Newsmax host Eric Bolling, another Fox alumnus, asked O'Reilly about Carlson during an interview on Tuesday after going through some other options for 2024. Reports came out in 2020 about the chatter in Republican circles of a Carlson campaign, but the host shot down that idea as recently as last year.
"I got another one for you on the Republican side that no one’s really talking about. But I don't know, why not?” Bolling said. "Ready? Tucker Carlson."
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The question was met with several seconds of silence. After O'Reilly asked if he was serious and Bolling said yes, O'Reilly shook his head
.“Look, if Mr. Carlson wants to leave his extremely lucrative position at Fox News and run for president, then more power to him," O'Reilly said. "But there isn’t a chance in hell that, number one, he will do it, and, number two, that he could succeed."
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Formerly the host of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News, O'Reilly was ejected from the network in 2017 after it was revealed he paid settlements in sexual misconduct lawsuits.
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Carlson said he has known and talked to every President for about 30 years: "I can't think of any one whose life was improved ... I guess if I was the last person on earth who could do it. But that seems pretty unlikely that I would be that guy — you know what I mean? ... I'm a talk show host; I enjoy it."
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In a fascinating column for the New York Times, Ben Smith reports that while condemning journalists on the air, Carlson has been a source for many reporters on Trumpworld and Fox internal politics.
"I won’t talk here about any off-the-record conversations I may have had with him. But 16 other journalists (none from The Times; it would put my colleagues in a weird position if I asked them) told me on background that he has been, as three of them put it, 'a great source,'" Smith wrote.
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Carlson produced a three-part documentary series, released late last year on Fox’s streaming service, purporting to tell an “alternative” view of what led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and earned Fox a rebuke from leading members of the congressional committee investigating the attack.
The project, dubbed “Patriot Purge,” also prompted the leaving of two longtime conservative donors at the network, though Fox claimed at the time of their resignation that the network did not plan to renew their contracts.