there to prevent the fall of Kabul to extremists. At the same time, there are 5,000 troops in our own capital tonight, also as protection against extremists, meaning people who voted for the losing candidate in the last election. Judging by those numbers, the Pentagon is now twice as focused on controlling our own citizens as it is and controlling the Taliban. Meanwhile, as Lloyd Austin hyperventilates about white supremacy, there are real threats out there, and the biggest ones continue to be ignored. Those threats are not Syria, they’re not suburban Virginia. They’re not domestic extremism, at least right now. The main threat that we face, and everyone who was honest knows this, is the government of China. China is ascendant, their economy will soon outpace ours. China now has the largest navy on the planet. Why do they have that? Why did they feel the need to build it? Does that have potential consequences for us? Yes. If China moved against Taiwan, how exactly would we respond? More likely, if the Chinese decided to close international shipping lanes, it would cripple our economy. If they decided to shut down our internet, it would bring our life to a halt. If it is decided to occupy Malaysia, that would be a grave concern to the world. If any of these things happened or a hundred other things that might happen, what exactly would our Pentagon do about it? Can the U.S. military still win a real war? Those are the questions that matter. Those are the only questions that matter, which may be why Joe Biden wants to talk about maternity flight suits.