Tucker Carlson suggests Trump is intentionally sinking his chances of re-election

Fans of Fox News host Tucker Carlson were shocked on Thursday to hear the conservative anchor suggest that the president is secretly trying to sabotage his own re-election bid.  The only reason President Trump would ever pursue “mindless and counterproductive” reforms like imposing a gas tax or cutting Medicare, argued Carlson, is if he intentionally sought to throw the 2020 election. 

“He wants out,” the Tucker Carlson Tonight host declared after listing unpopular policies that Trump has reportedly considered.

Career suicide

Anyone who doesn’t regularly watch Fox News might assume that its current lineup of primetime opinion anchors are exceptionally loyal to the current Republican administration.

However, Carlson’s Thursday evening monologue demonstrated that the cable news network may be more balanced than critics suggest.

Watch Carlson’s analysis (remarks begin at 16:37):

Carlson offered his viewers a “hypothetical” scenario wherein Trump secretly longs for a return to his pre-presidential days. Why would Trump want to subject himself to constant, unchecked criticism when he could simply return to Trump Tower and live out his remaining days as a billionaire celebrity with free private security?

“Everyone assumes he wants to be reelected — most presidents do,” Carlson began. “But what if Donald Trump has decided he’s had enough? Too many investigations, too much nastiness, too few upsides. It wouldn’t be a crazy conclusion,” he said. “How’d you like to spend your 70s in the White House?”

Carlson went after the President for pursuing policies that don’t jive with his America First agenda. “If you’re really sick of the job, go with the gas tax,” he said.

Next, Carlson slammed a proposed half a billion dollar cut to Medicare cuts. “That’s something that no one outside the libertarian symposiast circuit wants to see.” He also pointed to potential cuts to the government e-Verify program, allowing “companies to continue hiring illegal alien labor in violation of a key campaign promise.” If the president moves forward with plans to “release a bunch of drug dealers” from prison “in the middle of a drug epidemic,” argued Carlson, then “he has no idea what he ran on in 2016, he just wants out.”

Loyalty test

Fox News hosts are frequently chastised for blindly supporting Trump and his America First agenda. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer described Fox News as a “propaganda organization” for the president. “I think the question should be, is Fox state-run TV or is the White House state-run government by Fox TV?” asked CNN President Jeff Zucker.

But this analysis is unfair and inaccurate. Fox News splits its coverage between traditional newsgathering and political commentary. Within the former category, news anchors like Shep Smith, Chris Wallace and Bret Baier have been consistently critical of the Republican administration, and Trump has been anything but gracious in return.

Were @FoxNews weekend anchors, @ArthelNeville and @LelandVittert, trained by CNN prior to their ratings collapse? In any event, that’s where they should be working, along with their lowest rated anchor, Shepard Smith!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2019

While the network’s opinion broadcasters generally stand behind the president, they are anything but Trump cheerleaders. Laura Ingraham, normally an ardent defender of the president’s policies, accused Trump of making “a ridiculous mistake” when he attacked British Prime Minister Theresa May last year in an interview with U.K. newspaper The Sun. 

“If someone comes to our country, a foreign leader, and criticizes our president or our policies, we don’t much like that in the United States and I don’t think Donald Trump likes that,” Ingraham said on her show.

Fair and balanced

Carlson, too, has been highly critical of the president when he has deserved it. In December, the conservative pundit excoriated Trump for breaking his promise to voters and suggested that he was not “capable” of living up to Republican expectations due to his legislative inexperience.

When Trump held bipartisan immigration negotiations on Capitol Hill, Carlson was furious. “Today, in a remarkable twist, the president held a televised meeting with the very swamp creatures he once denounced. He told them he trusted them to craft immigration policy without his input.”

This time, however, Carlson is giving the president fair warning. He can stick to the type of bold foreign and domestic policies that got him elected, or risk losing support from his base.