Fox News’s Tucker Carlson said he has no interest in running for the White House during an interview Friday with the conservative podcast “Ruthless.”
“Oh God, come on! Yeah. I’ll be running,” Carlson said facetiously when asked if he was running for president.
Carlson said the job has no appeal to him and would also not be very popular with his family.
“That seems like a fun job. I’m sure my poor children would love that. Can you imagine?” he said. “I’ve known and talked to every president, you know, for a while, for like more than 30 years. And you know, I can’t think of anyone whose life was improved by that.”
“I mean, I guess if like I was the last person on earth, I could do it, but I mean, it seems pretty unlikely that I would be that guy,” he added.
The answer was Carlson’s latest declaration he has no interest in running for president.
Talk of a possible Carlson White House bid has taken place given the popularity of his show, which is often the most highly rated program on cable television.
In July, political strategists, commentators and several leading Republicans told Politico the 2024 GOP nomination was Carlson’s if he wanted it.
“Let me put it this way: If Biden wins and Tucker decided to run, he’d be the nominee,” Sam Nunberg, a former top political aide, told Politico.
Republican political Vernon Robinson even predicted that Carlson “will be the Republican nominee” in an interview with The Independent last September.
But Carlson has dismissed the idea, at least as far back as 2019 during a keynote address at a conservative gathering, according to National Review.
“If I were running for president — which obviously I would never do, I would be insane to run for president, I would never do that,” Carlson said while offering advice to Republican politicians on how to appeal to voters during his keynote address at the National Conservatism Conference.
And Carlson has made similarly dismissive statements about a possible presidential candidacy to other outlets: “No I’m not running for anything — come on,” he told Mediaite in a podcast interview last August.