With his ratings soaring, Fox News host Tucker Carlson is being talked about in Republican circles as a potential candidate for the 2024 presidential election.
Two reports were published Thursday posing the 51-year-old media giant as an early favorite to be a GOP front-runner after the era of President Trump.
The chatter began in earnest when Republican donors discussed an effort to recruit Carlson for a White House run in New York last month, according to Business Insider. Conservative media too are said to be taking the idea seriously.
“He’s a talented communicator with a massive platform. I think if he runs, he’d be formidable,” Luke Thompson, a Republican strategist who worked for Jeb Bush’s super PAC in 2016, told Politico. Sam Nunberg, a former top political aide to Trump, also views him as a potential candidate next cycle.
A San Francisco-born graduate of Trinity College in Connecticut, Carlson can trace his rise from print journalism gigs in the 1990s to hosting shows on CNN and MSNBC during the 2000s. He has been attached to Fox News for more than 10 years. Carlson also created the Daily Caller, a conservative-leaning publication, with his former college roommate Neil Patel, although Carlson recently gave up his stake in the company.
Carlson dismissed the possibility of a run for the White House last year.
“If I were running for president — which obviously I would never do, I would be insane to run for president, I would never do that — but if I were advising someone who was running for president, I would say make that the centerpiece of your campaign,” he said at the National Conservatism Conference nearly a year ago, discussing how conservatives ought to respond the progressive movement. “Vote for me, and you can raise your own kids.”
Still, that hasn’t discouraged the recent buzz about Carlson as his prime-time show averaged a record 4,331,000 viewers in this year’s second quarter. His monologues have become must-watch TV for conservatives, and Trump and other Republicans often amplify his show by tweeting out clips from it.
Carlson has been a vocal proponent for the president’s more nationalistic endeavors. Carlson also has Trump’s ear, making headlines in March after making his first-ever visit to Mar-a-Lago to warn the president to take the coronavirus seriously, after which the White House declared a national emergency and requested an $850 billion economic relief package.
Carlson has stood out among his prime-time counterparts on Fox News, leaning into “Trumpism” without being afraid to criticize the president, which he has done more than Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. In one monologue last month, Carlson laid into Trump for his response to the George Floyd protests, some of which have spun out into riots. Carlson later warned that the Black Lives Matter movement was significantly more popular than Trump.
He’s also fostered a friendship with the president’s eldest child, Donald Trump Jr., who is seen as a possible successor to his father’s political legacy.
“He’s taking a moment when the GOP is lacking vision or any sort of moral clarity — and he’s providing it,” conservative activist Jon Schweppe told Business Insider. “Naturally, his following is growing. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I hope the president is watching.”
