“Well, I’m shocked, I’m surprised,” Trump told Newsmax’s Greg Kelly during an interview conducted at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
“He’s a very good person and a very good man and very talented and as you know he had very high ratings,” Trump said of Carlson, who frequently pushed racist, misogynistic and xenophobic talking points on his (now-former) widely watched show.
Trump described Carlson as “terrific” and claimed: “He’s been, especially over the last year or so, he’s been terrific to me.”
On air, Carlson pushed Trump’s 2020 election lies and minimized the deadly U.S. Capitol riot that was incited by the former president and resulted in his second impeachment.
In private messages made public in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox, though, Carlson expressed his hatred for the former president.
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson wrote in a Jan. 2021 text, adding: “I hate him passionately.”
Carlson interviewed Trump earlier this month as one of his final sit-downs on his show.