Trump Steamrolls Tucker Carlson on His Own Show
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In his first public interview since being arraigned on federal charges of falsification of business records, Donald Trump sat down with Tucker Carlson for an interview where the Fox host was more set prop than one of the biggest names in cable news.
None of the bravado Carlson displayed when texting coworkers that he hated Trump “passionately” and believed he was a “demonic force” was present in the interview aired Tuesday. The Fox host deferred to the former president at every turn and simply folded as Trump hijacked the post-arraignment billing of their discussion in favor of airing another installment of his own Trump Show.
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Carlson was a passenger to his own interview. The former president briefly addressed the arraignment, asserting that he did “nothing wrong” and claiming employees at the Manhattan courthouse had cried and apologized to him. The rest of the interview was dominated by Trump’s virtually unchecked rantings. Before breaking for a commercial early in the show, Carlson admitted to viewers that while he intended to discuss the criminal case against Trump, the interview was dominated by Trump’s stream of conscious musings – which touched on foreign policy, his personal “n-word” (nuclear energy), and how attractive he found Chinese President Xi Jinping’s language interpreter.
Trump: When I listen to people talk about global warming.. a big problem nuclear warming. Nobody even talks about it. The environmentalists talk about all this nonsense in many cases. I've become a environmentalist in my own way… pic.twitter.com/afUdeTWnHZ
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 12, 2023
At one point the former president called out Carlson for causing him headaches during a trip to North Korea. Carlson quickly injected an apology while Trump continued ranting about his chummy relationship with dictator Kim Jung Un.
Carlson has been laying the groundwork for a friendly Trump interview for weeks now, launching a counter-offensive in defense of the former president. The Fox Host has wholeheartedly embraced Trump’s allegations that the charges against him are tantamount to election interference. In the days leading up to Trump’s arraignment, Carlson warned viewers that the former president’s plight was indicative of a widespread “political purge” against Republicans. At one point Trump referenced Fox’s own coverage of the indictment as evidence of his innocence.
“The purpose of this is to keep you out of the presidential race,” Carlson assured the former president. When he managed to steer Trump’s rambling toward his bid to secure the 2024 nomination. Trump told Carlson that he did not believe the current president was well enough to run for re-election. There’s “just something wrong” with him,” Trump said, questioning the president’s health and ability to lead the nation in times of conflict.
In one of the rare moments where Trump actually discussed the charges against him, he called the whole saga “weaponization.” He added, “They’re weaponizing our justice system… You get a subpoena, you might as well resign because you’re not going to be able to survive it.” The pair compared the indictment to Soviet-style political persecution.
Beyond the support of outlets like Fox News, Trump’s allies in Congress are also attempting to muddy the waters and undermine the case against the former president. After several attempts by House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to obtain testimony and materials related to the investigation, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sued the committee. The Tuesday suit called Jordan’s efforts “brazen and unconstitutional,” adding that “Congress has no power to supervise state criminal prosecutions.”
The turmoil surrounding the indictment was nowhere to be found in Tuesday’s interview — viewers learned absolutely nothing new from the discussion that was billed as a “historic” breaking of silence from the first criminally indicted president. Carlson would have been better off lending Trump his studio and taking the night off than actually making the trip to Palm Beach just to get steamrolled by the former president.
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