Tammy Duckworth responds to Tucker Carlson’s ‘desperate’ attacks on her

Senator Tammy Duckworth has written an op-ed in response to “desperate” attacks earlier in the week from Fox News host Tucker Carlson and president Donald Trump.

Ms Duckworth, who became a recipient of the Purple Heart after she lost both her legs in a helicopter crash while serving in Iraq, was criticised by Carlson on Monday for comments she made on CNN the day before.

Carlson falsely claimed on Tucker Carlson Tonight, that Ms Duckworth had called for monuments to George Washington to be torn down and said that the senator and other Democratic officials “hate America”.

“In the face of all this, the conclusion can’t be avoided: These people actually hate America,” the host said. “There’s no longer a question about that,” he added.

Responding to Carlson’s comments on Tuesday, the senator tweeted: “Does @TuckerCarlson want to walk a mile in my legs and then tell me whether or not I love America?”

In an op-ed published in the New York Times on Thursday, Ms Duckworth added that Carlson twisted what she said in her interview on CNN, and denied calling for statues to the US’ first president to be removed.

“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 wrote on Thursday.

During the interview on Sunday, Ms Duckworth said that “we should listen to everybody” about the monuments, but referenced the coronavirus pandemic, and added: “I’m more worried about the 130,000 who have lost their lives recently ... than I am about our historical past.”

The president had also waded into the debate earlier in the week, by retweeting a clip of Carlson’s monologue where he criticised Ms Duckworth, according to USA Today.

His campaign later released a statement saying the senator was “using her military service to deflect from her support for the left-wing campaign to villainise America’s founding”.

The senator, who is Thai-American, wrote that the president and Carlson attacked her to deflect from the White House’s widely criticised response to the pandemic.

“It’s better for Mr Trump to have you focused on whether an Asian-American woman is sufficiently American than to have you mourning the 130,000 Americans killed by a virus he claimed would disappear in February,” she wrote.

“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.”

Ms Duckworth added that their comments that suggested she hates the US, will not stop her loving the country.

“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,” she said.

“Or my willingness to sacrifice for it so they don’t have to. These titanium legs don’t buckle.”