Trump and Tucker Carlson: ridiculing Biden’s health and revelling in criminal charges

The controversial broadcaster Tucker Carlson asked Donald Trump in an interview released last night if he’s worried someone will try to have him killed.

The 46-minute conversation, which was recorded at the former president’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, was uploaded to Twitter minutes before eight of Trump’s Republican challengers clashed in a TV hustings in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Trump skipped the first Republican debate of the campaign but still managed to grab the headlines thanks to his colourful conversation with Carlson, the former Fox News host.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

‘You’re waiting for him to collapse’

Describing Joe Biden as “the worst president in the history of our country”, Trump claimed the Democrat “can’t put two sentences together, can’t speak, can’t walk, can’t talk”.

Warming to his theme, he said his rival was “worse mentally than he is physically – and physically he’s not exactly a triathlete”, adding that “you’re waiting for him to collapse and he almost always does”.

During the “chaotic” and “freewheeling” interview, Trump claimed that Biden “would not be fit enough to contest the next election”, said The Times. Trump’s “mostly stream-of-consciousness commentary” even included referring to “what President Biden’s legs look like on the beach”, noted The New York Times, a moment Yahoo News felt he “body-shames” the president.

However, speaking to The Hill, a spokesperson for Biden’s re-election campaign brushed aside Trump’s appearance on Carlson’s show as a “softball ‘interview’”.

‘Trivia, nonsense, bullshit’

Carlson asked Trump: “How do you get indicted every week and stay cheerful?” Trump responded that his standing in opinion polls keeps him upbeat because “it means people get it, they see it’s a fraud”.

He described the four criminal indictments he’s facing as “trivia, nonsense, bullshit”, as he “continued his attempts” to cast his legal challenges as “political persecution”, said the Los Angeles Times.

Commenting on the 90-plus federal and state felony charges he faces in connection with the four indictments, Trump said of his opponents that “it’s horrible when you look at what they’re doing”.

Previewing the 2024 election campaign, Trump also said he “expects to make similar claims about mass voter fraud efforts next year”, noted NBC News. Carlson asked at one point: “If you’re saying they stole it from you last time, why wouldn’t they do the same this time?”

“Oh, well, they’ll try”, said Trump. “They’re going to be trying.”

The former president is expected to surrender at a Georgia jail today to be booked on more than a dozen charges stemming from his efforts to reverse the state’s 2020 election results.

‘Savage animals’

In one of the conversation’s “craziest moments”, said New York magazine, Carlson suggested that the “next stage” after Trump’s four indictments could be a potential assassination.

“Are you worried they are going to try to kill you? Why wouldn’t they try to kill you, honestly?” he asked, in a moment described as a “dark turn” by The Guardian.

Trump replied by calling his opponents “savage animals” and people who are “really sick”, but he “didn’t really answer the outlandish question”. Yet amid “Carlson’s questions about the prospect of civil war”, said Slate, his “scaremongering somehow made Trump seem level-headed”.

Carlson’s line of questioning was “odd”, Slate added, because “Trump didn’t seem to want to follow him down that particular path”. But he “finally seemed to give the host a bit of what he wanted” when he said: “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.”