Welcome to Trail Mix, a fun but nutritious snack for your election news diet. See something interesting on the trail? Email me at jake.lahut@thedailybeast.com.
This week, we look at Friday’s big GOP candidate convention in Iowa, with none other than Tucker Carlson as the master of ceremonies. Plus, a look at some Iowa-focused ads.
Tucker’s turn in the 2024 spotlight
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Ever since he ditched the bow tie and took over from Bill O’Reilly in primetime on Fox News, Tucker Carlson has been the most feared man in Republican politics—aside from former President Donald Trump.
But that hard-earned honor might be slipping away from Carlson, just as he reaches a critical juncture in his relationship with the GOP and its voters.
On Friday, the ex-Fox News star will act as emcee and moderator at one of the most significant events of the 2024 presidential primary so far: the Des Moines convention of the right-wing FAMiLY LEADER group, run by perennial Iowa caucus kingmaker Bob Vander Plaats.
In front of hundreds of Iowa activists, Carlson will moderate discussions with Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott, former Gov. Nikki Haley, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump will not be attending.
If he still dominated Fox’s primetime bloc, or if his new show was posting huge viewership numbers, Carlson’s position onstage in Des Moines might strike fear into the GOP presidential campaigns, anxious to satisfy the famously combative host and his millions of viewers.
While Carlson still boasts plenty of fans despite his firing from Fox, he has seen a steep decline in his viewership on a new Twitter-based version of his show since it launched last month.
These days, GOP campaign sources and Republicans closely watching the 2024 primary see Carlson as a necessary hassle to deal with—but hardly the towering figure of doom he once was.
A senior aide for one of the presidential campaigns, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about planning, said they’re not sweating any “special prep” for Friday’s summit.
Carlson’s standing within the GOP and his ability to influence voters isn’t what it once was, the campaign aide said. But they suggested the former Fox News stalwart’s incentive to carve out a new gig poses its own problems.
“Certainly, Tucker’s worldview requires some amount of attention,” the campaign aide said, referencing the hard-right nationalist populism that has made Carlson such a key figure in today’s GOP. “Coupled with the fact that he’s trying to shop his show to buyers, that means he could be trying to make headlines.”
Trump isn’t attending the summit, citing no particular reason, though he has tended to avoid most events featuring the other candidates. But broadly, his camp still views the host fondly, with a Trump campaign adviser telling The Daily Beast, “Tucker’s interviews on Twitter continue to put up massive numbers,” though they “can’t speak to the ‘fear’ label.”
The former president is probably the only candidate who could wrest the spotlight from Carlson. Indeed, the main goal for the rest of the field on Friday is to avoid ending up as the springboard for the pundit’s comeback—which, if achieved, could make the Des Moines confab just the first of many displays of Carlson’s influence over the primary.
“This is high stakes for Tucker… to show that he has the mojo,” a GOP strategist not working for any candidate told The Daily Beast. “Does he still have the influence and the ability to rake people over the coals? He obviously wants to build a media empire, and he doesn’t have the sway he used to at Fox News, but this will prove whether he can still drive the conversation on the right and break through the noise.”
Still, the Carlson gauntlet will be an important test for the candidates who join him on Friday, all of whom are struggling to find real momentum in the race. The most pressure likely rests on DeSantis, once the golden boy of Fox News but now reportedly on the ropes within the Murdoch empire.
“DeSantis has the most to lose,” Alyssa Farah-Griffin, Trump’s former White House communications director, told The Daily Beast.
“To some degree, he’s a victim of sky-high expectations that he’s yet to meet,” she continued. “But he also majorly hurt his campaign last time he engaged in a Q&A with Tucker, when he gave the disastrous answer calling Ukraine a ‘territorial dispute.’’ The moment provided a preview of the hardline positions that Carlson, a virulent critic of Ukraine and the American support of their defense, could bait GOP hopefuls into taking.
The GOP strategist agreed DeSantis may be feeling the most pressure going into this, other than perhaps Carlson himself.
“He’s had high-stakes moments before, he’s been on with Tucker before, but DeSantis just has to be able to prove himself,” the Republican said. “He’s got the most pressure.”
For Ramaswamy, the “anti-woke” entrepreneur who has emerged as Trump’s favorite rival, the Tucker cattle call is just another day at the office.
Ramaswamy not only announced his campaign on Tucker Carlson Tonight back in February, but appeared on the network nearly 80 times, from January 2022 to March 2023.
“Really, Vivek just speaks the truth, no special prepping,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a Ramaswamy campaign spokesperson. “I think that’s one of the many things that differentiates him from plastic career politicians. The base can sniff out phony, too.”
DeSantis appeared on Carlson’s show at least five times since the 2020 election, reportedly met with him in-person six times in the first half of 2021, and called him “a fantastic individual” on the heels of his ouster from Fox News.
“I think it’s terrible that he was fired,” DeSantis told Newsmax in May. “I think there’s more to it. I don’t really think it was about Tucker. I think it’s about some of this other stuff that’s going on with Fox.”
For those jostling for second place and a shot at being the Trump alternative, a publicly MAGA Carlson—despite privately saying he wished the former president would simply go away—could cause some problems.
Pence, for instance, has not appeared on Carlson’s show since testing the 2024 waters; he launched his campaign more than a month after Carlson was fired from Fox.
In the past, Carlson has accused Pence of working with the feds concerning the Trump classified documents case back in January, while Pence has since condemned Carlson for his whitewashing of Jan. 6.
Haley, meanwhile, had been appearing elsewhere on Fox toward the end of Carlson’s tenure, and he’s made clear she’s no favorite of his.
“She may be running to be the Republican nominee, but she is fundamentally indistinguishable from the neoliberal donor base of the Democratic Party,” Carlson said in his opening monologue after her February campaign launch. “‘Vote for me because I’m a woman,’ she says. That’s her pitch.”
Haley has never said that, often saying of her past victories, “women didn't vote for me because I’m a woman.”
Carlson did not return a request for comment.
Republicans on the campaign trail don’t see this event shaking up the primary dynamic, though it does carry more importance for the non-Trump and DeSantis candidates looking to crack into the double digits in national and early state polling.
“Look, it’s a fight for the second-place people who have to do what they can to connect with voters,” a Trump-aligned GOP strategist told The Daily Beast, adding that it’s a far taller task for the rest of the field looking to crack into the double digits in polling.
For Carlson, this might be his first and best shot at the kind of 2024 campaign relevance insiders long assumed he’d have before his dramatic fall from grace. Some even forecast that Carlson would be onstage at Iowa events not asking questions, but answering them—as a candidate himself.
“It’s the highest stakes for Tucker than anybody,” the first GOP strategist said, “because this is a leading forum with presidential candidates who will have dozens of opportunities like this. But for him, at least for now, this is it.”
From Harry Crane’s Desk
Although this reporter is based in New Hampshire, we still try to get plenty of Iowa updates into Trail Mix. And there’s much more action happening in the first caucus state this week beyond the Tucker show in Des Moines.
Tim Scott is out with a new ad emphasizing his Christian bona fides, a likely play to a crucial GOP voting bloc in Iowa that has undergone some significant changes in the Trump era.
Although Scott was raised in the traditions of the Black church and does not identify as an evangelical Christian—he attends a nondenominational megachurch in South Carolina called Seacoast—hammering home his faith is an important first impression in an ad like this one.
“Our rights don’t come from a government,” Scott says in the ad, speaking the lingo of evangelical voters. “They’re inalienable. They come from a creator.”
In other ad news, President Biden’s re-election campaign is quietly dominating the digital ad landscape since the start of the new year, according to the latest data from Facebook and Instagram, along with YouTube and Google.
Campaign lit
Everyone needs an editor. Freshman Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) got himself blocked from Wikipedia after going on an editing spree over his own page—the latest politician-web faux pas caught by The Daily Beast’s Ursula Perano.
Everyone gets a gift card? A longshot 2024 hopeful, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, has come up with a bold strategy to qualify for the debate stage. As The Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger reports, it may not be fully above board.
Another one! Independently wealthy but totally obscure GOP presidential candidate John Anthony Castro is moving to New Hampshire and promising to spend enough money not just to burn a hole in his pocket, but to royally tick off Trump, according to Dave Levinthal of Raw Story.
Nothing to see here. The DeSantis campaign unsuccessfully sent out a memo “not for distribution” aimed at tamping down worries over his poor performance so far, according to NBC News.
