Tucker Carlson Says Trump Came Up With X Interview Idea As Debate Counterprogramming - Forbes

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Topline

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson took to X, formerly known as Twitter, hours before his interview with former President Donald Trump is scheduled to air to promote the counterprogramming to the first Republican debate, saying “voters have an interest in hearing” what Trump thinks.

Key Facts

In the video posted to X around 3 p.m. Eastern Time—six hours before the interview and the Republican National Committee's debate are scheduled to begin—Carlson revealed Trump approached his team about having a conversation in lieu of attending the debate.

Carlson called Trump the “indisputable, far-and-away frontrunner in the Republican race” and said he’d have “a far larger audience” on X “than he’d receive on cable news.”

Trump confirmed in a Truth Social post Sunday he would be skipping the debate—which is being aired on Carlson’s former network—citing his “legendary” lead of 42 points above his nearest opponent in a CBS poll (Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis) and saying the public knows who he is and “what a successful Presidency” he had.

What To Watch For

If Trump and Carlson actually draw a “far larger audience” than the first RNC debate. Carlson’s most recent episode of “Tucker on X” had 8.3 million views as of Wednesday afternoon, though that isn’t the number of views in real time and it’s unclear how many viewers watched the entirety of the episode, which was about 52 minutes. X counts a view as any time “a user watches a video for at least 2 seconds and sees at least 50% of the video player in-view,” but that isn’t the metric shown beneath tweets—rather that figure shows the number of accounts logged into X that saw the tweet.

Key Background

Trump had been teasing whether he would attend the first GOP debate for months—and had even been verbally polling crowds at campaign rallies about what he should do. Trump has been dissatisfied with Fox News’ coverage of him since his 2020 election loss, though he appeared to be a bit happier in recent months as he met with Fox News leadership to discuss debate attendance and interviewed with host Sean Hannity in March after a months-long break from the network. But recently, Trump reverted back to criticism of the network, last week accusing it of highlighting polls that showed other candidates’ success rather than his own. Carlson has also feuded with the network after he was fired in April and has reportedly taken steps to form a new media company with ex-White House advisor Neil Patel. He began hosting his show on X on June 6.