Tucker Carlson had an amusingly heated argument with fellow conservative, Texas Senator Ted Cruz in the latest episode of his podcast, when the duo discussed potential U.S. military action against Iran. But the heat wasn’t about the action itself, but rather about basic facts about the western Asian country.
Cruz was fully in support of attacking Iran, and Carlson, who was recently insulted by Donald Trump for opposing such action, gave Cruz the business of Cruz’s clear lack of actual knowledge about a country he wants to attack.
“How many people live in Iran, by the way?” Carlson asked. “I don’t know the population at all… I don’t know the population,” Cruz rpelied.
“You don’t know the population in the country you seek to topple?” Carlson, asked with an incredulous tone of voice. He then clarified that Iran currently has an estimated population of 92 million. “How could you not know that?”
“I don’t sit around memorizing population tables,” Cruz spat out. “Well, it’s kind of relevant, because you’re calling for the overthrow of the government,” Carlson retorted.
When Cruz asked why that matters, Carlson said, “Why you don’t know anything about the country?” He then asked Cruz about the ethnic makeup of Iran, to which Cruz responded “you don’t know anything about Iran, you’re the one who claims they’re not trying to murder Donald Trump.”
At that Carlson burst out in sarcastic laugher, declaring “you don’t believe that” to Cruz. At this point, Cruz referred to Israeli strikes on Iran, though he used the pronoun “we” to describe it, which sounded in the moment as if the US and Israel were conducting joint operations.
“You’re breaking news here because the US government last night denied [it],
Carlson said. “The National Security Council spokesman Alex heifer, denied, on behalf of Trump, that we were acting on Israel’s behalf in any offensive capacity.”
“We’re not bombing them, Israel’s bombing them,: Crus insisted. “You just said we were,” Carlson replied.
Anyway, you all get the gist. Watch the wild argument below:
