Fox News host Tucker Carlson blasted the Republican Party in a new interview published this week, calling the GOP “inept” and lacking the ability to govern.
“First of all, they’re inept and bad at governing,” Carlson told Time Magazine. “The party is much more effective as an oppositional force than it is as a governing party.”
Carlson said that the GOP lacked a substantial policy platform in the run-up to the 2020 elections and suggested that this led to the loss of control of the federal government.
“What’s the point in having a convention or a political party more broadly if you can’t be bothered to define what it is you stand for? I found that contemptible,” he said.
Carlson, the highest-rated host on cable television, and one of the most influential voices on the American right, separately dismissed rumors that have circulated in recent months suggesting he might run for president.
“That seems like the unhappiest job you could have,” Carlson said. “I just don’t have any ambitions like that. I have zero interest in being loved by people I don’t know.”
Since his program began in late 2016, Carlson has sparked widespread condemnations for comments on a number of issues ranging from the integrity of the 2020 election to immigration, transgender rights and race relations.
He told Time that he wants to see a “far less race-conscious America.”
“I want a far less race-conscious America,” he told Time. “The never-ending attacks on ‘white supremacists,’ ‘white nationalists,’ ‘white this’ ‘white that,’ what effect is that going to have? … I don’t want to live in a country where your race is the most important thing about you. That is a dead end. It never ends well,” he said.
“If he got up there and said, you know, ‘The problem is the Blacks’ or ‘the Asians’ or ‘the Jews,’ we’d be like, ‘What! No! You can’t talk that way, that’s horrible. What effect is this gonna have on people?’ ” he said, according to Time.
“You think there won’t be a backlash to that? You think this isn’t making people radical in bad ways? Oh yes it is.”