Conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson was confronted over a comment questioning whether or not his former ally, President Donald Trump, could be the “Antichrist,” which he adamantly denied, despite the fact that he made the remark on his own podcast just last month.
“I actually did not say, ’Could this be the Antichrist?’I don’t know where that comes from, but I know that those words never left my lips because I’m not sure I fully understand what the Antichrist is, if there’s just one,” Carlson told New York Times journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro in an interview published Saturday.
Last month, Carlson posted the Antichrist question to his audience following criticism over the president’s bizarre social media activity involving AI depictions of Jesus Christ, and amid their feud over the war in Iran.
“Here’s a leader who’s mocking the gods of his ancestors, mocking the God of gods, and exalting himself above them,” Carlson said on the April 15 episode of his show. “Could this be the Antichrist? Well, who knows?”
When Garcia-Navarro confronted Carlson, he replied that he “may have said some are asking that,” but that he himself is “not weighing in on that.”
“I know that people are speculating about that, but I would say it’s enough to acknowledge that Trump, like many leaders through history, is putting himself above God, but even on a more terrestrial level, to send out a picture of yourself as Jesus has got to be a red line for Christians,” Carlson told the Times.
Garcia-Navarro pressed him further, but the conservative podcaster became defensive and told her if he “thought Trump was the Antichrist,” he would “just say so.”
“If I understood what the Antichrist is, I’d say so, and I don’t really,” Carlson clarified.
He said he discusses such things because he wants his “audience to see what’s happening now in terms beyond just material,” adding that he thinks “there is a world beyond our senses.”
“I just want to make the point that you did say, ‘Could this be the Antichrist?’ And then you said, ‘Well, who knows?’ You did use those words,” Garcia-Navarro reiterated.
“Then my apologies to you, if there’s a video of me saying that,” Carlson said. “I guess what I’m expressing to you is it doesn’t reflect exactly how I feel. It suggests a precision that I haven’t arrived at, that Trump is the Antichrist.”