I’m going to be Frank with you, Jim: I haven’t watched this speech yet. Of course I’m going to. I had a busy, wacky weekend. But this is pretty important stuff, so I want to get the news out there while it’s hot, and comment on it later: on Friday, Tucker Carlson went to Des Moines, Iowa and gave a speech that was possibly akin to a campaign speech.
Somehow, this entire happening slipped my grasp. I heard him say that he’d be involved in a speaking engagement, and just assumed it was like any of his previous speaking engagements, which he does once or twice a week at various political conventions. But then I thought “wait, did you say Iowa?”
Because more than half of our readers are non-American, and half the Americans are 12 years old, I should explain: Iowa is where the first primary of the presidential season is held (it’s not actually a primary, but a caucus, which is not the same thing as a primary, but plays the same role of selecting a nominee for each party). This happens in January or a presidential election year.
Because the first (not) primary naturally sets the tone of the primary season, people considering a run for president often (maybe always) visit Iowa and give speeches, just to see what happens.
Again, I’m posting this cold, without having watched the speech, but the media is reacting as though this means Tucker Carlson is considering a 2024 run, and that does actually appear to indicate that this is what that means. Of course, it could just be similar to Tucker’s other political events he’s spoken at, and the fact that it’s in Iowa could just be a strange coincidence. It wouldn’t be that strange of a coincidence, as events are more likely to be held in Iowa, because of the aforementioned status as tone-setter. It might just be that he was asked to come and was like “hey, okay.”
I will need to watch the speech this evening to get a better idea of what I think of its implications, but the media is saying he’s considering a run. For example, Yahoo! News published a piece quoting various analysts saying he’s considering it over the weekend, while even before the event (but after it was announced), some stupid woman in POLITICO demanded that Jewish former Daily Show Host Jon Stewart challenge him in 2024.
For his part, Tucker has denied it, as he’s always denied it.
Long time readers are aware that my Golden Path was for Carlson to run in 2028 after a second term of Trump. Then the election was stolen from Trump, due to the virus hoax. Tucker’s show is involved with (and is basically kept on the air by) various forces in Peter Thiel world, which is why he plays such an aggressive role shilling people like JD Vance and Blake Masters (both of whom I not only disavow, but hope die in car crashes or of rare quick-onset cancers). Tucker also shilled for Joe Kent (who I actually do not like), and his shilling appeared to result in Thiel giving money to Kent (which might make Kent behave better, we’ve not seen yet).
Tucker Carlson is the only player in the game as a real candidate for a real leadership role in America. Trump is looming over everything now, but apparently, Ron DeSantis – who is the villain of this story – is getting a lot more campaign money than Trump, and it’s very unclear how Trump would be able to run successfully without the permission of the media, given that they’ve already established that he’s not allowed on the media, and America at this point has about as much media freedom as North Korea. The media could decide that they want Trump in the race, because he would turn out their own people, and they could decide that it doesn’t matter anyway, because they have institutionalized all the coronavirus mail-in stuff that allowed them to commit such massive fraud in 2020.
The more interesting “what if” is that by 2024, the actions of this government on the geopolitical stage could have caused a total economic disaster and hyperinflation, which would make the presidential race a whole lot more real (the Democrat Party would lack the organization to commit 2020-scale fraud, and you’d have 80+% of the people voting against the party that destroyed the economy, which might just make successful fraud impossible even if they could organize it).
If given the choice, I would absolutely endorse Tucker over Trump. In any other scenario, I endorse Trump. I would assume that Tucker’s position would be that if Trump had a clear shot, he would wait around for 2028, but if Trump somehow crashed and burned and the campaign became nonviable, he’d step in against DeSantis.
Of course, I have literally no idea about any of this. You know I don’t talk to any of these people, of course. I don’t even talk to any people who talk to these people. But I do have pretty good instincts.
Tucker is hard to get a read on. After Blake Neff was fired as head writer in July of 2020 over some stupid “racist internet posts” scandal, the show took a sharp turn for the worse. It’s gotten progressively better, though I do not think it has ever gotten back to where it was. Tucker has good instincts, and I’m sure good intentions, but it’s very clear that he relies heavily on staff to formulate his arguments for him, and sometimes he wraps very good points around total gibberish in a way that I dislike. But overall, even with all of the alternative content on the internet, his show is always worth 40 minutes of my day.
After 2020, I was totally dejected, and thought we were all doomed. Then this Biden Administration started doing what it has done, and its actions geopolitically, threatening the entire basis of the United States’ position as a superpower (which is the entire basis of our economy), has made me a lot more hopeful – tentatively hopeful.
In itself, Tucker giving a political speech means nothing (again, I’m writing this without having watched it yet, and will be doing a follow-up tomorrow, but I’m pretty sure it definitely doesn’t mean anything regardless of the content and presentation). But it’s definitely something we’ll be keeping an eye on. (And I promise to watch the speech and Q&A posted above sometime in the next 24 hours and give some content analysis.)