Melania Trump 'pushing for Tucker Carlson to be Trump’s running mate'
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Melania Trump is reportedly pushing for Tucker Carlson to be named Donald Trump’s running mate in next year’s presidential election, as the conservative media personality launched his own online platform.
Mr Carlson, 54, announced he would run his own subscription service costing $72 (£57) a year, after losing his job at Fox News. Since then he has been hosting live interviews on Twitter.
He will interview Mr Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy, two of the Republican presidential candidates, in the first shows on his new website, he announced, plus Javier Milei, the new president of Argentina.
It comes after he was named as a possible vice-presidential candidate for Mr Trump in next year’s election, and Mrs Trump’s favoured running mate.
Axios, a news website, said Mrs Trump had voiced her support for a Trump-Carlson joint ticket, and may be more likely to attend campaign events if he was selected.
The website reported that Mrs Trump believes Mr Carlson would be a “powerful onstage extension of her husband,” citing sources close to the former president.
The former first lady is reportedly drifting from her husband and the couple face rumours they are planning to divorce, after she allegedly began renegotiating their prenuptial agreement in September.
‘Tucker Carlson content’ on its way
Mr Carlson is one of the US’s most recognisable media personalities, but has been criticised for hosting controversial guests and promoting conspiracy theories and hard-line views, including that vaccine mandates were a “Nazi experiment”.
After beginning his onscreen career on CNN in 2000, Mr Carlson moved to PBS, MSNBC and finally Fox News, where he worked from 2009.
He was sacked from his Fox show in April without explanation, but later claimed his exit was because of a defamation settlement between the network and Dominion Voting Systems, a company that manufactures voting machines. Fox News denied the claim.
He has since hosted several interviews on Twitter, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, including an interview with Mr Trump.
On Sunday he joked about being “unemployed” but said he had been “working in secret and producing an awful lot of material for months now” for his new website, the Tucker Carlson Network.
The site said it would host “unlimited access to five brand-new shows, speeches, films, and more from Tucker Carlson”.
‘Tucker’s got great common sense’
Mr Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur competing with Mr Trump for the Republican nomination, will appear in the site’s first batch of content. He has faced accusations of spreading conspiracy theories about 9/11 and the Capitol riots of January 6, 2021. He says he was “speak[ing] to the hard truths”.
Other guests will include Kid Rock, the pop star; the Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alex Jones, an alt-Right radio host and conspiracy theorist.
A representative for Mr Trump did not respond to a request for comments on rumours he would consider nominating Mr Carlson as his running mate, but the former president said in an interview last month: “I like Tucker a lot…I guess I would. He’s got great common sense.”
The former network host joins a growing list of figures Mr Trump is thought to have shortlisted, including Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kristi Noem, the governors of Arkansas and South Dakota, respectively.
