Tucker Carlson and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) got into a fiery exchange on Tuesday over the senator’s support for President Trump and his posturing toward Israel in its escalating conflict with Iran.
The conservative media personality on Tuesday released a clip from the interview — set to be released in full on Wednesday — in which he grills Cruz on details about Iran and its demographic makeup. When Cruz does not know the answers Carlson is seeking, the host blasts the senator for failing to know the details of “the country you seek to topple.”
“How many people live in Iran, by the way?” Carlson asked.
“I don’t know the population,” Cruz responded.
“At all?”
“No, I don’t know the population,” Cruz said.
“You don’t know the population in the country you seek to topple?” Carlson retorted.
When Cruz asked Carlson the same question back, the journalist responded quickly: “92 million,” adding, “How could you not know that?”
“I don’t sit around memorizing population tables,” Cruz responded.
The conversation grew increasingly heated from there, as Carlson argued the numbers are “kind of relevant because you’re calling for the overthrow of the government.”
“Why is it relevant whether it’s 90 million or 80 million or 100 million — why is that relevant?” Cruz responded before pushing back against Carlson’s suggestion that he doesn’t “know anything about the country.”
Carlson then offered another trivia question: “What’s the ethnic mix of Iran?”
Cruz said the country is Persian and “predominantly Shia,” at which point Carlson cut in, asking, “What percent?”
The two men then began shouting over each other.
“Okay, this is cute-” Cruz said when Carlson cut him off to say, “You don’t know anything about Iran.”
“So, I’m not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran-,” Cruz said.
“You’re a senator who’s calling for the overthrow of a government, and you don’t know anything about the country,” Carlson said, shouting over the senator.
“No, you don’t know anything about the country,” Cruz shot back. “You’re the one who claims they’re not trying to murder Donald Trump. You’re the one who can’t figure out if it was a good idea to kill General Soleimani, and you said it was bad.”
Carlson pushed back on Cruz’s initial claim, saying, “No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying you don’t believe they’re trying to murder Trump.”
“Yes, I do,” Cruz exclaimed, cutting in.
“Because you’re not calling for military strikes against them in retaliation,” Carlson said, suggesting Cruz would be if he “really” believed they were trying to kill the president.
When Cruz retorted that “we are carrying out military strikes today,” Carlson pressed the senator on his use of the word “we.”
“You said Israel was,” Carlson said to which Cruz clarified that the U.S. is supporting Israel’s efforts but that Israel is carrying out the strikes.
“You just said ‘we’ were,” Carlson said. “This is high stakes. You’re a senator. If you’re saying the United States government is at war with Iran right now, people are listening.”
The Hill has reached out to Cruz’s office for additional comment.
Carlson, a long-time supporter of the president’s, has found himself at odds with the commander-in-chief over their conflicting viewpoints on the best approach in the Middle East.
After Israel launched a missile offensive against Iran last week, Carlson called Trump “complicit” in the escalation and warned the president’s legacy was on the line depending on “what happens next.”
Carlson has for years been a critic of Republican leaders, diplomats and others who have advocated for military intervention in the Middle East.
He last week railed against so-called “warmongers,” including his former colleagues at Fox and those in the party who he says are nudging Trump toward a needless war.
“The real divide isn’t between people who support Israel and people who support Iran or the Palestinians,” Carlson wrote on social media last week. “The real divide is between those who casually encourage violence, and those who seek to prevent it.”
But Trump hit back, telling reporters, “I don’t know what Tucker Carlson is saying. Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen.”
The president went a step further later on Monday, dubbing the former prime time host turned internet commentator, “kooky Carlson” and insisting “IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON,” in a post on his Truth Social account.
