What we learned from Ted Cruz vs. Tucker Carlson
CNN
When Sen. Ted Cruz went on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show in 2022, he was there to make amends.
When Sen. Ted Cruz went on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show in 2022, he was there to make amends. The Texas Republican’s offense was having called the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol a “violent terrorist attack.” This kind of view was quickly falling out of favor as Donald Trump moved to sanitize January 6. So Cruz disowned what he had said the day before to a cable host who had just savaged him for it. It was a stunning scene: a US senator feeling compelled to grovel to a cable TV host who had targeted him for saying January 6 was very bad. But it epitomized the MAGA zeitgeist and shifting power dynamics, in which extreme enforcers like Carlson had to be appeased. Three years later, Cruz this week joined Carlson on Carlson’s own network for a very different purpose – but also one that recognized the former Fox anchor’s heft on the right. This time, Cruz was there to try and marginalize a man who is suddenly a big problem for the Trump administration. Carlson has criticized the Trump-backed Israeli strikes on Iran and strongly opposes the US joining in those strikes, which Trump is increasingly considering. Carlson’s opposition had already earned a sharp comment from the president, who called him “kooky Tucker Carlson.” Cruz was there to argue that maybe this guy that he and other Republicans have been so solicitous of is indeed a crank.
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