Earlier in the week, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), frustrated at the relative lack of Asian-Americans in senior positions in the Biden administration, threatened to vote down non-diverse nominees until she got an assurance of better representation in the executive branch. Ultimately, President Joe Biden promised her he would address the problem, and she dropped her objection.
But to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson — who perpetually sees any attempt to center people of color as an attack on America — this whole episode was something far more sinister. It was, in his view, a plot to oppress white people, as evil as the white supremacist terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan.
“Robert Byrd was the Tammy Duckworth of his day,” said Carlson. “Quote, ‘I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side,’ Byrd wrote, amazingly. ‘Rather, I should die a thousand times and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt, never to rise again, than to see this beloved land be degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.’ That’s real. Robert Byrd wrote that. At the time he did write it, Robert Byrd was working as a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan, which was very much the Yale University of the time, a source of so much poison in our society.”
Republicans have commonly invoked Byrd, who went on to become a Democratic senator in senior leadership, to absolve themselves of their modern support for racially discriminatory policies, although it is worth noting that Byrd went on to renounce his segregationist past, supported Black voting rights, and died with honors from the NAACP.
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