Tucker Carlson apologized for defending former Vice President Dick Cheney for more than two decades, but he’s only sharing his regrets because the politician is now supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in her run for president.
The former Fox News anchor expounded on Cheney while chatting with Megyn Kelly during an appearance on her podcast “The Megyn Kelly Show.” On Wednesday’s episode, Carlson shared how he’d previously asked his good bud Russell Brand how he clocked his ill feelings about Cheney earlier on.
“I asked the other night, I was with Russell Brand, who I love, and I said to him, ‘You kind of called this early, what about Dick Cheney made you uncomfortable 20 years ago that I missed?’ And he just said, ‘He just seemed a bit evil.’ And that’s kind of true,” the conservative pundit told Kelly. “I just felt shame for ignoring that. It’s like Mr. Burns from ‘The Simpsons’ with Dick Cheney. It’s not a tough call. You don’t need to be super spiritually aware to get an evil whiff off Dick Cheney and I just refused to see it and so I just want to apologize for that.”
At the time, Carlson and Kelly were discussing the noticeable amount of cross-political party support happening between candidates this year.
“You said, ‘This is the year where [Robert F.] Kennedy [Jr.] has endorsed Trump, and Dick Cheney has endorsed Kamala Harris.’ I mean, that just kind of sums it up right there,” Carlson said, recalling remarks Kelly has made before about parties switching sides to aid politicians on opposing teams. “Not just the obvious drama, the meltdown, Biden dropping, the assassination attempts on Donald Trump, but just the total realignment in the most obvious, undeniable way of American politics, where Bobby Kennedy is on the campaign trail for Donald Trump? And Dick Cheney and his daughter are working for Kamala Harris? I mean, who could have predicted that? Nobody.”
Carlson went on to say that he chose to ignore the issues he’s had with Cheney’s decisions over the years, seemingly for the sake of standing by the GOP.
“It just puts it into stark relief as you just said correctly. It also raises questions for me personally as someone who defended Dick Cheney for, I don’t know, like 25 years in public and always got the sense maybe there’s something wrong with Dick Cheney and why would you be so enthusiastic about shooting down a civilian airliner as he famously was on 9/11,” Carlson noted. “And just the cost of these wars and human life was so high, doesn’t that bother you? I kind of pushed all those thoughts into the back of my mind and didn’t deal with them, but they always did bother me on a gut level.”
On Sept. 6, Cheney announced he would be casting his vote for Harris this fall. His daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney has followed in her father’s footsteps also supporting Harris as the nation’s next commander-in-chief.
“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney said in a statement. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.”
He continued: “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”
