Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
Where do you go after losing your job as the most popular political pundit on television? For Tucker Carlson, newly ousted from Fox News under circumstances still being revealed, the answer could be a bid for the presidency.
In years past, when he was floated as a possible presidential contender, Carlson was adamant he would not run. Not in 2024—not ever. “I don’t think that way. I don’t want power. I’ve never wanted power,” he said in an interview last year. “I’m annoyed by things, and I want them to change, but I’ve never been motivated by the desire to control people.”
That position made sense when Carlson had his perch at Fox News. Why go through the trials of the trail when you can just talk on television instead? Carlson’s declaration, in the same interview, that his ambition in life amounts to “writ[ing his] script by 8pm” was, though self-deprecating, an expression of interest in influence and attention rather than direct exercise of state authority and the responsibility which comes with it.