Fox News’ Tucker Carlson — the man cheered by white supremacists for repeatedly peddling white nationalist talking points — served up some dog whistle racism on his show Wednesday night with his comments about President Joe Biden’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Carlson simply can’t believe that Jackson — who would make history as the first Black woman to serve on America’s top court if confirmed by the U.S. Senate — really is, as Biden has claimed, one of the “top legal minds in the entire country.”
Let’s cut through the B.S. This has nothing to do with LSAT scores.
Last week, Carlson claimed that Jackson — who served eight years as a federal district judge before being elevated last year to the prestigious U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Washington, D.C. — was not “much of a jurist,” was “simply ignorant of the law” and that her nomination was an effort by Biden to “humiliate and degrade” our nation — turning it into “Rwanda.” (Yes, Carlson actually said “Rwanda.”)
Carlson went further and demanded to see Jackson’s law school admission test scores because he wants his viewers to believe that she’s not qualified to be on the Supreme Court. Carlson even suggested Biden is intentionally shielding Jackson’s LSAT scores from the public: “How did she do on the LSATs? Why wouldn’t you tell us that?” Of course, Carlson never demanded to see the LSAT scores of the three people then-President Donald Trump nominated to the Supreme Court during his term. But then again, those three are white.
Let’s cut through the B.S. This has nothing to do with LSAT scores, which law schools consider in addition to an applicant’s grades. I’m a lawyer, and I can tell you that no one speaks of LSAT scores after their acceptance to law school; nor do those scores indicate how good of a lawyer or judge a law school applicant would be.
This is simply Carlson, like so many other white bigots, trying to diminish Black achievement because such achievement is a threat to the myth of white superiority that he peddles. Carlson wants his viewers to believe that Jackson couldn’t possibly have been admitted to Harvard Law School on her own merit — despite the fact she graduated with honors from there as she had as a Harvard undergraduate.
If that sounds familiar, that’s because it’s exactly the playbook used by Trump, a man also cheered by white supremacists, to undermine then-President Barack Obama’s academic excellence when he demanded to see his school transcript back in 2011. Trump also claimed Obama was a “terrible student,” asking, “How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?”
The implication of Trump’s message was clear: Obama didn’t deserve to go to the two prestigious schools because there’s no way a Black person could’ve been smart enough to achieve that on his own. It didn’t matter that Obama graduated with top honors from Harvard Law School.
Trump’s comments a decade ago were subtle when compared to the remarks of some of today’s GOP leaders.
In addition to embracing the white supremacist view that white people are somehow inherently intellectually superior to other races, there seems to be something else at play here. We have a Republican Party that’s increasingly embracing the white nationalist belief called “replacement theory” that says white people are in danger of being “replaced” by people of color.
Back in 2011, Trump touched on that theme when going after Obama’s academic credentials when he stated he has "friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can't get into Harvard." While we don’t know the race of Trump’s so-called “friends,” the dog whistle message was that his qualified white friends' sons didn’t get into Harvard but an unqualified Black person did.
But Trump’s comments a decade ago were subtle when compared to the remarks of some of today’s GOP leaders following Biden’s January announcement that he would fulfill his campaign promise of picking a Black woman to fill his first opening on the Supreme Court. Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., framed Biden’s pledge as a case of “affirmative racial discrimination” and some type of “quota” hire. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, took it a step further by claiming that Biden’s promise to choose a Black woman to fill the seat sends the message: “If you’re a White guy, tough luck. If you’re a White woman, tough luck. You don’t qualify.’”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., even spoke at a white nationalist conference this past weekend whose leader openly espouses replacement theory. Greene was criticized for it by some GOP leaders and while she incredibly claimed she didn’t know what the group was about, her well-documented history of spewing white nationalist rhetoric and bigotry has been rewarded by the GOP base. In 2021, she raised $7.5 million in campaign contributions, making her the fourth biggest fundraiser in the House GOP that has 213 members. If nothing else, this signals where the passion and energy lie in today’s GOP.
When Biden first announced he would pick a Black woman to fill the open Supreme Court seat, Carlson warned it would lead to “tribal warfare.” By that, he meant tribes based on race pitted against each other. We are already there. We are seeing a GOP that is no longer about policies, but rather focused on protecting the power of its own “white tribe.” And as it feels its tribe is losing control, it’s likely the GOP will become even more desperate and dangerous.
