Why a Trump-Carlson Ticket Merits Serious Consideration

Adding Tucker Carlson to the ticket would not only resolve lingering issues concerning presidential succession, but do so in the most formidable way conceivable.

Please consider upgrading your subscription here, or subscribe to my Newsletter if you have not done so already, to help me keep producing content of the highest possible quality. Your financial contributions, whether via an annual or monthly subscription or gift, are greatly appreciated and truly go a long way to helping me keep my writings available to everyone, free of charge.  Thank you in advance for your generosity! God bless!

While rumors have circulated for months now about the possibility of Donald Trump uniting with Tucker Carlson to make a formidable presidential ticket, they for the most part remained the stuff of idle backroom chatter – until this past week.  When pitched the question of whether he would consider the former Fox News talkshow host during an appearance on The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, the 45^th President said, “I think I’d say I would, because he’s got great common sense.”  Prior to these remarks, which have now made the prospect a serious talking point, Carlson has moved closer and closer to Trump’s orbit in the months since he was forced out of Fox News. On the night of the first televised Republican primary debate, in which Donald Trump notably did not partake, Carlson instead used the occasion to amplify the 45^th President’s message on X, where Carlson’s new show routinely garners hundreds of millions of views.  As a result, President Trump’s forty-five-some-odd minute conversation generated close to three hundred million views, becoming, over just a few days, the most watched television interview of all time. 

A mastery of the media landscape is not the only thing these two outsized personalities have in common.  Both have, particularly in recent years for Carlson, become pariahs of the mainstream media – and specifically, bugaboos of the Murdoch-owned Fox News.  Indeed, it was because of Carlson’s heterodox positions on COVID vaccinations and the war in Ukraine (relative to the rest of the network) that made him at one and the same time Fox’s most successful and most controversial commentator.  The 45^th President’s contretemps with Fox News are arguably even more notorious – going back to the network’s obscenely premature call of the 2020 race for Joe Biden, and subsequently, outright ban the 45^th President and some of his most loyal acolytes, such as Rudy Giuliani, from primetime hours. 

What ultimately unite President Trump and Tucker Carlson that has led to both becoming anathema in the corporate boardrooms of Fox (and many other legacy media outfits) is a shared enmity for the financial and political elites in this country.  In a word, they are both anti-establishment.  But their shared antagonism for the ruling class, the regnant leadership who feel deeper fealty to a globalist order over their own people, runs much deeper than mere anti-establishmentarianism: they are bona fide class traitors.  Hailing from the same cultural and financial centers as our liberal ruling class – New York City, Washington, D.C., La Jolla – Trump and Carlson each have decades between them of experience dwelling and working in the same blue enclaves as our managerial class.  Thus, they understand the psychology, values, and even lifestyles of our leadership better than, say, a rogue populist politician who did not come from wealth or status. 

This makes them each potent weapons because both can identify the problems that run downstream from the suicidal policies advocated by the ruling classes – open borders, endless wars, unchecked trade, outsourcing industry – to a degree better than someone who only recently entered politics, for example.  Whereas Mike Pence, having never enjoyed success outside of politics and not originally coming from wealth himself, could at best only put on a bad impersonation of how someone with a populist bone might behave, Carlson – following Trump’s lead, as a genuine class traitor – is the real deal because he spent his entire life around these people now managing the country to ruins. 

Beyond a common background, both Trump and Carlson are maybe the two most successful Americans at threading the needle between politics, media, and entertainment.  At one point, President Trump was the most successful reality television host – and Carlson, the most successful primetime cable news host.  They have both marinated in the modern news cycle for decades – Carlson once had shows on each of the three cable news networks: CNN, MSNBC, and Fox – while dozens of clips of Donald Trump on Larry King’s CNN show, spanning several decades, can be easily found with a quick Google or YouTube search.  And while President Trump and Tucker Carlson have both lived and breathed politics for a significant portion of their professional lives, neither one qualifies as a true politician.  Between the two of them, they only have four years of official government service – and that of course entirely belongs to Donald Trump’s first term as president.  Beyond the presidency, neither one ever held elected office, which is to their advantage because they are both genuine outsiders.  In contrast with Joe Biden, who first became a U.S. senator in the early 1970s – a half century ago – and thus has more political experience under his belt than most Americans have years to their lives, the mere four years of political experience that a Trump/Carlson ticket would have is a refreshing – indeed, welcome – change of pace. 

Given the geriatric makeup of our ruling class, less “official” political experience is often a badge of honor.  In the case of Tucker Carlson, who has been following the machinations of Washington for decades, it is almost wholly irrelevant. Carlson well understands the personalities and requirements for competent governance, having written and monologued on these subjects for years.  It is thus highly unlikely that Carlson would draw a staff from the same Washington engine that produced so much of the personnel — many of whom came from Pence’s office — that subverted President Trump’s agenda from within his own White House throughout his first term.

More to the point: being a political outsider allows one to study, critique, and lay out solutions to the political problems that would be incomprehensible to a career politician.  Carlson is also an entrepreneur in his own way – although of a different breed than Donald Trump, who made the bulk of his fortune as a Manhattan real estate developer.  Carlson, being a journalist, and having launched his own company in the Daily Caller, boasts a different type of business resume – albeit one complimentary with the pedigree of the man at the top of the ticket.  His journalistic experiences have allowed Carlson to, over the course of nearly three decades, talk about and experience the events of modern American history that have led to our current predicament.  He has toured the Middle East, journeyed countless times to the southern border, traveled to war-torn Ukraine, and more recently, Argentina, Hungary, and Spain – where he has commanded high-profile interviews and on the ground coverage featuring key leaders and focusing on populist/nationalist movements.  He therefore boasts an awareness of an exceedingly complex global situation that few career politicians, beholden to special interests, would be able to match.

At a time of unprecedented crisis on the world stage, it is essential that sobriety – rather than the paranoid zealotry that typifies the rhetoric and politics of Kamala Harris and the administration she represents – steward the ship of state.  Carlson’s politics are neither overtly ideological (he started his career as a libertarian before drifting into populist waters of late), nor even conservative per se – but much like the 45^th President, pragmatic – as he termed it, steeped in “common sense.”  In this sense, the two are kindred spirits.  Now, that is not to say that kindred spirits always make the best shipmates.  After all, one cannot avoid the problems of clashing egos, even among the most reasonable of men – and particularly, of the few men who have made it into Trump and Carlson’s rarefied caliber.  To put it simply, it is not easy to ask someone as independently successful as Tucker Carlson to play second fiddle. 

Nor is it necessarily the case that Carlson would accept the offer, even if asked – and even if asked by President Trump himself, whom Carlson recognizes as a generational talent, even someone he “love[s].”  Being that Carlson has spent decades in the mainstream media, he is no stranger to publicity – of both positive and negative varieties.  Even since his ouster, Carlson remains one of the most famous men in the world – it is partly because of his fame that he has been able to land so many high-profile interviews, from Donald Trump to Andrew Tate to Viktor Orban.  The other side of the equation is that Carlson may not want to put his close family and friends, particularly his wife and children, who live otherwise normal, private lives, through this degree of public scrutiny.  As observed by the countless investigations against the 45^th President, it takes a preternatural will, coupled with a borderline madness, to enter the political arena – especially at the presidential level – in this day and age.  This is no small feat, even for a subordinate role, and invariably takes a significant emotional and spiritual toll on oneself and one’s loved ones.

But the alternative is that same age-old issue that – as raised in Plato’s Republic – ultimately forces the philosopher to descend from the light and creature comforts of the garden to the darkness of the city, or the political arena.  And that issue, of course, is if not Carlson, someone as incompetent, corrupt, and unworthy as Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or even worse – might be his substitute.  The fate of the republic hinges on brave soldiers willing to pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, to pursue the eternal struggle for liberty, a struggle as old as the country itself, and one that must be constantly renewed with each generation.   Carlson has effectively reached the highest summit of fame and fortune a man could possibly have in this life – he not only ascended all the way to the top of his profession as journalist and commentator, but more importantly, has a wonderful marriage and happy and successful children – the truest hallmarks of success.  Unlike the current leadership, both Biden and Harris, whose personal lives are as utterly dysfunctional as their policies and personas, Trump and Carlson stand representative as two of the best public figures who have proficiently navigated both professional and private spheres with alacrity and grace. 

The sacrifice that President Trump made late in life to leave behind the comforts of private life for a greater good is the same undertaking that Carlson should give due consideration.  Carlson’s addition to Trump’s ticket would provide a nice insurance policy for any deep-state chicaneries directed against the 45^th President – an extra layer of protection that would send chills down the spines of every enemy of the republic.  It would also establish a serious line of succession for the MAGA movement, one that so far is precariously dependent on the fate of a single man.  Carlson might just offer the perfect remedy for these and other issues concerning succession, providing the star power, youth, and skillset that would not only resolve those outstanding concerns but do so in the most formidable way conceivable – creating a presidential/vice presidential pairing that will go down as one of the greatest seen in American history.

Order your Patriot Cigars today at mypatriotcigars.com and use Promo Code: TRUMPWON for 15% OFF!

Paul Ingrassia is a Law Clerk at The McBride Law Firm, PLLC. He graduated from Cornell Law School in 2022 and is on the Board of Advisors of the New York Young Republican Club. He is also a two-time Claremont Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, and Rumble.