Trump’s Insecurity Over Tucker Carlson’s Star Power Could Dash the ‘Real’ Possibility of a VP Pick, Maggie Haberman Says
New York Times’ Maggie Haberman addressed the “real” chance that Trump could ask former Fox News figurehead Tucker Carlson to be his running mate in the 2024 election.
On Jamie Weinstein’s “The Dispatch Podcast,” the journalist acknowledged the possibility of this happening — as well as what could derail the two outspoken conservatives, were they to team up for the Republican candidacy in next year’s presidential race.
“It’s a real thing that I’m hearing as a possibility. The likelihood of it — I think there will be a pretty professionalized vetting process,” Haberman said when asked about the possibility of Carlson joining Trump on the Republican ticket. “Honestly, I know that might sound believable, based on what we’ve seen from Trump historically, but Trump’s current political team is the best at least as a non-incumbent. There’s just a different level of control. I think the risk with Tucker Carlson and Trump is that Tucker Carlson is a star in his own right, and I’m not sure how Trump would contend with that.”
Trump himself first responded to growing curiosity over who his running mate would be, telling the “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show” earlier this month that he’s consider Carlson. “He’s got great common sense,” he said at the time.
Haberman went on to answer other staffing questions Weinstein posed about attorney general and treasury secretary vacancies. Haberman said that Trump probably doesn’t want Steve Bannon back in the White House.
They also discussed the Bill Barr of it all. Earlier on in the podcast, Weinstein asked about the type of team Trump would be looking to pick for his follow-up campaign.
“Is he capable of picking a team that won’t restrain him?” Weinstein asked.
“He is capable of picking a team that won’t restrain him and that is actually much more what he wants. I think that he feels like he learned lessons from staffing last time,” Haberman said. “I don’t think that he realized he was picking a team that’s going to restrain. I think he thought that he was picking a team that would please the media, or they would please elites or who had what he considered impeccable credentials, because he’s a credentialist. But I think he very much does not want a team that will constrain him. I do think that he is extremely fickle. I think that he is hard to predict about what he is going to want in a staffer.”
Haberman also compared Trump to Logan Roy from “Succession.” For that and more, listen to the full podcast episode here.
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