In a wide-ranging interview on Newsmax's new show, "Savage Nation," conservative commentator Tucker Carlson said he believes America is "coming back to the center" now that President Donald Trump is back in the White House.
Host Dr. Michael Savage asked Carlson if he agreed that the country is experiencing a renaissance and is set to have the "four best years of our lives," to which Carlson replied, "I really fervently hope so."
"It's such a wonderful country, the best country led by the worst people," Carslon said Sunday. "I hope that they are out of the way … as Trump said in his inaugural, it's just common sense. This is not a triumph of ideology. We're not whiplashing from one extreme to another. I think we're coming back to the center.
"At best, anyway, we're coming back to the center of reasonable behavior, merit-based rewards, color-blind assessments, trying to have policies that help actual people — not some crazed idea that you came up with in the graduate school of sociology at Yale. Just normal people have some power once again. That's the goal, anyway, that's the promise. I think we can do it, I do."
When Trump won the 2024 election on Nov. 5, Savage said he felt "freer" and like he had "just escaped bondage." Carlson told Savage he was "exactly right" in his assessment that if Democrat Kamala Harris had won the presidential election, she would have continued the political targeting of conservatives begun under the Biden administration.
"The other night, I was in Washington, I was at dinner, I was on my way to the men's room, and I ran into this old friend of mine, and he just got out of prison," Carlson said. "I was thinking about this, Like, how many people do I know who went to prison in the last four years? I know a bunch of people who went to prison, on political crimes.
"The number of people they locked up and had the FBI show up at their house and threaten them, and then I think there are probably some people who got really hurt. Can't prove it, but I think that's likely. But the political repression that we've been living under is insane. I never thought I would live in a country like this at all — that is politically repressive. That's the country we've been living in."
Carlson, who attended both of Trump's inaugurations, told Savage he noticed a "shocking" difference between the first and second time that Trump was sworn in.
"What I really was struck by — just knowing the city as well as I do, I've spent my whole life there — I didn't talk to one person who criticized Trump; I didn't meet one person who didn't like Trump," Carlson said of Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20. "Trump was like the most popular person. Now, of course, there were thousands of people there for the inaugural, but not one person was rude to me, not one person was anything but nice to me, and that's all because of Trump; it had nothing to do with me. So Trump's total control of the city was shocking."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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