Fox News’ Tucker Carlson is dishing out campaign advice for Republican candidates running for office in the November election: whatever you do, don’t do what Lindsey Graham does.
On Carlson’s show Friday night, he once again had zero nice things to say about the senator from South Carolina and, in fact, laid out his disdain for him pretty clearly.
With the “red wave” that was once projected to easily bring Republicans back into power in the House come the mid-term election in November now not looking so definite, Carlson pointed his finger at one of the reasons he believes brought about the turnaround.
“In a special election last week in New York’s 19th congressional district, Democrat Pat Ryan beat Republican Marc Molinaro. Now, in a red wave year, you would’ve thought the opposite would happen. And this was a very tight district. This district went to Joe Biden by a point and a half in the last election,” Carlson said, listing several races where Democrats outperformed.
“There’s evidence that the Republican Party may be at fault by alienating its own voters and not getting them to the polls,” Carlson continued, noting that Molinaro lit up a county office building in Upstate New York with Ukraine’s colors as a show of support as Russian began its assault.
He noted that earlier this year, Molinaro, a county executive in upstate New York, ordered a county office building illuminated with Ukraine’s colors to express solidarity as Russia began its invasion of the country. “As if his voters care.” A real “joke” move, Carlson said.
Flipping to a video clip of Graham calling for the U.S. to send military aid to Ukraine to hold off Russia, the host said, “So just to be clear to Republican candidates — that was Lindsey Graham. Your job is to make fun of Lindsey Graham and to disavow Lindsey Graham. Your job is not to emulate Lindsey Graham and steal his talking points. And if you do emulate Lindsey Graham and steal his talking points, you will lose. And the losing candidates did just that.”
Carlson’s beef with Graham is nothing new. Back in 2020, Carlson did a brief segment about Donald Trump’s interviews with reporter Bob Woodward, which made up much of the substance of Woodward’s book, “Rage”. But Carlson’s target in his rant wasn’t Woodward — it was Graham, who the Fox News host claimed “brokered” Trump’s relationship with Woodward.
“It was Lindsey Graham who helped convince Donald Trump to talk to Bob Woodward. Lindsey Graham brokered that meeting. Lindsey Graham even sat in on the first interview between Bob Woodward and the president. How’d that turn out?” Carlson complained.
And Carlson went in for the verbal kill:
“Now remember, Lindsey Graham is supposed to be a Republican, so why would he do something like that? You’d have to ask him, but keep in mind that Lindsey Graham has opposed — passionately opposed — virtually every major policy initiative that Donald Trump articulated when he first ran from ending illegal immigration, to pulling back from pointless wars, to maintaining law and order at home. Lindsey Graham was against all of that more than many Democrats. So maybe you already know the answer.”
