Top-rated Fox News host Tucker Carlson has revealed why he was happy to become a huge supporter of Donald Trump as he ran for president the first time in 2015. Carlson made his revelations in an interview with former Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard on her new podcast this week.
Watch Tulsi discover her purpose:
Here’s a transcript of her conversation with Tucker, per Real Clear Politics:
I wasn’t against the system at all. Really what changed me was watching Trump in 2015. And I knew Trump before because I’m in the media, so I had known Trump, not well, for 15 years before — a long time. And I thought he was kind of a buffoon. I still think that sometimes. But what changed my view wasn’t Trump, it was the reaction to Trump among my neighbors.
So Trump would say something in his florid, orange way. Like, “We are we funding NATO?” And that was the one that got me. I’d never questioned NATO because I grew up during the Cold War, and NATO was the bulwark against Soviet aggression in Western Europe. My dad worked for the government, so like, we were totally for NATO, why wouldn’t we be? But that ended in August of 1991, I was on my honeymoon when the Soviet Union collapsed, but we still had NATO in 2015? What was the point?
My neighbors were like, “Shut up! He must be killed!”
OK, maybe shut up and he must be killed, but what’s the answer to the question?
Why are we funding NATO? Is there a good reason? “Shut up!”
They were so hysterical about obvious and basic common sense questions about the way things were working that that was a tell to me. I was stunned by it, actually. Reasonable people who were acting out of honorable motives should be happy or at least willing to explain themselves.
Hey Tulsi, why are you doing that? If you’re like, “Shut up!” then that tells me that you’re doing something wrong. You may disagree but here’s why. They couldn’t do that on any topic.
Immigration policy, I’ve never been like, against immigrants or anything, but you should have control of your border. And Trump, in his Trumpian way was basically arguing for that. They couldn’t deal with any questions about the way things were then operating. And when I saw that, it completely exploded my view of the system. This system is a lot more fragile than I realized.
Gabbard herself is somewhat of a political maverick, having left her party earlier this fall over its divisiveness and insane focus on ‘wokeness.’