With axes to grind against Fox News, Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson held another lengthy and largely amicable discussion that was posted online five minutes before the right-wing network’s first GOP primary debate Wednesday—a discussion that began with Carlson asking the quadruply indicted former president why he skipped the event.
“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?” Trump said in the pre-taped interview, which Carlson oddly hyped up as “debate night in Bedminster.”
Despite hearing pitches from Fox News executives in person, as well as on-air pleas from MAGA-friendly hosts, Trump spurned the network, which fired Carlson this spring—a move that Trump mourned as a “big blow” to the country.
Trump went on to criticize Fox News—“a network that isn’t particularly friendly to me”—for “backing” Florida Gov. Ron Desantis. “And now they’ve given up on him. It’s a lost cause,” Trump said, perhaps aware of the network’s increased attention on GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Trump further explained that it felt “more appropriate” for him to not attend. He then cited his wide leads in several polls—an argument he has made in Truth Social posts in recent weeks.
Trump leads DeSantis by an average of more than 30 percentage points nationally, according to FiveThirtyEight.
“I’m going to have all these people screaming, shouting questions at me, all of which I love answering, I love doing, but it doesn’t make sense to do them. So I’ve taken a pass, as you’ve probably noticed,” Trump said, cracking up Carlson.
