Fox News host Tucker Carlson said he felt a “moral obligation” when he made his first-ever visit to Mar-a-Lago earlier this month to warn the president to take the coronavirus seriously.
Carlson made the visit during a party for Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend. But the Fox News host told Vanity Fair on Tuesday that he did not know the party was happening and only came to the resort to speak with the president.
His conversation with Trump lasted two hours, and, during that time, he impressed on him how important it was to take the coronavirus threat seriously because it poses a dangerous threat to both the country and his presidency.
“I felt I had a moral obligation to be useful in whatever small way I could, and, you know, I don’t have any actual authority. I’m just a talk show host,” Carlson said. “But I felt — and my wife strongly felt — that I had a moral obligation to try and be helpful to in whatever way possible.”
The host said it “was very clear” that the White House “had been thinking about the world in ideological terms and in political terms” because of impeachment and was missing how the coronavirus posed an actual threat to the country.
“We spent three and a half years arguing about whether the president was a Russian agent, and he got impeached, and they were in that way of thinking, and it’s just hard to transition there. And maybe that’s part of the cost of doing that shit, you know what I mean?” he said.
Since Carlson’s visit to the Mar-a-Lago, Trump declared a national emergency over the coronavirus and requested an $850 billion stimulus package to combat the economic impact.
Over 6,000 people have confirmed cases of the coronavirus while 17 people have recovered from the disease according to Johns Hopkins University.
