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What Tucker Said About Biden’s SCOTUS Nominee Has Sparked a Media Firestorm

The mainstream media was already is a tizzy about conservatives’ treatment of Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee — and then Fox News host Tucker Carlson weighed in Tuesday.

SO WHAT

Did Carlson go too far this time?

WHAT TUCKER SAID

Carlson said on his show Tuesday that while Jackson – who is vying to be the first black woman to sit on the Supreme Court – is “tanner than Joe Biden,” her political views are no different than those of “your average garden variety white liberal.”

“You’re getting yet another Democratic Party robot with the same rigid and totally predictable views as your average professional class white liberal,” Carlson said following Day 2 of Jackson’s confirmation hearings.

  • Carlson argued Jackson was not representative of the black American experience, contrasting her relatively privileged upbringing with black conservative Justice Clarence Thomas’ childhood of rural poverty in Georgia.
  • “If you picked a rap star off the street, that person’s views would more likely be closer to the views of the average American than the views of this woman, I would argue,” Carlson later quipped.
  • At another point in the show, Carlson repeated his call to see Jackson’s LSAT scores, saying: “You’re not allowed to ask because asking is racism.”

HOW PEOPLE REACTED

For many in the media, Carlson’s comments were the ultimate example of what they saw as the right’s hatefulness toward Jackson.

  • Talking Points Memo’s Cristina Cabrera reported that the segment, which was flagged by Media Matters, featured more than one “helping of racism.”
  • “Why is Tucker Carlson again demanding to see [Jackson’s] LSAT scores?” tweeted MSNBC contributor Dean Obeidallah. “Same reason Trump demanded Obama’s school records. White supremacists are outraged at Black excellence bc it threatens the myth of white superiority.”
  • “I did NOT have Tucker thinking Ketanji Brown Jackson wasn’t BLACK ENOUGH on my confirmation hearing bingo board,” said liberal comedian Jay Jurden in a tweet.

Before Carlson’s show aired, The New York Times published an analysis that cast Republican senators’ interrogation of Jackson – about her views and record on issues like critical race theory, child pornography, terrorism and transgenderism – as motivated by racism and partisan paranoia.

  • Of the questioning by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the Times reporters wrote: “The attack, the most dramatic of several launched from inside and outside the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing room, contained barely coded appeals to racism and clear nods to the fringes of the conservative world.”

OK, BUT

While conservatives’ objections to progressive politics and jurisprudence are hardly new, the media’s concern about civility during Supreme Court confirmation hearings has been less consistent.

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