Tucker Carlson says he heard from Donald Trump over texts that revealed the Fox News host hated him 'passionately'
"I'm pretty straightforward," Tucker Carlson told a WABC radio show. "I love Trump, like as a person. I think Trump is funny and insightful."
Shane Bevel/NCAA Photos via Getty Images; Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
- Tucker Carlson said a "wounded" Donald Trump called him after his "hate" texts were made public.
- "I hate him passionately," the Fox News host texted of Trump, according to recent court filings.
- Carlson said during a radio show this week that he actually loves Trump "as a person."
Tucker Carlson said this week that a "wounded" Donald Trump called him up after it was revealed that the Fox News star said he "passionately" hated the former US president in private text messages that were made public.
"I'm pretty straightforward. I love Trump, like as a person. I think Trump is funny and insightful," Carlson said on Monday during a radio appearance on WABC's "Bo Snerdley's Rush Hour" show, adding that he "spent four years defending" Trump's "policies" and that he would "defend them again" that night.
Carlson added, "And I said this to Trump when he called me, you know, all wounded about those texts. That was a moment in time where I was absolutely infuriated."
The primetime host's eye-opening text messages about Trump were recently released as part of a trove of court evidence in election-technology company Dominion Voting Systems' $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News.
Carlson — who has long been one of Trump's most stalwart defenders on camera — secretly fantasized about not having to cover Trump after the 2020 election, saying in a text message in January 2021, "I hate him passionately," the court filings showed.
On the day of the deadly US Capitol riot, Carlson called Trump a "demonic force" in a text message to his producer, according to court documents.
Carlson said during his Monday radio appearance that he was "enraged" his texts were pulled.
"Those were all grabbed completely illegitimately, in my opinion, in this court case, which I guess I'm not allowed to talk about, but I'm enraged that my private texts were pulled," Carlson said.
Carlson said he sent the texts about hating Trump while he was frustrated with the former president's campaign after Trump's loss to President Joe Biden.
"Those particular texts were pulled at the moment where I was texting with one of my producers because some idiot on the Trump campaign had sent us the name of these dead voters who had voted," Carlson said. "And we went, and I repeated them on air, and it turns out, some of them were alive."
"So, I was just, I felt humiliated," said Carlson.
Carlson said he was "so mad by the incompetence of that campaign, which was completely incompetent."
"I can't stand getting the facts wrong," Carlson continued. "At the time, I was just blaming the Trump campaign, and I was livid."