Tucker Carlson said the Murdoch family encouraged him to run for president after Donald Trump was already in the 2024 race and after Carlson was fired from Fox News.
On his podcast Tuesday, Carlson recalled a conversation with the media moguls in the spring of 2023, a month after Carlson was let go from his primetime hosting job by Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott.
“I got fired in April of 2023. In May of 2023, they asked me to run for president against Trump and said they would back me,” Carlson said.
But Carlson dismissed the notion immediately, saying being an officeholder is “not my world” and he had “zero interest” in it.
“Obviously, I’m not going to be running for any office. You know, I would never get elected to any—plus I like Trump!” Carlson said, laughing. “The funny thing is, I actually genuinely, I get frustrated. I’m frustrated now—but I like Trump.”
Carlson explained further that Lachlan, son of Rupert Murdoch, told him that the family’s media properties would support his effort.
“Lachlan Murdoch said, ‘You should run for [president], we’ll back you, the whole thing.’”
“And not just Fox,” clarified Carlson, “but, you know, Wall Street Journal…”
The Murdochs, through News Corp, also own The New York Post, a conservative tabloid.
Carlson said the Australian clan is firmly anti-Trump.
“The Murdochs really hate Trump. Like, there’s no one who hates Trump more than the Murdochs,” he said.
The simmering feud goes back years. When Trump announced his 2024 campaign in November 2022, the New York Post described the news on the bottom of its front page with the underwhelming line: “Florida Man Makes Announcement.”
Trump was incensed. He called Rupert Murdoch, who was still executive chairman of News Corp at that time, a “piece of s—,” according to a book on his reelection campaign by Axios reporter Alex Isenstadt.
Since Trump’s inauguration, the editorial boards of the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal have not been shy about criticizing some of the administration’s policies, like Trump’s tariffs and his attacks on Harvard.
Last week, both spoke out against Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. firing every member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Trump, during an Oval Office press conference in February with Murdoch in the room, called the Journal “always wrong.”
The post Tucker Says Murdochs Wanted Him to Run for President Against Trump appeared first on The Daily Beast.
