Trump sounds off on primary, other issues with Carlson, snubs GOP debate
BEDMINSTER, N.J. (FLV) – Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson posted an interview with Former President Donald Trump on X, opting to skip the Milwaukee Republican primary debate Wednesday night.
Carlson released the interview with Trump at 8:55 p.m., five minutes before the debate.
Within the first two hours of posting the interview, the video already reached a whopping 80 million views.
Kicking off the interview, Carlson asked Trump why he did not make an appearance at the debate.
Trump reiterated his strength in national polling, which he previously mentioned as the reason for not attending.
“I’m leading by 50 and 60 points, and you know, some of them are at one and zero and two, and I’m saying, do I sit there for an hour or two hours, whatever it’s going to be and get harassed by people that shouldn’t even be running for president, should I be doing that?” Trump asked.
Trump said that Fox News “isn’t particularly friendly” to him.
“They were backing Ron DeSanctimonious, like crazy, and now they’ve given up on him. I mean, he’s, it’s a lost cause,” Trump said.
“Ron DeSanctimonious” is a nickname Trump has previously given Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Building the wall
If reelected, Trump said his number one priority would be the border and “taking hundreds of thousands of criminals that have been allowed into our country, and getting them out and bringing them back to their country.”
“I had the strongest border in the history of our country, and I built almost 500 miles of wall,” Trump said.
Trump said he had another 200 miles that he was “going to build.”
“All they had to do was install it, it would have taken three weeks, and that’s when I found out, I said I think these people actually want open borders,” Trump said.
Trump said the first thing he would do would be “seal up the border good and tight, except for people that want to come in legally.”
“When you see open borders, when you see these policies that they have, and so many other things, it’s so sad to see. We have a country that’s very fragile right now,” Trump said.
Television in decline
Carlson pointed out that Trump spent a lot of his career in television and asked him if he feels television is declining.
“According to a poll that I guess we just saw, just came out, where it’s down like 30, 35%. But I think they were talking referring to cable, I think cable’s down because it’s lost credibility,” Trump said.
“MSNBC, or as they say, MSDNC, is so bad, it’s so wrong, what they write, and what they do, and what they say,” Trump said.
“It’s fake news. As I said, I think I came up with that term. I hope I did, because it’s a good one. It’s not tough enough anymore. It’s corrupt news, you know, really what you do is called corrupt news, but somehow that doesn’t play as nicely, but it is corrupt news,” he added.
“So you have MSNBC and you have CNN, who’s absolutely doing no ratings at all. I mean, they’re dead,” Trump said.
Trump said Fox is “way down” and “the good old days are long ago.”
“I will say this, it could come back, but they just don’t have a lot of credibility, Tucker, you know that perhaps better than anybody,” Trump said to the former Fox host.
“I think it was a terrible move, getting rid of you,” Trump said to Carlson.
“You had number one on television, and all of a sudden you’re, we’re doing this interview, but we’ll get bigger ratings using this crazy forum that you’re using, then probably the debate or competition,” Trump said.
Carlson, who has 9.5 million followers on X, was terminated from Fox News in April. Since his departure, he has posted multiple videos and interviews on his account, all receiving multi-million views per video.
In May, Carlson posted a viral video gaining 137 million views and said he would be brining a new version of his show to Twitter.
“Do you think we’re moving towards civil war?”
Carlson asked Trump if he feels we are “moving towards civil war.”
“There’s tremendous passion, and there’s tremendous love. You know, January 6 was a very interesting day, because they don’t report it properly,” Trump said.
Trump went on to say he thinks it was the largest crowd he’s spoken to.
“People that were in that crowd, a very, very small group of people, and we said patriotic and peacefully, peacefully and patriotically. Right, nobody ever says that. Go peacefully and patriotically. But people that were in that crowd that day, a very small group of people went down there,” Trump said.
On January 6, during his speech at a rally in Washington, D.C., Trump said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
The former president said there was “love and unity” but also “never seen, simultaneously, from the same people, such hatred of what they’ve done to our country.”
Carlson asked Trump if he thinks it’s possible that there is “open conflict.”
“I don’t know, because I don’t know what, you know, I can say this… there’s a level of passion that I’ve never seen. There’s a level of hatred, that I’ve never seen, and that’s probably a bad combination,” Trump said.
Election and Biden
Trump said the 2020 election was “rigged” and he got more votes in 2020 than 2016.
“It was a rigged election. But and with COVID, they use COVID to cheat and a lot of different things, and we have so much on it. It’s like so easy. But, we had judges that didn’t want to look,” Trump said.
Trump said he has never seen “spirit like there is right now,” and mentioned people lining the roads for his arrival.
“I have never seen spirit like it is right now and the reason is because crooked Joe Biden is so bad,” Trump said.
Trump said Biden is the “worst president in the history of our country.”
In regards to elections, Trump said he believes we should “go back to all paper ballots, voter ID, same day voting.”
“Anytime you have mail in ballots, you’re gonna have massive cheating on your elections,” Trump said.
Epstein’s death
Carlson asked Trump if he believes Jeffrey Epstein was killed.
Epstein died on Aug. 10, 2019 in a New York City prison. He was reportedly arrested on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges.
Trump said he believes “it’s possible,” but said he think’s “he probably committed suicide.”
On Aug. 11, 2019, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner performed an autopsy and determined the cause of death was “hanging” and the manner of death was “suicide,” according to a DOJ report.
“But a lot of people think that he he was killed. He knew a lot – on a lot of people,” Trump said.
“He was killed,” Carlson said. “The closer you look into it, I mean, the attorney general of the United States, your attorney general, clearly lied about the Epstein death. Why?” Carlson said.
“It wasn’t well done. They’d had no cameras, they had no anything, everybody was sleeping. Look, I’m not gonna get involved in it. But I can tell you a case could be made either way. But, it certainly wasn’t the most well run play,” Trump said.
The CIA
Carlson asked Trump if when he was president, if he was “confident that you knew everything say CIA was doing.”
“No, I’m not. I’m not. it’s it’s a very interesting group of people. I had very good relationships, I thought, but I was a little surprised when I got out that, you know, things go on.
“What were you surprised by?” Carlson said.
“I was surprised, I think at some of the people, I was surprised at.. there was.. I had a group of people. We killed many using the CIA, I have to say this, bad, very bad actors. We were very good at it,” Trump said.
Indictments and impeachments
Carlson asked Trump how he stays cheerful after getting “indicted every week.”
“It’s a lot easier because I’m so high in the polls, because it means that people get it,” Trump said.
Trump said the people “see it’s a fraud.”
The former president said he had “great support” when they did “impeachment hoax number one and impeachment hoax number two.”
“Jim Jordan, the house was fantastic. And actually the senate was very good for me,” Trump said.
“Mitch McConnell, in my opinion, was trying to get senators to impeach me, especially for the second one, and on the first one, he acted very, very slow, it should have gone much faster,” Trump explained.
Trump faces charges from Special Counsel Jack Smith, surrounding the 2020 election and Jan. 6, 2021. He is also facing 38 federal charges in relation to alleged mishandling of classified documents.
