Not surprisingly, Dr. Ben Carson was not the only person to gripe about Harriet Tubman replacing Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. Fox Business host Neil Cavuto repeatedly complained about Jackson “getting kicked off.” Carson called the slave-owning Jackson "a tremendous president."
As I posted earlier, Fox Business tweeted Carson’s comments about Tubman replacing Jackson: "We can find another way to honor her."
Those comments were made on Cavuto: Coast to Coast. Now that the video has been published, it turns out that host Neil Cavuto did more griping than Carson.
The segment was mostly about the 2016 presidential campaign. But at about 4:05, Cavuto brought up Tubman:
CAVUTO: You might have heard that the Treasury has announced that Andrew Jackson is getting kicked off the $20 bill. Harriet Tubman, the African American abolitionist, is going on. I don’t know where Andrew goes now. But what do you think of that, when you think of Harriet Tubman getting on the face of U.S. currency?
Carson replied that Jackson was “a tremendous president” and “the last president who actually balanced the federal budget, where we had no national debt.”
Assuming Carson is correct, the country seems to have done just fine economically since Jackson left office, in 1837.
Not that anybody seemed to have noticed. Nor did anyone point out that Jackson is hardly a universally beloved figure in the U.S. these days. From The New York Times:
[Jackson’s] place in history has suffered lately with attention to his record of forcibly relocating Native Americans, supporting slavery and — despite his prominence on currency — opposing a national banking system and paper money.
But Cavuto suggested an American hero had just been dissed. He complained again, “And here he gets kicked off the $20 bill.”
Carson did suggest that Tubman should go on a $2 bill. Cavuto thought maybe Jackson should go there. “Resolve it that way,” he said.
Watch it below, from the April 20 Cavuto: Coast to Coast.
The Donald – wait for this yuuuuge surprise – is whining taking Jackson off the $20 bill is “political correctness.” Idiot or liar Trump is repeating the mostly myth narrative the Treasury Department nixed Hamilton based upon the popularity of the popular play bearing his name. Having watched the Treasury Secretary interviewed on PBS “NewsHour” last night on this subject I know that to be mostly bulls**t.
No doubt FOX News will catch wind of Der Furor towing their line on this topic and invite him over for a double-header softball match. ;^)
Here’s the thing. The issue isn’t even commemorating any president like Jackson, IMHO. I’m quite okay with him being on the $20 bill or a on a stamp or some federal building bearing his name. But he’s been featured on the $20 since 1928. Seriously, can’t we refresh our currency more frequently? Spread around who we’re commemorating. Put a woman on our paper currency more often than every 100 years without FOX News ‘traditionalists’ doing a diaper dump?