Tucker Carlson Floated Quite a Theory Last Night About What Will Happen to Trump Soon
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In the interview posted on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, at the same time as the Republican presidential debate Wednesday night, former President Donald Trump was boasting about his poll numbers when Tucker Carlson suddenly cut him off.
“Can I ask you—that gets back to my original question,” he said. “If the protests didn’t work, and you got elected anyway; the impeachment didn’t work, twice; indictment is not working … If you chart it out, it’s an escalation, is what I’m saying. So what’s next, after trying to put you in prison for the rest of your life? That’s not working. Don’t they have to kill you now?”
Trump didn’t respond directly. “I think the people of our country don’t get enough credit for how smart they are,” he said. “They get it. I got indicted four times. All trivial. Nonsense. Bullshit. It’s all bullshit.”
It was the second time Carlson had brought up the strong likelihood, from his perspective, that they were going to try to kill Trump. Over the course of the 46-minute interview, Carlson emphasized, repeatedly, the looming danger from the left. It was an odd conversation in part because Trump didn’t seem to want to follow him down that particular path. Trump was eager to talk about the stolen election or the failures of the Democrats or Joe Biden’s senility, but he had little apparent enthusiasm for Carlson’s questions about the prospect of civil war. It was, oddly, an interview that served, unintentionally, to make Donald Trump seem reasonable.
The specter of political violence first arose—in what was almost certainly the strangest moment of the interview—five minutes into the interview. In the first few minutes, Trump had addressed his decision not to attend the RNC debate: “I’m leading by 50 and 60 points and some of them are at 1 and 0 and 2, and I’m saying, do I sit there for an hour or two hours or whatever it’s going to be and get harassed?” He then discussed the failures of cable news and his disdain for Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson.
Then, Trump was explaining why his next administration would be staffed with more loyal people than the “Bushies” he had dealt with before. Carlson abruptly interrupted him.
Carlson: This is kind of far afield. But it was just interesting. I read Barr’s account of this time; he wrote a book about it, his autobiography. And in it he lies about Jeffrey Epstein’s death. Clearly lies. Do you think Epstein killed himself, sincerely?
Trump: I don’t know. I will say he was a fixture in Palm Beach. I don’t know what Barr said about it either. I have no idea what he said. What did he say, that he killed himself?
Carlson: He said he killed himself and they were going to do this investigation, and they never did the investigation. And it’s never been public, and they hid it, and, like, why are they doing that?
By now, Carlson was animated, talking over Trump as the former president tried to respond. Carlson insisted, again, that Barr was covering up Epstein’s death.
When Trump was finally able to respond, he launched into a rant about Barr’s failure to investigate “election fraud”—never responding directly to Carlson’s question. But Carlson wasn’t letting it go.
Carlson: Do you think it was possible that Epstein was killed?
Trump: Oh sure, it’s possible. I mean I don’t really believe it—I think he probably committed suicide. He had a life with beautiful homes and beautiful everything, and all of a sudden he’s incarcerated and not doing very well. I would say he did. But there are those people, there are many people—I think you’re one of them, right? But a lot of people think that he was killed. He knew a lot on a lot of people.
“He was killed,” Carlson said firmly. Then he appeared to relent slightly. “I think. I think the closer you look—I’m not a conspiracy person at all. I believe everything I hear.” But he wasn’t done. He smiled momentarily. “But yeah, I mean the closer you look into it …”
Trump, again, didn’t go for Carlson’s line. “A case could be made either way,” he said, “but it certainly wasn’t the most well-run place,” he said in reference to the Manhattan jail where Epstein was kept.
If it seemed odd that Carlson was grilling Trump about Jeffrey Epstein, the host finally made his point clear. “The reason I’m asking you is I’m looking at the trajectory since 2015,” he said. “It started with protests against you, massive protests, organized protests by the left, and then it moved to impeachment next, and then indictment. I mean the next stage is violence. Are you worried that they’re trying to kill you? Why wouldn’t they try to kill you, honestly?”
Trump again did not answer directly. “They’re savage animals. They’re people that are sick, really sick. You have great people in the Democrat Party. … I represent everybody; I’m the president of everybody. But I’ve seen what they do, the lengths they go to.” He then began discussing the Russia investigation and the Mueller report. He never returned to the topic of left-wing violence.
Trump did have his strange and very Trumpian moments. He made an oddly gendered attack on Asa Hutchinson. (“I call him Ada Hutchinson.” “Why do you call him Ada?” “You know I could tell you, but I don’t want to get myself in trouble. But he’s weak and pathetic.”) He repeated many election fraud lies. He railed about crime. He ranted about the Panama Canal at some length. (“It should have never been given to Panama; we should have had it.”) He seemed to blame Biden for the Russia invasion of Ukraine. But he didn’t appear quite as extreme as Carlson.
Or as mean as Carlson. At one point, Trump started mocking Joe Biden for being physically frail. He quipped that “there’s somebody there who thinks he looks fabulous at a beach; I think he looks horrible.” But it was Carlson’s blurting out “skinny legs” that seemed particularly personal. At another point, Trump mocked Kamala Harris’ rhetorical style, asserting she speaks in “rhyme.” Carlson jumped in: “She seems pretty senile, too.” When Trump brought up a debate moderated by Chris Wallace, Carlson said: “Bitchy little man.” Trump then said that Wallace “didn’t have the talent of his father.” Carlson kept going, on his own tangent: “A little fussy man.” And when Trump mentioned the call in which Hillary Clinton conceded the 2016 election, Carlson was gleeful: “Did her voice crack?”
Carlson also repeatedly egged on Trump, urging him to trash Biden. When Trump was talking about his own experience with foreign leaders, Carlson cut in with, “What do you think [Kim Jong-un] and Xi and Putin think of Biden?” When Trump returned to his own experience with Kim, Carlson steered the conversation back: “So you think the rest of the world is looking at Biden and thinks someone else has got to be running the government?”
He also teed Trump up to attack Mike Pence, repeatedly asking him why Pence was not faithful to him during the certification of the 2020 election. While Trump peddled his same lies about the election, he didn’t go after his former vice president, stating instead that “I think he got very bad advice.”
In his last question, Carlson asked Trump if “we’re moving towards civil war.”
Trump, rather than agree, praised the people who were at the Jan. 6 insurrection as peaceful patriots, while also boasting about the size of the crowd—it was the same Trump as always. But, still, next to Carlson, he seemed measured.
“So do you think it’s possible there’s open conflict?” Carlson said, unable to let Trump’s positive note be the final one. “We seem to be moving towards something.”
“I don’t know,” Trump said. “I don’t know.” Then he finally seemed to give Carlson a bit of what he wanted. “I can say this: There’s a level of passion I’ve never seen. There’s a level of hatred that I’ve never seen. And that’s probably a bad combination.”
Carlson nodded. “Donald Trump, thank you.”
“Thank you very much,” Trump said. The interview had ended.
But Carlson couldn’t help himself. “That is a very bad combination, by the way.”
