Asked Friday if he would run for president in 2024, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said no, for now, but he then launched into what could’ve passed for a fiery populist campaign speech.
SO WHAT
It took Carlson three minutes to sum up the frustrations of millions of MAGA voters.
WHAT HAPPENED
Speaking at the Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines, Iowa, Carlson threw cold water on growing enthusiasm for him to make a White House bid, saying, “I have every intention of staying in the job I’m blessed to have.”
But the top-rated cable news host also acknowledged, “God knows what the future holds,” before launching into an anti-establishment rant.
- Carlson expressed deep dissatisfaction with GOP leadership and said he understands why the Republican base embraced an outsider like former President Trump.
- “Republican voters understood on a gut level, that they were not always able to articulate, that whatever Trump’s problems, he kind of liked them. These other people, they knew, that when no one was watching it was, ‘oh the Evangelicals! The snake handlers, whatever,'” he said.
- “The average Republican voter is not represented in a meaningful way by his or her leaders in Washington.”
A potential “Tucker 2024” campaign has gained traction even in the mainstream press, with liberal outlets like The Guardian taking it seriously.
- “There’s a very good chance that the most popular, and most dangerous Republican candidate would be Tucker Carlson,” political strategist Juleanna Glover wrote in Politico Magazine earlier this month.
CARLSON’S CLASS WAR
While left-leaning commentators have generally characterized the MAGA movement as racist and authoritarian, Carlson has not been alone in seeing Trump voters as part of a legitimate uprising.
- University of Texas political science professor Michael Lind argued in his 2020 book, “The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite,” that working-class Americans are resisting the imposition of a “high-tech caste system” by a “managerial overclass.”
FYI: A 2017 Harvard-Harris poll found 76% of Republicans believed GOP leaders in Congress were out of touch with the concerns of their voters.
- Only 39% said the leaders represent their views.