On Monday’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on FNC, host Tucker Carlson reflected on former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s passing but compared him to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.

Carlson reminded viewers that Powell was often called an “affirmative action” hire. However, according to Carlson, Powell “deserved to be where he got, which was not quite as apparent in the case of Buttigieg.

Partial transcript as follows:

CARLSON: At the beginning of the show, we told you about the passing of 84- year-old, Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State. Whatever you thought of his role for example, in the Iraq War or in the Obama Campaign, anyone who ever spoke to Colin Powell knew conclusively he was a legitimately impressive, a very smart, thoughtful, patriotic person. That’s just true. Ask someone who knew him. They’ll confirm it.

The interesting thing as we noted was that Colin Powell always said it was probably a talking point that he was the beneficiary of affirmative action, maybe. We can’t prove it. But he certainly deserved to be where he got. That’s the view — that’s our view having known him to be perfectly blunt about it, which is not to say affirmative action isn’t out there.

What else for example, but affirmative action could explain the ascent of the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana? A certain sort of affirmative action program for dwarfish frauds who once worked for McKinsey & Co. Chelsea Clinton may have benefited from this as well.

In any case, however, he got there, Mayor Pete is somehow the Secretary of Transportation at this point, and maybe it’s not a coincidence that our transportation infrastructure has collapsed. There is a supply chain crisis and that means that shelves at your local store of things that you actually need to buy are empty.

So Mayor Pete went on television the other day, finally back to work, to explain that actually the shortages, the bare shelves, they are a sign this country is thriving.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE BUTTIGIEG, U.S. TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: Retail sales are through the roof and if you think about those images of ships, for example, waiting at anchor on the West Coast. You know, every one of those ships is full of record amounts of goods that Americans are buying because demand is up, because income is up, because the President has successfully guided this economy out of the teeth of a terrifying recession.

Now the issue is, even though our ports are handling more than they ever have, record amounts of goods coming through, our supply chains can’t keep up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARLSON: Oh. So it’s not — it’s not the administration’s fault. They’re doing such a good job that you have more money than you can spend and because you’re so rich, you want to spend it on so much stuff that we no longer have enough stuff for you to buy, so the shortages are really in effect your fault for being the undeserved beneficiary of Joe Biden’s economic genius. Got that?

But it’s definitely not the administration’s fault that gas and lumber and automobiles and everything you might actually want to buy has risen and the things that you need to buy like washing machines or refrigerators or toilet paper simply aren’t unavailable and none of that is Soviet, no not at all. It’s not the Brezhnev administration.

No. It’s utopia. Be happy about it. Stop your complaining, says Mayor Pete, the dwarfish fraud from McKinsey.

We just thought we’d bring you up to date on his explanation for all of that, and that’s what it was.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor