Tucker Carlson Desperately Tried to Avoid Trump’s Call — Until Matt Gaetz Got Involved

When Donald Trump was president, Tucker Carlson was particularly cautious about the counsel he provided, according to reporting from Michael Bender.

Bender — senior White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal and author of the new book, Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost — spoke to Mediaite’s Aidan McLaughlin for the latest episode of The Interview podcast.

Bender detailed a scene in his new tell-all that illustrates how Carlson would go out of his way to avoid conversations with Trump and his annoyance that Rep. Matt Gaetz tricked him into a conversation with Trump that he’d rather have avoided

In the book, the Wall Street Journal reporter described a scene at Mar-a-Lago in which Trump called the Fox News host for input on the deadly military strike he’d ordered that took out Iranian Military Officer Qasem Soleimani in 2020. From the book:

“Get Tucker on the phone,” the president said.

Like Gaetz, Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson opposed American adventurism in the Middle East. Unlike Gaetz, he’d grown wary of Trump’s calls. Carlson wanted to be a TV show host, not one of Trump’s advisers. He was riding along in a golf cart in Florida when he saw Gaetz calling. He answered only to find Trump on the other end.

Carlson was upset—both about the strike and that he’d been tricked into taking a call from the president. But Trump defended the decision to take out Soleimani and described his calculation as partly based impeachment considerations.

“Sixteen Republican senators were calling me, demanding I do this,” Trump told Carlson, keeping Gaetz’s phone on speaker mode. “They want me to do this, and they’re running impeachment. And, you know, it’s really not the time to ignore Republican senators. I had to listen to them.”

“Maybe that’s why they impeached you in the first place, to neuter your instincts,” Carlson told him.

Bender explained on The Interview that the former president wanted to hear Carlson’s opinions on the strike that took out Soleimani and “whether he thinks it was a good thing or a bad thing.”

The reporter went on to explain how Carlson, as a “very successful TV personality” thought he would be “throwing away a lot to try to become a political adviser.” Advising Trump is not a job that tends to end well, and Bender said Carlson “repeatedly goes out of his way to avoid trouble” with the then-president.

Bender explained that Trump often wanted to call Rupert Murdoch and Fox News executives to have them “do his bidding essentially,” and would be “beside himself by the fact that that that they won’t write,” what Trump wanted.

“But there is actually a line even at Fox News and what they will and won’t do for for for Donald Trump,” Bender said.

Listen above via The Interview.

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