Tucker Carlson called country singer Maren Morris a ‘lunatic’ for supporting trans kids. It backfired
![Maren Morris in a green suit playing the guitar.](https://www.thepinknews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/GettyImages-1411433595-scaled-e1662725998299.jpg?w=792&h=416&crop=1)
Maren Morris is stepping away from the country music industry. (Debra L Rothenberg/Wireimage)
Country singer Maren Morris has turned an insult from Fox News host Tucker Carlson into a $100,000 donation to trans charities.
The row began when Brittany Aldean, wife of country singer Jason Aldean, posted a make-up transformation video to Instagram with the caption: “I’d really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase. I love this girly life?✌?”
She later took to her Instagram stories to claim children were being made to undergo “genital mutilation”, according to Billboard.
Guidelines generally do not recommend genital gender-affirming surgeries for under-18s, and despite constant anti-trans claims that such procedures are taking place, there is no evidence to support.
Singer Cassadee Pope was among those to criticise Aldean, tweeting: “You’d think celebs with beauty brands would see the positives in including LGBTQ+ people in their messaging. But instead here we are, hearing someone compare their ‘tomboy phase’ to someone wanting to transition. Real nice.”
Aldean sells a line of clip-in hair extensions, as well as a range of t-shirts with right-wing slogans like ‘unapologetically conservative’, ‘Alexa, change the president’, and ‘military lives matter’.
Maren Morris replied to Pope, saying: “It’s so easy to, like, not be a scumbag human? Sell your clip-ins and zip it, Insurrection Barbie.”
Tucker Carlson then waded in on Fox News, speaking of Aldean’s “fight to protect kids” and “her work to fight child exploitation”.
“No sane society would have a problem with or even notice words like that, but in 2022, this is a time when you are led to believe that minors should be castrated by their parents,” Carlson said.
Carlson then called Morris “a lunatic” and a “fake country music singer”.
![Fox News host Tucker Carlson](https://thepinknews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/GettyImages-1139127493-1024x683.jpg)
Morris, a one-time Grammy and five-time Academy of Country Music Award winner, took the insult and turned it into a fundraising t-shirt.
Her “lunatic country music person” design, which includes the phone number of the Peer Support & Crisis Hotline for trans youth (877-565-8860), went on sale on 2 September, with proceeds split betweenTransLifeline and the GLAAD Transgender Media Program.
Over $63,000 was raised in just two hours, and later that day Morris tweeted: “Over $100K raised. Have a great Labor Day weekend, lunatics.”