A novel Omicron strain of the coronavirus has started to tear through the United States, but on Friday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson and right-wing radio pundit Jesse Kelly focused on scoffing at women selflessly serving in the United States military.
The segment lifted off with Carlson taking a swing at remarks made by Christopher Grady, who was confirmed on Friday by the U.S. Senate to the post of Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Fox News host played a clip from the hearing in which Grady expressed support for the idea of “understanding the ecosystem” pertaining to the role of the military’s “gender adviser.”
Kelly, best known for making incendiary and sexist remarks on the network, then stepped up to the plate to go on (yet again) another sexist tirade.
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Carlson asked Kelly: “Do you think the key to remaining competitive with the Chinese military is more gender advisers?”
“Oh, there’s no question, Tucker,” the C-list pundit snarked. “I mean, China right now, and Russia, they’re both testing hypersonic missiles that can turn New York City to ash. Russia is actually developing and has developed satellites that can push our satellites out of orbit and cripple our military. Our military, though, they're focused on the important things. We want to focus on climate change, and we definitely have to make sure there are enough tampons in the restrooms at the Pentagon.”
The Fox News host, who has never served in the military and apparently doesn’t understand the concept of pursuing multiple policies at once, seemingly agreed with the degrading remarks about women who deploy to warzones.
“That’s kind of what they’re saying,” Carlson said. “There’s a psychological term for this, and it escapes my memory at the moment, where there’s a massive real threat that you can't deal with, so you scurry off and deal with imaginary threats to make yourself feel in control. That kind of feels like what we're watching.”
But then, Kelly took it a step farther and said that the U.S. military should not be “woman-friendly” or “gay-friendly.”
“We don’t need a military that’s woman-friendly. We don’t need a military that’s gay-friendly, with all due respect to the Air Force. We need a military that’s flat-out hostile. We need a military full of Type-A men who want to sit on a throne of Chinese skulls, but we don’t have that now. We can’t even get women off of naval vessels,” he said. “That should be step one, but most of them are already pregnant anyway.”
According to a 2020 report from the military publication Stars and Stripes, the percentage of women serving in the military year on year has seen minuscule partial percentage upticks. Yet there remain countless reasons why women leave the ranks, including “problems they perceived within the military's organizational culture such a lack of female mentors.”
