Pentagon Grapples With How To Defend Military Women From Tucker Carlson’s Insults
Army Secretary Christine Wormuth on Friday urged military leaders to “stand up for women,” amid a heated Defense Department controversy over how to respond to Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson’s vicious criticism of female soldiers.
A heated debate was sparked after Major General Patrick Donahoe was recently berated by the Army and had his retirement suspended for defending female soldiers, with one of his tweets last year challenging Carlson.
Retired Colonel Yevgeny Vindman — the twin brother of retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified at Donald Trump’s first impeachment inquiry during his presidency — freaked out last month in the treatment of Donahoe by an army intimidated by the political right for “standing up to Fox/Tucky.”
The Pentagon and the Army “are lost. They fear the law,” Yevgeny Vindman tweeted. “They’re losing their moral compass and service members are going to vote with their feet.”
Carlson has repeatedly lashed out at women in the military with misogynist slurs, denigrating the increasingly “female” US armed forces – and hailing the brutal “male” militaries of Russia and China. Carlson never served in the military.
Wormuth warned at a conference earlier this week that army leaders must “stay out of the culture wars” — and out of politics.
“We have to have… broad appeal,” she warned. “When only 9% of children are interested in serving in the military, ‘we need to make sure we don’t alienate a large segment of the American public from the army,'” Wormuth added.
But on Friday, she clarified her comments amid angry backlash.
“To be clear, I expect @USArmy leaders to stand up for women – and all soldiers – who are being inappropriately targeted or disrespected.” she tweeted.
she added another tweet: “Use good judgment online. Stay professional.”
Several senior military leaders have reacted angrily to Carlson’s insults – without naming him – and made statements in support of women in the armed forces.
Donahoe named Carlson in a tame reply in March 2021, saying the right-wing Fox host “couldn’t be more wrong” with his insults against women in the military.
At that point, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) fired off a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin accusing Donahoe and other military leaders of partisanship in standing up for soldiers and other military personnel.
A report by the Army’s Office of the Inspector General on the matter, obtained by the website Task & Purpose last week, says Donahoe’s post “while possibly admirable” “brought the Army a measurable amount of negative publicity.”
A headline in a Washington Post opinion column earlier this month read, “Why is the Army Punishing a General for Calling Out MAGA Lies?”
The military “rightly seeks to stay out of politics, but that commendable instinct can lead it to run from controversy even as it must cede the information battlefield to the far-right trying to undermine American democracy,” warned the writer Max Boot.
Donahoe’s “only offense was taking social media to champion the very values that the Army claims to stand for,” Boot added.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.