Trump's tale about Manhattan court workers crying and apologizing at his arraignment isn't true, source says

Fox News host Tucker Carlson sat down with former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida for an hourlong interview broadcast Tuesday night that was supposed to be about his arrest and arraignment in Manhattan the previous week but ended up focusing on whatever Trump wanted to talk about, with little pushback from Carlson. Trump did discuss his experience getting booked at his arraignment, but his version included a lot of sobbing court workers apologizing to him for his arrest.

The courthouse is "a tough, tough place, and they were crying," Trump said. "They were actually crying. They said, 'I'm sorry.' They said, '2024, sir. 2024.' And tears were pouring down their eyes."

You may be surprised to learn that none of that happened, at least according to a law enforcement source who spoke with Yahoo News' Michael Isikoff. Trump's story is "absolute BS," the official said. "There were zero people crying. There were zero people saying 'I'm sorry.'" In fact, Trump barely interacted with anybody at the courthouse other than his lawyers, Secret Service detail, and a handful of district attorney employees, the official said, and the only hiccup was when Trump's fingers had to be moistened with lotion because they were too dry to fingerprint.

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Along with sitting through Trump's sobbing story about court workers, Carlson let the former president "prattle on at will" about "the various 'hoax' investigations to which he'd been subjected and his false assertions about the cease-fire in Afghanistan and the classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI," Philip Bump writes at The Washington Post. Stephen Colbert's Late Show turned Trump's fawning description of Chinese President Xi Jinping into an '80s hit by Roxette.

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But perhaps "the most telling part" of Carlson's "fundamentally obsequious" interview was when he said he thought viewers will find that what Trump "has to say moderate, sensible, and wise," Bump says. "This was sharply reminiscent of how Carlson described Ye, the musician formerly known as Kanye West, when he interviewed him in October," before showing an interview in which Carlson's team had "edited out much of Ye's most bizarre and disconcerting commentary" to make him sound like "a wise, sober opponent of the American elite." One "obvious question" about Carlson's Trump interview, he adds, is: what might he have left out "to present the former president as favorably as possible?"

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.