Former President Trump did not receive any pushback from pundit Tucker Carlson after promoting false statements about the 2020 election during an interview that was released Wednesday.
Trump reiterated his unfounded claim that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to reject or return electoral results on Jan. 6, 2021, something Pence and many legal experts vehemently disagreed with.
“In other words, I said, ‘Is he a human conveyer belt. If he finds fraud in Pennsylvania, in Georgia, in any of these states, in Arizona. He has to send them to Mitch McConnell?” Trump said of the Senate GOP leader during one diatribe about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Carlson offered no pushback to these and other debunked claims in his interview with Trump on Wednesday night that was published on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The pundit was ousted from his prime-time hosting post at Fox News just days after the network agreed to pay $787 million in settlement money to Dominion Voting Systems in connection with the network’s airing of false statements about the company’s software being promoted by Trump and his allies.
Claims about voting machines did not come up in the new interview with Trump.
Trump has criticized the network over its decision to oust Carlson, who wrote in text messages as part of the Dominion litigation that he hated Trump “passionately.” On Wednesday, Trump skipped the first GOP primary debate, which was hosted on Fox.
Carlson has separately sparked bipartisan backlash for his commentary on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, which he described at one point as “mostly peaceful chaos.”
“I think it was a terrible move getting rid of you,” Trump told the former host. “You’re No. 1 on television and all of a sudden we’re doing this interview but we’ll get bigger ratings doing this crazy forum that you’re using than probably the debate.”