"Whatever you think of Trump," former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in a post promoting his prerecorded interview with the former president on the social platform that is still located at twitter.com but now is supposedly known as X, "he is, as of tonight, the indisputable, far-and-away front-runner in the Republican race. We think voters have an interest in hearing what he thinks."
Whatever you think of Donald Trump, we know what Carlson thinks, thanks to private communications that Dominion Voting Systems uncovered through discovery in its defamation lawsuit against Carlson's former employer, which agreed to pay $788 million rather than defend its promotion of Trump's stolen-election fantasy. "There isn't really an upside to Trump," Carlson said in a January 4, 2021, text message to his staff, describing "the last four years" as "a disaster." Back then, Carlson was eager to be rid of Trump: "We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can't wait. I hate him passionately." The day after the January 6, 2021, riot by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol, Carlson privately called him "a demonic force" and "a destroyer."
