Tucker Carlson topped himself for smarmy disingenuousness last night when he smeared Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s military service in Afghanistan and even suggested it never happened. Even worse, Fox News allowed it.

In his pre-scripted and thus pre-approved commentary last night, trust-fund baby Carlson, who never spent a minute serving his country, suggested that Buttigieg enlisted merely to enhance his presidential resume, as if there’s something wrong with that:

CARLSON: At the end, there was only one block missing, something to appeal to middle America. Buttigieg chose military service. Normal people respect that. So in 2009, he joined the Naval Reserves. Five years later, he did a tour in Afghanistan. Buttigieg was now officially a veteran and he never stopped reminding you of it.

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You really get the impression Buttigieg spent his time in Afghanistan stringing Taliban ears onto necklaces. As he told Beto O'Rourke at one of the Democratic debates, I don't need lessons from you on courage. Ugh. Who talks like that? Not people who've actually been there, that's for sure. Phonies talk like that. And Buttigieg is nothing, if not a phony. 

Carlson went on to cite conservative writer Kyle Smith. You may recall that Smith once sneered that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was all about, “Did you realize I’m a woman?” In other words, just the kind of guy that Carlson would love.

CARLSON: Kyle Smith of National Review spent some time looking into Buttigieg’s record and here’s what he found. When Buttigieg joined the Navy, he didn’t do it in the usual way. He didn’t go enlisted. He didn’t sign up for ROTC. He never attended Officer Candidate School. Instead, Buttigieg joined through something called direct commission. Take a physical, sign the form and you’re in. Buttigieg never even completed basic training. As Kyle Smith put it, imagine someone got a diploma direct from Harvard but never wrote any papers or took any tests. That’d be a little different, right?

Again, so what? Meanwhile, Donald Trump got into Wharton based on his family connections and has lied about his record there. Readers will probably not be shocked to know that Trump’s dishonesty never came up. Nor did the fact that he faked a medical condition to get out of serving in the military altogether.

No, Carlson was too busy finding new ways to smear a guy who actually served his country by smearing another one.

CARLSON: Not surprisingly, Hunter Biden joined the Navy in exactly the same way. When Buttigieg deployed to Afghanistan, he didn’t go as a member of the unit, he went as a one-man reinforcement. He never saw combat. Instead, he spent his time sitting on base or ferrying people around in a jeep.

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Democratic voters may have bad ideas but they know a transparent fraud when they see one.

Speaking of frauds, has “sworn enemy of lying” Carlson ever owned up to his “Antifa broke my door” falsehood?

You’ll notice that “truth-loving” Carlson barely touched on what Buttigieg actually did in Afghanistan where Fox News has reported he “saw active duty.” Thankfully, we have the AP to fill us in on what didn’t fit into Carlson’s hit piece. Though AP's report warns that Buttigieg skates close to overstating his war experience, it notes he is careful not to say he’s a combat veteran. But he was, in fact, in harm’s way:

Though more of Buttigieg’s time in Afghanistan was spent working in a secured intelligence office as an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, his dozens of trips outside U.S./NATO headquarters in the fortified Green Zone make him a combat veteran in the eyes of Hollingsworth, Buttigieg’s commanding officer.

During these movements, Buttigieg, in body armor and an M4 rifle nearby, would typically drive a team of officials, navigating an armored SUV through Kabul’s chaotic streets.

If Carlson thinks driving around Kabul is such a piece of cake, why doesn’t he go over there and show us?

You can watch Carlson act as though only some military service deserves respect, despite propagandizing in support of a guy who fraudulently avoided it, below, from the February 19, 2020 Tucker Carlson Tonight, via Media Matters.