Fox News host Tucker Carlson obsessed over Jill Biden’s doctorate in education for the third night in a row on Wednesday, this time devoting roughly ten minutes to mocking her dissertation while claiming the incoming first lady is “borderline illiterate.”
In case you missed it, a Wall Street Journal writer took issue with Mrs. Biden—whom he addressed as “kiddo”—using the title “Dr.” in front of her name, saying it “sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic” because it was just in education and not in medicine.
The article sparked immediate outrage, with critics accusing the writer Joseph Epstein of rank misogyny and sexism. At the same time, Epstein found defenders in right-wing media, especially from Carlson, who celebrated the piece on Monday night while snarking that Biden has the “same degree as Dr. Bill Cosby.”
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“Jill Biden is not a doctor, no,” he added. “Maybe in the same sense Dr. Pepper is.”
After targeting Biden once again on Tuesday night, Carlson made it a trifecta on Wednesday evening by trashing the soon-to-be first lady’s doctoral dissertation and trying to smear her as someone who “can’t write.”
Spending a few minutes joking about how Biden’s “not a healer” and merely has “an education degree from some school in Delaware,” Carlson—whom Fox News lawyers have successfully argued shouldn’t be taken seriously—then pivoted to questioning Biden’s intelligence.
“We read her dissertation this week,” he declared, adding: “Dr. Jill needs reading glasses, either that, or she’s borderline illiterate. There are typos everywhere, including in the first graph of the introduction. Dr. Jill can’t write, she can’t really think clearly, either.”
“Part of the dissertation seems to be written in a foreign language using English words,” Carlson continued. “They’re essentially pure nonsense like pig Latin or dogs barking. The whole thing is incredibly embarrassing. And not simply to poor illiterate Jill Biden, but to the college that considered this scholarship.”
The conservative Fox News host was just getting started, ramping up his insults by saying that Biden’s “doctoral dissertation was our national shame.”
Obviously aware that he would be accused of misogyny over his relentless and obsessive attacks on the incoming first lady, Carlson insisted that this had nothing to do with Biden’s sex.
“They’re telling you that no one would ever call a man dumb. Okay, well, that’s wrong. We call Dr. Jill’s husband dumb all the time,” he gleefully exclaimed. “In fact, we’re going to go full feminist here and admit that Dr. Jill is a lot smarter than the man she married.”
“Not that it’s saying much,” the right-wing Fox star added. “Joe Biden never wrote a dissertation, even on community colleges. The only thing Joe Biden has written recently are reminder notes to himself to wear matching socks. So it’s not a sexism thing.”
It may come as a surprise to some that Carlson’s outrage over Biden’s use of the “Dr.” honorific is selective. The Fox host has repeatedly bestowed the “doctor” title on Sebastian Gorka, whose doctorate in political science has been questioned in the past. He’s also addressed several other political scientists as “Dr.” on his program.
