QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: What Happened to Tucker Carlson?
In the event Trump loses, and doesn’t run again in 2028, Carlson could very well emerge as a leading contender for the nomination if he wants it. A populist party that nominated Trump in three presidential elections in a row is a party that could nominate Tucker Carlson.
Carlson hides his worst rhetoric behind a “just asking questions” and anti-cancel-culture pose. He faced only a modest backlash from his allies over the Darryl Cooper interview. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts posted a tweet defending Winston Churchill, then appeared at a Tucker Carlson Live event the next day. A “Dear Fellow Patriot” Heritage fundraising email was sent out under Tucker Carlson’s name on September 12—just 10 days after Carlson called Darryl Cooper “the most important historian in the United States.”
There were calls for Trump to distance himself from Carlson after the Cooper interview, but no such distancing occurred. “The fundamental idea here is Republicans believe not in censorship; we believe in free speech and debate,” GOP vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance said on September 6. Vance appeared at a Tucker Carlson Live event in Pennsylvania on September 21.
The Tucker Carlson Live tour has the trappings of a presidential listening tour, with the potential candidate surrounded by MAGA elites like Vance, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard. The tour wrapped up on Saturday night with a joint appearance with the former GOP president’s son, Donald Trump Jr. Earlier this year, Don Jr. said he wanted his father to pick either Vance or Carlson as his running mate, and there’s no question that Carlson is the more charismatic of the two.
One might think Carlson’s association with kooks reveals a man uninterested in actually winning the presidency, but that may not be how he sees it. In his 2018 book, Carlson wrote that with continued mass immigration, coupled with job losses due to automation, it “won’t take much” to convince Americans “to vote for radical populists who will make Donald Trump look restrained.”
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