Tucker Carlson rebuked two GOP senators who have been trying to get Juneteenth recognized as a federal holiday instead of Columbus Day.
The Fox News prime-time host condemned Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and James Lankford of Oklahoma on his show Wednesday night for giving in to the “hysteria,” which he described as “likely just another way to humiliate and demoralize Americans.”
The senators “want to delete it from the national calendar and replace it with Juneteenth. This is a big change. Americans have celebrated Columbus Day as long as we have had a country, since 1792. Columbus Day is a celebration of the nation itself. That’s why it’s a national holiday,” Carlson said.
“Juneteenth commemorates the freeing of the American slaves. Emancipation is one of the great moments in America’s history. It’s why we consider Abraham Lincoln a hero. But paradoxically, and this is odd, the people who are pushing Juneteenth on the country do not consider Abraham Lincoln a hero. They are pulling down the statues along with Columbus’s. Confused? That’s the nature of hysteria outbreak,” he added.
The host also claimed that “it may not be long before” Johnson and Lankford support tearing down statues of former President George Washington. He predicted that other holidays “they” will be “canceling” include the Fourth of July and Presidents’ Day.
Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day or Black Independence Day, is recognized as a holiday in 47 states and the District of Columbia on June 19. The date marks the anniversary of Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger announcing the end of the Civil War and of slavery in Galveston, Texas, in 1865.
Johnson, despite Carlson’s attacks, explained earlier in the day that his reasoning is based on making sure an additional federal holiday is not added, but rather replaces an old one.
“In response to a bipartisan effort to give federal workers another day of paid leave by designating Juneteenth a federal holiday, we have offered a counterproposal that does not put us further in debt,” Johnson said Wednesday. “We support celebrating emancipation with a federal holiday, but believe we should eliminate a current holiday in exchange. We chose Columbus Day as a holiday that is lightly celebrated and least disruptive to Americans’ schedules.”
The holiday gained public and media attention last month when President Trump scheduled his first rally since taking a coronavirus pandemic hiatus on that date in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is the site of the deadliest race massacre in the U.S. history in 1921. The campaign later rescheduled to push the rally back a day.
