We still don’t know for sure if Ron DeSantis is going to run. The rest of the field after Donald Trump is a bunch of weak controlled opposition Republicans including Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, John Bolton, and the immortal Asa Hutchinson. In light of all this, the Republican primary debates could end up being a major snoozefest. Tucker Carlson, however, has a tantalizingly different idea: he is considering hosting his own debate, outside of the Republic National Committee framework. Now that could liven things up considerably.
The snag that Carlson is still an employee of Fox News remains, but the Washington Post reported Thursday that if he is “willing to walk away from some of the millions that Fox is contractually obligated to pay him, if that would give him the flexibility to have a prominent voice in the 2024 election cycle.” Bernie Sanders would tell Tucker that he has plenty of money already, so why not? If he does go this route, Carlson could “moderate his own GOP candidate forum, outside of the usual strictures of the Republican National Committee debate system.”
That would be a breath of fresh air, as anyone who remembers the viciously biased performance of Chris Wallace in the first 2020 debate between Trump and Old Joe Biden can attest. Wallace did everything he could to sandbag Trump and let Old Joe get away with a cornucopia of lies, false denials, and false accusations. It was clear that Wallace was angling for the job he soon got at CNN, where he was a spectacular failure, and that he was eager in his debate “moderation” to make the doddering kleptocrat Biden look as good as possible, and the America-First president as bad as possible.
A debate with Tucker Carlson moderating would be an entirely different matter. It opens up the possibility of candidates, for the very first time in the history of modern presidential debates, being asked questions from a patriotic perspective and confronted about issues that the establishment media refuses to discuss. Instead of being led for the umpteenth time to the prepackaged conclusions that the Leftist political and media establishment demands that we accept, there might be an opportunity for candidates to think beyond sound bites and shibboleths and actually engage in some independent thought. Even in a debate featuring such lackluster establishment hacks as John Bolton and Asa Hutchinson, that could be positively scintillating.
The Post explains that “the idea, which he has discussed with Donald Trump, the front-runner for the party nomination, would test his vaunted sway over conservative politics. And it would take a jab at his former employer — Fox is hosting the first official primary debate, which Trump has threatened not to attend.” True to form, the Post, a foremost establishment organ, is not even bothering to consider how explosive it could be to see a discussion among presidential candidates that wasn’t conducted from the far-Left point of view that the political and media elites want us to accept as axiomatically true. Such a debate could have consequences far beyond the 2024 presidential campaign. That may be why the Leftist wonks who run the Post didn’t dare even go there.
Related: Okay, Hold Everything: Tucker Carlson WASN’T Fired, Says ‘I’m Still Employed by Fox’
The Post does, however, discuss the interest of smaller patriotic networks including Newsmax and One America News Network in bringing Carlson on. It informs those luckless enough to read its twaddle that Carlson is “a polarizing personality whose disparaging comments about immigrants, defense of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, and dabbling in paranoid white-nationalist theories during his years on Fox would make him toxic for mainstream media companies.” Carlson himself, of course, rejects the very idea that there was a Jan. 6 “insurrection” and was instrumental in exploding the Left’s narrative on this point, and stoutly rejects the white nationalist smear. The Post’s sneering character assassination shows why it’s all the more important to have alternative voices out there.
And so the prospect of a Carlson-moderated debate is exciting. One observer noted: “He could go straight to the candidates, stream it live, invite the networks but maintain control over the process.” In 2016, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign got a massive boost from his going straight to the American people on Twitter. In 2024, Tucker Carlson could do a great deal to restore our severely damaged republic by giving us a primary debate in which the candidates had to speak honestly and confront the actual issues, rather than simply demonstrate their fealty, or lack thereof, to pet Leftist causes. Let’s hope it happens.
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