There is a “real” chance that former President Donald Trump will ask former Fox News host Tucker Carlson to be his running mate in 2024, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman.
During an interview with host Jamie Weinstein for Monday’s episode of 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.”
Fox News fired Carlson in April, just a few days after agreeing to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787 million to settle defamation claims outside of court. The host now has a video series on the X, which used to be Twitter, but he or she is still under contract with Fox.
Beyond that, Trump is now leading President Biden in a major national survey for the first time, another huge signal that the current commander-in-chief is in trouble politically heading into next year’s election.
NBC political correspondent Steve Kornacki reported on Sunday that Trump was leading Biden in the network’s poll by a margin of 46-44 percent, adding that while Biden has long held a “likeability” advantage over Trump, the latest survey shows the two men tied in that category as well.
“The gap is gone. Thirty-six percent positive on both and actually Biden, one point more negative than Trump. That’s been a significant advantage for Biden. Our poll says that advantage, at least for now, may be gone,” Kornacki noted.
In addition, the political correspondent said that, according to the survey, just 40 percent of respondents gave Biden positive job approval, which is also the lowest number in the span of the current president’s term.
And just 30 percent of self-identifying Independents give Biden positive job approval ratings.
“If you take a look here by party, I think it’s significant for two reasons: one, Independents, obviously, more than two to one disapprove. You don’t want to be there as an incumbent president. But I think equally significant, no surprise, 7% of Republicans approve of Joe Biden, job performance, but three times as many Democrats, 21%, that’s more than one in five, say they disapprove. You need much more unified support in your own party if you’re going to have a successful reelection campaign,” Kornacki said.
While younger voters tend to skew more liberal, the latest NBC poll found that voters ages 18-24 were actually leaning toward Trump, 46-42 percent.
“The youngest voters in the 2020 election were Biden +28,” Kornacki said. “This could be a massive sea change.”
Other recent surveys show Trump moving past Biden in a basket of key swing states.
According to a new PRRI Research/Ipsos survey, Biden edged Trump in a national two-person race, 48–46 percent, with 6 percent saying they did not prefer either candidate, according to Breitbart News last month.
“However, Trump has a clear advantage over Biden in key swing states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, leading Biden by a difference of six points—49 percent to the 80-year-old’s 43 percent,” the outlet added, citing the survey’s results.
Previous surveys have also shown Trump leading Biden in the critical swing states.
Voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were polled by Bloomberg/Morning Consult, and their results showed that Trump was ahead of Biden by 4 percentage points due to widespread disapproval of the vice president’s handling of the economy.
Trump has a 5-point lead over Biden in Georgia, a 4-point lead over Biden in Arizona, a 2-point lead in Wisconsin, a 1-point lead in Wisconsin, and a 1-point lead in Pennsylvania. According to the survey, Biden is ahead of Trump by three points in Nevada, and the two candidates are neck and neck in Michigan.
In the seven swing states, 49% of voters said Bidenomics was bad for the economy. This is the term the White House has used to describe Vice President Joe Biden’s economic agenda.
In those seven states, 46% of undecided voters think Bidenomics is bad for the economy, while 41% either don’t know enough about it or have no opinion.
The survey found that 14% of voters who said they would vote for the president in 2020 now say they would vote for Trump, are undecided, or will not vote at all.
Only 9% of Trump voters in 2020 said they would vote for Joe Biden in 2024, while 91% of Trump voters in 2020 said they would vote for Trump again.
This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
