Candace Owens claims USA Today's designation of Adm. Rachel Levine as a “Woman of the Year” points to a government “Marxist” plot to take down “the nuclear family”
Owens and Fox host Tucker Carlson were among the right-wing media personalities lobbing anti-trans attacks at Levine, the assistant secretary for health, for the USA Today honor
Written by Mia Gingerich
Published
On Tuesday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson and guest Candace Owens of The Daily Wire attacked USA Today’s recent selection of Adm. Rachel Levine as one of a dozen women recognized as part of its Women of the Year program. During the Tucker Carlson Tonight segment, just one of a host of right-wing attacks against Levine over the recognition, Carlson and Owens consistently misgendered Levine and deployed hateful anti-trans rhetoric, furthering their record of attacking both Levine and trans people broadly.
Levine was honored by the paper for her role in helping to fight the COVID-19 pandemic as assistant secretary for health. She is both the highest-ranking transgender official in the U.S. and the country’s first woman four-star officer, serving as an admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.The division of the Department of Health and Human Services is composed of health professionals who address public health crises through treatment and research, a role that has been instrumental during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beyond discussing the pandemic, Levine touched on topics including body image challenges and the critical roles women have played in effecting positive social change. She was also asked if she had any advice for trans people, responding that it was important “to be true to yourself.”
Levine has long been at the receiving end of transphobic attacks, facing misgendering and other public harassment for her identity while serving as health secretary of Pennsylvania under Gov. Tom Wolf.
Carlson opened Tuesday’s segment by repeating lies about Levine’s record in Pennsylvania, saying she “forced nursing homes to take COVID-positive patients even as Levine snuck Levine's mother into a private facility.” In reality, the steps she took to readmit previously positive-testing patients followed federal guidance, and Levine’s mother personally chose to leave the home she was living in, which was not even under Levine’s supervision.
Adding to his history of denying the qualifications of trans women, Carlson called Levine a “fake admiral,” even though her division is a uniformed service subject to the same laws that apply to all branches of the military and whose members earn the same benefits as any military veteran. Levine currently serves as professor of pediatrics and psychology at Penn State University and graduated from Harvard College and Tulane University School of Medicine.
Carlson’s guest Candace Owens joined in on attacking Levine, claiming during her appearance that “we are actually erasing women,” and bashing trans athletes, asserting, “Now you can just throw on a wig and say, ‘Actually, I'm a woman, too’ and you can crush all of their records.” The Daily Wire host also charged Hillary Clinton, who last sought elected office six years ago, with being “quiet on [the] topic” of “men taking the spots of women,” which Owens characterized as an “existential crisis.” (Trans people represent just over 1% of the U.S. population, and Levine was one of 12 women given the USA Today title and one of 59 total women honored by the program this year.)
Owens further escalated rhetoric into conspiracy theories, speculating that Levine’s recognition by a newspaper “gets back to Marxist ideology. …It’s always about disrupting the family unit. The government gains more power when people are confused, right? If you don’t know whether you’re a woman or a man, you’re not going to have a functional nuclear family unit, right? Instead you’re going to be dysfunctional, and dysfunctional people tend to rely upon the government. That’s what is happening right now. That’s what you are seeing this push for.”
Citation From the March 15, 2022, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Well, U.S.A. Today, America's newspaper, just announced its ‘Women of the Year’. According to the newspaper that award is a "Recognition of women across the country who have made a significant impact." Okay, but here's the irony. In this ‘Women of the Year’ competition, we saw a major win for the patriarchy. A biological man called Rachel Levine is at the very top of the list. Now, Levine is a former health official in the state of Pennsylvania who forced nursing homes to take COVID positive patients, even as Levine snuck Levine's mother into a private facility. Now Levine is a fake admiral and, we're told, a woman. Candace Owens is a woman so we thought she could assess. She is the host of Candace and we're happy to have her join us tonight. Candace Owens, ‘Woman of the Year,’ Rachel Levine. Do you feel honored to have this new addition to the sisterhood or do you have other feelings?
CANDACE OWENS (GUEST): What's a woman, Tucker? I'm confused. I don't know what a woman is anymore. Look, this is, it's funny and it is also pointedly ridiculous and it kind of gets back to what I always say, which is that with progressives, they’re always so progressive that they are actually just regressive, right? We saw this in terms of race. We were once the country worth aspiring towards, not being able to judge each other by the color of our skin. Now we basically say, no, we have to only judge each other exclusively by the color of our skin. Same thing in the category of feminism, right? Early feminism, we were trying to create a space for women that was separate from men. We wanted women's sports. We wanted women to be able to compete differently. We have women that train from the time that they are kids all the way up through college, trying to compete at the level to say against other women. Well, now you can just throw on a wig and say, ‘actually, I'm a woman, too’ and you can crush all of their records because it's so progressive it’s actually regressive. We're actually erasing women, and sadly, it was the feminists that got behind this early on. They didn't have the courage to say ‘no, actually, that's a man’ that we're looking at and feminists should be fighting this tooth and nail.
By the way, where is Hillary Clinton? I don't want her perspective on Russia and Ukraine. I want to hear her perspective on this category. I want to hear her perspective on the person who ran on, ‘oh, my gosh, women are so oppressed, and I'm a woman and vote for me because I'm a woman’, she seems suspiciously quiet on this topic, doesn't want to really touch this topic about men taking the spots of women, something that is actually representing an existential crisis for these young women who I said earlier, are competing in these categories. So it's ridiculous.
Bigger question, Tucker, why are they doing this? You always have to ask with the left because it's always something Machiavellian and it gets back to Marxist ideology over and over again. It's always about disrupting the family unit. The government gains more power when people are confused, right? If you don't know whether you're a woman or a man, you're not going to have a functional nuclear family unit, right? Instead, you're going to be dysfunctional and dysfunctional people tend to rely upon the government. That's what's happening right now. That's what you're seeing this push for.
CARLSON: I mean, just — I've asked this so many times, but I still don't know the answer. If Rachel Levine can declare ‘I'm a woman’ then why can't I declare I'm Samoan and demand that you respect me? Is it because I don't have the Human Rights Campaign backing me up? Like what's the honest answer? If we can be whatever we want to be because we wished it, why can't I be whatever I want to be?
OWENS: Well, I think we need to turn around and Rachel Dolezal is owed an apology. Who cares if she was born white? Who cares if she was tinting her skin color? She felt on the inside that she was a Black woman and I feel it's absolutely ridiculous to state that a woman can be a man, a man can be a woman? Well, why aren't you Black, Tucker? And why aren't I White? Why can't we just pick our races as well? It's that ridiculous. And that, by the way, is a question that trans people never want to answer. Can you just pick your race? They go, ‘oh no, of course you can't pick your race’. Of course you can't pick your race and of course you can't pick your gender. You're born the way that you are, but what we're talking about, Tucker, of course, is reality and the left doesn't work in reality.
CARLSON: I mean, of course. I mean, and by the way, racism, much shallower category than gender. I mean, the sex differences are much deeper than racial differences. So like if you can change your sex — whatever, it's too crazy, and thank you for not playing along. I appreciate it.
Carlson’s show joins a slew of segments and articles attacking Rachel Levine following USA Today’s selection:
- The Washington Examiner published an op-ed from Christopher Tremoglie headlined “Male doctor wins ‘Woman of the Year' award” that misgendered and deadnamed Levine and asked, “What has Levine has done to help the nation, other than be among those responsible for a record-breaking loss of life?”
- Newsmax host Rob Schmitt targeted Levine, saying, “So why is Rachel Levine so special? Well, solely because she's not a woman,” before repeating the previously mentioned lies about her time serving in Pennsylvania.
- An article for The Blaze misgendered Levine and said USA Today’s selection was “a distinction that flies in the face of biological reality.”
- An article for The Christian Post, a right-wing evangelical newspaper, both misgendered and deadnamed Levine before engaging in a long anti-trans screed that targeted trans swimmer Lia Thomas and quoted anti-trans author Abigail Shrier.
- Tim Young, columnist for The Washington Times, tweeted that Levine was selected by USA Today “for literally just showing up to work in a dress,” adding, “Name ANY other reason ‘she"’ would earn this award.”
- Right-wing podcaster Steven Crowder, a figure with a prolific history of transphobia, took a similar route as Young, tweeting, “Congratulations, brave and beautiful, former-male Admiral Rachel Levine, for being one of USA Today's ‘Women of the Year’ just for wearing a dress.”
Levine has a long history of public service as a medical professional. In addition to treating adolescent patients as a pediatric physician at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York City, she helped to address Pennsylvania’s opioid crisis by issuing a standing order for the anti-overdose drug Naloxone, a measure that likely saved the lives of thousands in the state.