Fox News' Tucker Carlson wonders aloud whether Trump actually wants to lose in 2020

Is it possible that President Trump actually has no intention of winning re-election in 2020?

That's the question that was posed on Thursday by a surprising voice: Fox News' Tucker Carlson, who in a segment on his show wondered what it might look like if Trump had decided he didn't want to be president anymore and was taking steps to ensure he didn't win another term, per The Washington Post.

In this "hypothetical" scenario, Carlson ran through a number of things Trump could do so that his base would turn on him — all of which line up with actual Trump administration actions or reported proposals. He noted, for example, that if Trump wanted to lose, he could raise gas taxes, something the administration is reportedly considering and an idea that Carlson said is "so mindless and counterproductive there's literally no way you could get re-elected after doing it." Later, he told Trump he should definitely "go with the gas tax" if he secretly wants "to retire early" and is "really sick of the job."

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Proposing cuts to Medicare and E-Verify would also be ways Trump could undermine his re-election chances, Carlson argued, as well as continuing "our pointless military intervention in Syria." These, again, are not hypothetical scenarios at all.

“If the president did all that, the message would be very clear: he has no idea what he ran on in 2016," Carlson said. "He just wants out.”

This was a surprisingly brutal segment from the Fox News host, although he has been critical of Trump before. Carlson in December went off on the president by saying he hasn't kept his promises to voters and suggested that due to his lack of legislative experience, he is not "capable" of doing so. Watch Carlson's segment below. Brendan Morrow