OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former Fox News star Tucker Carlson, who has been producing content for the X platform with much success, made a dire prediction about the 2024 election cycle at a Las Vegas conference earlier this week.
Carlson shared his thoughts on contemporary political and cultural issues at the Risk On 360! Global Success Conference, according to The Daily Caller, the news outlet he co-founded. He spoke just over a year before early voting for the 2024 elections begins.
The people Carlson has recently spoken with are “angry and paranoid,” he began, before clarifying that they are not conspiracy theorists but rather ordinary citizens worried about the state of the nation.
“I flew out here across the country this morning and spent five hours texting people … and I gotta tell you, every single person I texted, except my wife — who’s not on the internet at all — was angry and paranoid,” Carlson said.
“Seriously, and these are not crazy people. These are normal good people with kids and stuff. With a vested interest in Americans’ success. These are not the burn-it-down caucus. These are the, you know, these are the people you want voting,” he added.
Carlson continued to express that, based on his “assessment” of their perspectives, he believes their feelings are entirely justified. He pointed out that the growing tension within America is likely to spill over into the next year as the U.S. approaches an intense election season.
“And I have to say after assessing their views for five hours, I think they were justified in both. They had every reason to be angry and all the evidence required to become paranoid,” Carlson continued. “I’m just telling you once again, what you already know, which is this is going to be — the next year is going to be, I think I’d bet my house on it, really like nothing we’ve ever seen in the country. And everyone can kind of feel that. You know, most of our perceptions come through intuition rather than reason.”
“But if you’re close to your dog, you know, the dog knows exactly what’s going on … they just watch and they feel. And people are very much the same. And if something bad is about to happen, everybody gets jumpy. And everybody’s jumpy right now,” Carlson stated.
Carlson provided some “suggestions” for the upcoming months, emphasizing the importance of staying informed about political developments.
He called attention to President Joe Biden’s mental state and underscored the indictments against former President Donald Trump. Additionally, Carlson cited the country’s predominant social issues, including gender ideology.
Carlson then shifted to Trump’s pending court cases: “Every time he gets indicted and every time they tack years onto this potential sentence, he becomes more popular—and now he’s winning.”
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman made headlines earlier this month when she said there is a “real” chance that Trump will ask Carlson to be his running mate in 2024.
During an interview with host Jamie Weinstein on The Dispatch Podcast, Haberman talked about how the former president plans to fill his new administration with devoted supporters if he wins a second term.
Because of this, Weinstein asked Haberman what he thought about rumors that Trump might choose Carlson to be his vice president.
“It’s a real thing that I am hearing as a possibility,” Haberman said. “The likelihood of it, I don’t know. I think there will be a pretty professional vetting process, honestly. I know that might sound unbelievable based on what we’ve seen from Trump historically, but Trump’s current political team is the best—at least as a non-incumbent—that he’s had, and there’s just a different level of control.”
While Haberman continued to speak about Carlson as a potential Trump VP pick, she noted that “the risk with Tucker Carlson and Trump is that Tucker Carlson’s a very big star in his own right, and I’m not sure how Trump would contend with that.”
Trump and Carlson have been on friendly terms in the public eye. Trump skipped one of the GOP presidential primary debates to have a sitdown with Carlson, and the two have enjoyed each other’s company in other social situations.
Earlier this month, Trump said he’d consider Carlson as a potential running mate in 2024.
“I like Tucker a lot; I guess I would,” Trump said during an appearance on “The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show” last week. “I think I’d say I would because he’s got great common sense. You know, when they say that you guys are conservative, or I’m conservative — it’s not that we’re conservative, we have common sense. We want to have safe borders. We want to have a wall, because walls work.”
