In a surprising twist, Tucker Carlson is publicly eating his words. After private texts of him denouncing former president Donald Trump were released earlier this month as part of Fox News’ ongoing lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems, Carlson addressed the damning messages Tuesday in conversation with conservative host Bo Snerdley on WABC Radio.
“I love Trump,” Carlson said, later adding that he was “humiliated” at the time and “enraged” that his private texts were aired out for all to see.
You can listen to the conversation below via MediaMatters.
“I spent four years defending his policies and I — I’m going to defend them again tonight,” Carlson said of Trump on Tuesday. “And actually, and I’m pretty straight forward, I’m — I love Trump. Like, as a person, I think Trump is funny and insightful.”
Brushing off the texts – which expressed disdain for the former president, saying, among other things, “I hate him passionately” – Carlson went on to say that the exchanges came at “a moment in time where I was absolutely infuriated.” He added that he’s since cleared the air with Trump on a recent phone call.
“I think this is in the text — and those were all grabbed completely illegitimately, in my opinion, in this court case, which I guess I’m not allowed to talk about, but I’m enraged that my private texts were pulled,” Carlson continued. “But those — those particular texts were pulled at exactly — at the moment where I was texting with one of my producers because some idiot on the Trump campaign had sent us the name of these dead voters who had voted. And we went and I repeated them on air, and it turns out some of them were alive. So. I was just — I felt humiliated. Yeah. Like what? And I thought then and I think now that that election was not on the level, it was not a free and fair election. I thought that then. I think it now.”
Snerdley ran to Carlson defense, echoing that things are often said in bouts of anger that do “not represent the whole body of our thoughts.”
You can listen to a clip from the radio interview in the audio embed above.
