Combat Veteran Sen. Tammy Duckworth Responds To Tucker Carlson's 'Desperate' Attacks

Sen. Tammy Duckworth lost both legs while serving in Iraq. Tucker Carlson lost his mind when he called her a "coward" for not debating him.
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Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) responded to attacks by racist and Fox News host Tucker Carlson in a New York Times op-ed that discusses what service to America actually means.

Duckworth, a decorated veteran who lost both legs while serving in combat in Iraq, said attacks from “self-serving, insecure men who can’t tell the difference between true patriotism and hateful nationalism will never diminish my love for this country.”

The Thursday op-ed came in response to attacks from Carlson, who falsely claimed on his show that Duckworth wanted statues of George Washington torn down.

“To morons like Tammy Duckworth, [George] Washington is just some old white guy who needs to be erased,” Carlson said earlier this week.

The moron is Carlson, who ― intentionally or not ― seemed to miss what Duckworth actually said, which was that President Donald Trump is more focused on protecting statues than he is on stopping the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed more than 130,000 Americans.

“[Trump’s] priorities are all wrong here,” Duckworth said. “He should be talking about what we’re going to do to overcome this pandemic.”

That didn’t stop Carlson from calling Duckworth “deeply silly and unimpressive” and claiming that she and other Democrats hate America. Duckworth reminded Carlson that he can tell his lies in part because Duckworth and others like her fought for his right to.

“Setting aside the fact that the right wing’s right to lie about me is one of the rights I fought to defend, let me be clear: I don’t want George Washington’s statue to be pulled down any more than I want the Purple Heart that he established to be ripped off my chest. I never said that I did,” she said in her op-ed.

Duckworth said she believes Carlson is using the baseless attacks to distract from the president’s colossal failures.

More from the op-ed:

But what I actually said isn’t the reason Mr. Carlson and Mr. Trump are questioning my patriotism, nor is it why they’re using the same racist insults against me that have been slung my way time and again in years past, though they have never worked on me.

They’re doing it because they’re desperate for America’s attention to be on anything other than Donald Trump’s failure to lead our nation, and because they think that Mr. Trump’s electoral prospects will be better if they can turn us against one another. Their goal isn’t to make — or keep — America great. It’s to keep Mr. Trump in power, whatever the cost.

Read the full New York Times op-ed here.

HuffPost reached out to Carlson to comment on this story.

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