Tucker Carlson, the fired Fox News host who now broadcasts on Twitter, hit out at aides to former President Donald Trump who he claims prayed on his susceptiblity to flattery to gain power and subvert his political agenda.
Carlson’s rant against the likes of former Vice President Mike Pence, former secretary to the United Nations Nikki Haley, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo came on the day Mr Trump was arraigned on 37 felony counts for mishandling classified documents after the conclusion of his presidency and impeding government efforts to get them back.
“The stealthier ones took another path: they ran towards Trump, not away from him,” Carlson said in his social media monologue. “They sucked up to him. They ingratied themselves to a man they intuitively understood was susceptible to flattery, which Trump is, and they did this to subvert Trump’s administration from the inside.”
Carlson, who was fired by Fox News earlier this year and has been sued along with the network for promoting a hostile work environment by a former employee, then upped his rhetoric.
“They were there slobbering over their boss with elaborate self-abasement as if they were addressing a monarch or a God,” Carlson said. “It was a scene from the Ottoman Court, it was filthy and it was decadent, and it was false.”
It was only after Mr Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and was removed from power when the likes of Mr Pence, Ms Haley, Mr Pompeo, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina revealed their “neo-con war agenda.”
Mr Pence and Ms Haley are now challenging Mr Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but both have been extremeley guarded in their criticism of him — largely going out of their way to praise his work as president and arguing that the prosecution he now faces from the Justice Department is politically motiviated.
Mr Pompeo was more direct in his criticism of Mr Trump’s handling of classified documents in an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday morning, but he has thus far passed on the opportunity to join the 2024 field.
In fact, one of the defining features of the Republican race for president so far is how unwilling much of the rest of the field has been to attack Mr Trump. The former president is the current polling leader, though it remains to be seen how his multiple indictments shape his chances of ultimately returning to the White House.
