I'm not going to lie to you. As the first GOP debate approached, my eyes weren't on Fox News's stage. Like many others in America, they were on Trump sitting down with Tucker Carlson, arguably the most famous man in news at this time in our history.
And it's not hard to understand why. Trump is the frontrunner, after all, and it's not even close. Even the people who have their picks firmly in place have to admit Trump is a massive issue for their candidate, making him the GOP's most interesting person.
But despite my interest in the interview, I had some worries. While I like Carlson, I was worried he was going to deliver a softball interview. I was holding out hope that he wouldn't. I've seen Carlson when he's turned up to 11 during an interview and he can be dynamic and revealing. His previous interviews with 2024 GOP candidates proved that.
Trump has a lot of hard questions that need answering, and the debate stage was the perfect place to answer them. As I wrote previously, his decision to skip out on the GOP debate would have saved him a lot of time and headache, but it would ultimately bite him in the rear because there are a lot of questions and comments about his decisions in the past that would go unanswered. One way or another, he'd have to answer them, and it would probably have been better to answer them now than later during a debate with a Democrat...however that Democrat ends up being.
(READ: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly About Trump's Decision to Stay Out of the GOP Debates)
When I learned that Trump would be interviewed by Tucker, I held out some hope that he would take the opportunity to address a lot of these questions, but a larger part of me doubted it.
I was sadly proven correct.
As my colleague Jerry Wilson wrote, Carlson's approach was "minimalistic," making a comment or asking a question and then just standing back and letting Trump talk, but that resulted in a lot of monologuing about things that were mildly interesting to hear but ultimately not super substantial. Not much detail was even asked about Bill Barr's lack of investigations into very serious matters.
Ep. 19 Debate Night with Donald J Trump pic.twitter.com/ayPfII48CO
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 24, 2023
What I was hoping to hear were some answers about Fauci and Operation Warp Speed. I wanted to hear about how the people Trump often appointed ended up being disappointments or why they ultimately hated him. Some of these people really screwed the pooch and it doesn't reflect well on him.
Even if you are a Trump supporter, some clarification would have been nice.
But we didn't get that. We got more talk about North Korea, which we didn't need. We got some talk about Ada Hutchison and Hillary Clinton's 3 a.m. concession. We got some verbal slaps across Chris Wallace's face and some talk about Jeffrey Epstein.
It was cool to hear him talk about foreign policy, how he would have done things differently, and how the southern border is still a big deal for him...but we know all of this.
I feel like I didn't really learn much of anything during Trump's interview with Tucker. I feel like Tucker held back on questions he knew he should have asked but didn't. It gives me the impression that Trump knows talking about these things is damaging. I felt like both men were walking on eggshells during the interview, and that doesn't exactly give me confidence in either of them.
That said, I still think Trump won the night. My earlier prediction stands. Skipping out on the debates will benefit Trump, but I think in the short term only. This interview with Carlson possibly made that short term even shorter as a Streisand effect will likely take place and hiding the answers to some important questions will only make people want them more.
Eventually, he will have to answer them, the question is where and when, and it would behoove Trump not to wait until answering these questions is wildly inconvenient...like on the debate stage against a Democrat.
There's still a while to go before the elections so there's a lot of time left for this to happen, but the point of election season is to make yourself look like a strong candidate to run the country, and I'm not sure softball interviews give off the impression of strength.
To be clear, I've still yet to decide who I'm voting for in the primary and Trump is definitely in the running, but I can't say this interview helped his case in my mind and I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one.
As I said, this likely won't damage Trump too badly in the short term, but lingering doubts often get louder over time. Trump will have to deal with them. The sooner the better.
