Friday evening, Teen Vogue writer Lauren Duca took on Tucker Carlson over Ivanka Trump. It seemed like Carlson was looking for a liberal to blame for Trump's confrontation with an airline passenger. Unfortunately, he chose the wrong person in Duca.
The big "news" on that slow news day, the Friday before Christmas Eve, was the fact that a Jet Blue passenger was kicked off a plane for "making angry remarks" at Trump. Reuters reported:
A JetBlue airline passenger, who media outlets and a witness described as making angry remarks at the sight of Ivanka Trump on his flight, was removed from the plane on Thursday by the airline.
JetBlue Airways Corp (JBLU.O) confirmed in a statement that a passenger had been removed from a flight set to depart from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, bound for San Francisco, but provided no other information about the incident.
Another passenger on the flight, Marc Scheff, said that, when the man saw U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka, he "did a double take and said 'Oh my God. This is a nightmare!'"
According to Reuters, the passenger was never identified. The passenger's husband tweeted, then deleted his tweet, "My husband chasing them down to harass them. #banalityofevil."
I'll bet that Fox was hoping to find a liberal to defend the passenger's conduct but in this case the producer either didn't know that being critical of Ivanka is not the same thing as condoning rude behavior or he or she thought that any Ivanka critic was as good as another for playing the foil to Carlson or he or she was so desperate for a foil that any well-spoken Ivanka critic available that almost-holiday Friday evening would have to do.
In Carlson's introduction, he said that Duca thought the outburst was "justified." Apparently, he based that conclusion on the fact that Duca had tweeted about Ivanka, "Don't let her off the hook because she looks like she smells good."
Duca quickly clarified that she didn't think "anybody should be enduring confrontations in the air be it Ivanka Trump with her children or just any other human being." Duca added that she thought it "significant" that Trump was with her children and deserved a certain level of decorum as a mother. "At the same time," Duca continued, "she does have an incredibly powerful position and she's not just a mother. She's a powerful, powerful woman who's connected very closely to the president-elect not just as his daughter but in many ways as a business confidante, an advisor." Therefore, Duca argued, it's not clear what "protections" of a private citizen should be afforded to her.
From there, the interview went downhill. Carlson insisted that Duca's tweets "suggested" she agreed with the angry airline passenger because she criticized Trump at the time she was in the news. When that tack didn't work, he clearly cast about for other ways to demean Duca. But she wasn't having any of it. She called out his attempts to talk over her and ignore the substance of her comments as "incredibly unprofessional."
When Carlson pretended he was just "asking a simple question," Duca shot back, "You're not. You're actually being a partisan hack who’s just attacking me ad nauseam and not even allowing me to speak.”
What do you think of this confrontation? I agree Carlson was being a dick to Duca but I'm not so sure he lost the exchange.
Crossposted at Newshounds.us
