Tucker Carlson grilled Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson on Friday over his past veto of a bill banning transgender procedures for minors.
The exchange, which happened at The Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, comes after Hutchinson repeatedly defended his veto back in 2021, calling the bill “extreme.”
“I believe in a limited role of government,” Hutchinson told Carlson. “And so, you know, I don’t think that California ought to be able to tell parents, ‘you need to have gender affirming care for the children.’ The government should not do that. And in the same way, let’s keep the government out of it unless it’s that extreme case. And let’s let parents guide the children. I stand with parents.”
Carlson said he agreed with standing with parents before he started to bring up Hutchinson’s veto.
“The reason I asked the question was not to bring up a sore subject, which I know that it is, but to ask if in the subsequent two years, you had said that you drew the line at castration, of physical altercation of a child’s body because it’s permanent,” Carlson said. “But in the subsequent two years, I think we’ve learned that hormone therapy for prepubescent children is permanent, it changes the bone structure, it changes the brain of the child, that a lot of people believe, including me, that it destroys the child’s life, but it is permanent. It’s not reversible.”
“So given that, and that standard you just articulated, do you have different feelings?” Carlson asked. “I mean, this is a permanent change we’re making to a child, why would we allow that if we don’t allow surgery?”
Hutchinson responded, “Well, permanent change is one issue. But also hormonal treatment is a different issue and can be a different issue. And whenever you look at the bill that I vetoed, there was not any grandfather clause in there. Again, I respect legislators that have a different view. But I think independently, I think of the parents, I think of the Constitution. And actually the court, if you read the decision of the federal judges who struck it down as unconstitutional, really sided with parents as well.”
Carlson pressed Hutchinson over why he thinks that altering a person’s natural hormones is “treatment.”
“If you have a child who says, who’s born a boy, ‘I want to become a girl.’ He hasn’t gone through puberty yet. He’s say 10,” Carlson said. “Is it treatment to prevent him from going through the natural process of adolescence? How is that treatment? It seems, not like treatment. It seems like something else.”
Hutchinson snapped, “Tucker, I hope that we’ll be able to talk about some issues.”
“Well this is one of the biggest issues in the country,” Carlson responded. “And I think, every person in this room would agree that it is a central issue because these are children who are being altered permanently, and you can defend that alteration that change if you like, but there’s really no debate about whether or not it’s permanent. And so I think it’s fair to ask you in a calm, rational and I very much hope polite way, why you would support that.”
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