GOP presidential candidate says Tucker Carlson would be ‘good addition’ to 2024 field

by Olafimihan Oshin - 04/24/23 7:35 PM ET

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said in an interview that former Fox News host Tucker Carlson would make an “good addition” to the 2024 presidential race.

In an interview with Politico published Monday, Ramaswamy, who announced his candidacy for president earlier in February, said that he believes Carlson throwing his name in the GOP candidacy hat will be “good for the country.”

“I think he’d be a good addition to the race,” Ramaswamy said. “I think someone should only do this if they feel called to do it, but I think it’d be good for the country if he got in, to be honest with you.”

Ramaswamy, a conservative investor, also called Carlson “one of the smartest voices in the conservative movement,” also applauded the former Fox News host’s ability to “defect from party orthodoxy when necessary.”

“There’s definitely a thought leadership vacuum in political media, across the political spectrum. And Tucker was one of the great political thinkers and commentators of our time,” Ramaswamy told Politico.

Ramaswamy’s remarks come as Fox News announced on Monday that they have parted ways with Carlson, whose last show aired on Friday. Carlson, who joined the conservative news network in 2009, had the highest ratings for the network, gaining an average of more than 3 million viewers per night, most of any nightly news programs on cable television.

Ramaswamy was scheduled to appear as a guest on Carlson’s now-defunct news program “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Monday evening, Politico reported.

Carlson’s departure from Fox News comes days after the network settled a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, agreeing to pay $787.5 million to the voting technology company over its coverage of former President Trump’s false claims of voter fraud involving Dominion software.

Carlson wasn’t the only prominent news figure to abruptly leave his employer Monday.

Longtime CNN anchor Don Lemon, one of the co-hosts of CNN This Morning, said he was fired from the network on Monday. Lemon said in a Twitter post that his agent informed him about his firing by CNN president Chris Licht.