Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson Are Elites in Populist Clothing
Donald Trump skipped the first GOP debate to chat with his courtier Tucker Carlson. Their conversation revealed the utter insincerity of their branding as opponents of the elite and the military-industrial complex.
Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson attend a golf tournament in Bedminster, New Jersey, July 2022. (Rich Graessle / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
On Wednesday, Tucker Carlson asked Donald Trump if Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. It was a potentially explosive moment. Before being reduced to hosting streams on Twitter — sorry, “X” — Carlson was the biggest personality on Fox News. And he was asking a former president of the United States to weigh in on whether a wealthy sex trafficker, notoriously connected to a long string of famous names, including Trump himself, may have been murdered to stop him from spilling powerful people’s secrets. How would Trump react?
Carlson: Do you think Epstein killed himself — sincerely?
Trump: I don’t know. I will say he was a fixture in Palm Beach. . .
Trump went on to say that Epstein probably did kill himself, before pivoting to his favorite subject: his claim to have won the 2020 election. Both men politely pretended not to know that Carlson had derided that narrative in text messages that have long since become public.
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