While maintaining his disbelief that Tucker Carlson would run for president in 2028 at all, conservative journalist Mark Halperin said Wednesday that if the former Fox News host somehow got on the general election ballot and had a presence on the debate stage, “that would be the doom for the Republican Party. Unequivocally.”
Halperin lightly sparred with podcast host Megyn Kelly on Wednesday’s episode of “The Megyn Kelly Show” as she said that she believes Carlson will run as a third party candidate following the reveal that he and Marjorie Taylor Greene have formed a new “American First” movement after being disillusioned by the Trump administration’s war in Iran and more.
“Tucker’s as likely to run for president as I am to move to India and start my cricket career, I just don’t think it’s going to happen,” Halperin quipped.
But Kelly dug her heels in: “I haven’t talked him directly about it, but I believe Tucker is so disgusted in the neocons and what’s happened within the Republican Party that for the first time, he actually would consider it.”
Halperin went on to emphasize the difficulty of running a third party campaign in the United States — “nearly impossible in our system” — despite there being “tens of millions of people who like that point of view of that group.”‘
The group in question shared a dinner party photo from Carlson’s Maine home over the weekend and announced their “movement.” Included in the photo were Carlson, Greene, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), Joe Kent and related spouses.
You can watch the interview in the video below.
“We said no more foreign wars and we meant it and supported Donald Trump because he made that promise,” Greene wrote on Saturday. “But he’s betrayed us all. Our commitment is America First for all Americans, right, left and center. The movement has begun.”
On Tuesday, Kent guested on “The Young Turks” podcast and revealed that everyone in the new conservative movement has tried to talk Carlson into running for president in 2028.
“I’d say all of us at one point in time told Tucker he needs to run, and Tucker’s been pretty public that he’s not going to run,” Kent told host Cenk Uygur. “So we all made our pitch to Tucker as to why he should run, and hopefully he wakes up one day and says he’s gonna run. I fully support that.”
On her Wednesday podcast, Kelly admitted that the road to success as a third-party candidate is difficult, but 10 to 20 million votes is 10 to 20 million votes.
“No party can afford to lose that many voters in a general election,” Kelly argued.
“Getting ballot access is really difficult. Determining a process by which you select your nominee is really difficult. So if magically they could be on the general election ballot and in the debates, yeah, that would be the doom for the Republican Party. Doom, I mean, unequivocally,” Halperin said.
But the journalist again emphasized his doubts that Carlson would seriously consider joining politics.
“In terms of what that group represents, they have a lot of grievance, I know they’re against a lot of stuff, but I don’t really know what they’re for and again, you don’t start a political party without standing for something,” he said. “So mark me down as skeptical that Tucker wants to give up the great life he has now for a fool’s errand.”
On Tuesday, Carlson cryptically shared that he had more to say about his new movement with Greene on his personal website, scheduled for 6 p.m. Eastern.
