Senior Army officer who sparred with Tucker Carlson honorably discharged
Mike Brest
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A senior Army officer who had his retirement plans on hold during an inspector general investigation into social media interactions with conservatives, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson, has been honorably discharged without reprimand.
Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe, in March 2021, publicly rebuked Carlson on Twitter for accusing the military of being “more feminine,” specifically as he took exception with pregnant women serving in the military, while “China’s military becomes more masculine.” Donahoe was among a multitude of senior service members who pushed back on Carlson’s claims and defended women’s service online, though his retirement had been paused during the investigation that ultimately found in October that his Twitter usage “exhibited poor judgment.”
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On Sunday, “I retired honorably and without any reprimand or admonishment,” Donahoe told Military.com. He had been scheduled to retire last July.
Following Carlson’s segment, Donahoe tweeted a video of himself reenlisting a female noncommissioned officer. He said that Carlson “couldn’t be more wrong” about women in the service.
At the time, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) wrote a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, arguing in part that “the campaign was launched in response to criticisms by Carlson that linked gender-based reforms in the military, which are being justified using the language of social justice, with widely-recognized vulnerabilities and erosions in the military’s warfighting capabilities, including and especially in the context of Great Power competition.”
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The Army IG noted that “While potentially admirable,” his post “brought a measurable amount of negative publicity to the Army, enough that [the Office of the Chief of Public Affairs] warned [the Secretary of the Army] of the fallout.” It added, “The media and public outcry demonstrated MG Donahoe had not thought about what he typed before he posted his tweets to Mr. Carlson … nor had he given any consideration of the impacts given their larger audience of followers.”
John Kirby, who was the Pentagon spokesman at the time, said, “What we absolutely won’t do is take personnel advice from a talk show host or the Chinese military,” adding, “Maybe those folks feel like they have something to prove — that’s on them. We know we’re the greatest military in the world today and, even for all the things we need to improve, we know exactly why that’s so.”