Tucker Carlson is still shocked by the comment President Donald Trump allegedly made after the conservative pundit suggested the real reason why the U.S. is at war with Iran.
In an interview with NPR posted Thursday, Carlson insisted Trump didn’t start the war with Iran on his own.
“He was pushed by a foreign country to do this,” Carlson said. “It is the most profoundly destructive thing any single decision a president has made in our history. I feel sorry for him. I’m not angry at him personally. I don’t think that he had the latitude to make this decision on his own.”
Carlson claimed to have made that very point to Trump – and was shocked by the president’s response.
“I had flown back from Tel Aviv from Ben Gurion Airport after seeing the ambassador, and two days later, I was in the Oval with Trump alone,” said Carlson. “…I said, ‘This war is not about Iran’s nuclear program, which you told me – and the world – that you eliminated last summer in June.’”
When Carlson suggested that Israel was pushing the war on Iran, Trump agreed.
“And he looked at me and said, yes, you’re right,” Carlson said. “But in the end, we all die anyway. So it doesn’t matter. That’s exactly what he said.”
JS reached out to the White House for comment on the reported conversation, but no one immediately responded. When NPR made the same effort, the White House responded with a social media post from the president calling Carlson and others “stupid people.”
Carlson also proclaimed that Trump should have been removed from office immediately via the 25th Amendment when he threatened nuclear war.
“He should have been bundled up and taken out. That’s a crime. There’s no greater crime than that,” Carlson said.
Trump has made those kinds of threats numerous times while in the White House. In 2018, he threatened to use nuclear weapons against North Korea after its leader, Kim Jong Un, asserted that “the entire area of the U.S. mainland is within our nuclear strike range.” Earlier this week, Trump told the U.N. General Assembly that he might “annihilate” the Islamic Republic if a deal wasn’t reached soon to end the nearly seven-month war.
Carlson has previously called for Trump’s removal from office. Last month, he declared that “the second any president actively considers first-use of nuclear weapons, that person should be removed from office immediately.”
“So why isn’t there an attempt to remove him from office, like, immediately?” he asked.
Watch the complete NPR interview below: