Democratic socialist to Tucker Carlson: ‘You don’t like opinionated women, do you?’

A former surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign late Wednesday accused Fox News host Tucker Carlson of not liking “opinionated women” after the pair clashed in an interview discussing the environment and Sanders’s private jet travel.

 

The verbal volley began after Carlson pointed to a recent report from the Vermont-based watchdog news site VTDigger.org that noted Sanders’s 2018 reelection campaign committee paid nearly $300,000 to a private charter jet company based in New York.

 

Carlson noted that Sanders has been an outspoken advocate for battling climate change, with the senator last month calling it “the single greatest threat facing our planet.”

“It’s not fair for someone who is telling us the planet is being destroyed to live in a way that suggests that he actually believes the planet is [not] being destroyed,” Carlson said to Nomiki Konst, a democratic socialist currently running for public advocate in New York City.

 

“I honestly really don’t get it,” Carlson continued.

 

“So if you are Al Gore and you say nothing is more important than climate change,” he added. “I’m a better person than you are because I care more than you. By the way, I have one of the largest houses in Nashville and I fly private and take a Suburban to the airport, to the FBO [private jet airport]. Sincerely, why is that OK?”

“Individual choices are not going to solve the disaster that we are facing,” Konst replied. “We already have a migration issue. We already have flooding. We already have hurricanes that have hit Puerto Rico, have hit New Orleans, have hit Florida and have displaced so many working people. 

“This is an industry change. We have to cap emissions globally,” she added. “If we don’t cap emissions with big industries and policy, then those individual choices mean nothing.”

“In real life, individual choices matter or else what’s the point of any of this, OK?” Carlson retorted. “Liberals used to say it starts with one person. I guess they don’t anymore because they don’t want to be held to their own standards. But the solutions are always like ordinary working people ought to pay higher gas tax.”

After the back-and-forth became more heated, Carlson noted to Konst that “volume is not the same as an argument.” 

“You don’t like opinionated women, do you?” Konst asked.

“I live with four of them,” Carlson deadpanned, referring to his wife and three daughters. 

“You are pretty loud. My earpiece is blaring right now,” Konst replied shortly before the segment ended.

 

Konst used her appearance on the program, which averaged 2.825 million viewers in November in being one of the top-rated shows on cable, to fundraise for her run for New York City public advocate, the second highest ranking elected office in the city. 

“If you like how I take on Tucker, wait til you see how I take on the corrupt of New York City,” Konst wrote to her nearly 80,000 followers. “Join our fight today. For every $1 we receive $6 with NYC’s matching program.”