A day after Tucker Carlson spent his opening monologue criticizing California Governor Gavin Newsom, the Fox News host was surprised to learn that the Democrat used to “get along really well” with Donald Trump when he was president and often praised him – at least, according to Trump.
Newsom, often a villain in the eyes of opinion leaders, contributors and Fox News guests, was warmly mentioned by the former president when he answered Carlson’s question about potential Democratic presidential candidates if Joe Biden was not running for re-election. (Biden has said he intends to do so.)
“You’ve got a very ambitious guy in California, but he’s done a terrible job with the state,” Trump said of the governor, who was elected in 2018, won a recall election in September 2021 and got a second term last fall.
“I got along really well with him, you know, when I was president. I got along really well,” Trump told a wide-eyed Carlson. great things. He would say things like, ‘He’s doing a great job.’
“About you?” Carlson asked in disbelief.
“On me. That’s why I never got to hit him because he was so nice to me. Just waiting, right? But he was very nice to me, relatively speaking. “Some of them weren’t. We’ve done a good job for the governors. But they’re talking about him.”
Trump’s comments came during his first interview since being arraigned in Manhattan last Tuesday on 34 counts of falsifying business records. He also made a familiar claim when he insisted that when he was arraigned, courthouse workers were so upset by his situation that they didn’t just “cry,” but they had apologized to him.
Interestingly, the Mar-a-Lago interview was conducted by Tucker Carlson and not by Sean Hannity, a former informal adviser to Trump whose live and phone conversations with the ex-president took place far more frequently. than those of Carlson. .
During their conversation, neither Carlson nor Trump made any overt reference to the Fox News host’s opinion of the twice-impeached former president, as texted to an anonymous staffer in a message from January 2021: “I hate him passionately.”
The telling remark was included in documents released last month as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Carlson’s characterization of Trump during the Jan. 6 uprising as a ‘demonic force’ also made headlines for Fox News, which has repeatedly fought for those who participated in the deadly riot. on his weekday shows and in a Fox Nation documentary.
The fact that these texts were made public may have served to bring the couple closer together. Carlson “don’t hate me, or at least, no more!” Trump posted on Truth Social last month.
For her part, Carlson has gushed about Trump in recent weeks, declaring her “love” for him during a radio interview and calling Trump’s appearance at a McDonalds in Ohio “incredible.”