Warning:  about halfway through Tucker Carlson’s interview with President Trump --- maybe sooner --- you’re really, really going to start missing him.  It’s going to hurt a little.  How refreshing to hear from someone who actually knew what he was doing, both domestically and on the world stage.  This is the Donald Trump that Trump-haters won’t allow themselves to acknowledge, as it would create such cognitive dissonance for them that they would just melt down.  Here are some highlights...

Tucker noted that in former Attorney General Bill Barr’s book, he “clearly lies” about Jeffrey Epstein’s death and says Epstein killed himself.  (Tucker made it clear he thought Epstein was murdered.)  Trump said he didn’t know what Barr had said about Epstein’s death and that he himself didn’t know one way or the other.  But “a case could be made either way.”  BUT...

“Bill Barr didn’t do an investigation, [of Epstein’s death] or of the election fraud, either.  He said he did, and he pretended he did, but he didn’t.  McSwain, the U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, said Barr just wouldn’t let him do it; it was crazy.”  He said that Barr was terrified of being impeached by the left.

As Tucker observed, the trajectory of Trump’s candidacy in 2015 and later presidency was marked first by massive, organized anti-Trump protests, then by two (count ‘em) impeachments, and now a series of indictments.  “The next stage,” he said, “is violence.  Are you worried that they might try and kill you?”

He didn’t address that directly but did characterize them as “savage animals.” There are great people in the Democrat Party, he said, and he represented everybody, but “I’ve seen what they do, I’ve seen the lengths that they go to,” invoking the Russia Hoax.

“Barr should’ve gone after them [Russia Hoaxers], and other people should’ve gone after them.”  They did, “very late,” and the result was the Durham Report, which he characterized as “fairly good,” in that “it explained how corrupt it was.”

On the other hand, Trump praised Inspector General Michael Horowitz for doing “a phenomenal job” on Comey, McCabe and “some of the others.”

Trump said the policies of the Democrats, such as open borders, reflect a hatred of our country.

As for cheating in 2020, Trump said, “We have so much on it,” referring to the use of COVID as an excuse to change the standards and cheat.  “Judges didn’t want to look; people didn’t want to get involved.”

But, of 2023, “I have never seen spirit like there is right now,” he said.  “...And the reason is because Crooked Joe Biden is so bad.  He’s the worst President in the history of our country.”

“He’s so corrupt that I took the name off Hillary.  You know, I don’t do two people at one time.”  He retired “Crooked Hillary” so he could apply it to Biden.  “I’ll bet she was very happy,” he said.

There were some great laughs.  “They love pictures of him [Biden] on the beach.  I think he looked terrible on the beach.”

“Plus, the beach doesn’t represent what a President’s supposed to be doing.”  He mentioned a variety of things the President could be doing instead, but of course the first thing that comes to mind, because of the timing, is helping the people of Hawaii.

Trump said that if Biden dropped out, there might be a “free-for-all.”  As for Kamala Harris, “her moments are almost as bad as his.”  He thinks “they probably have some kind of a primary and other people will get involved...could be [California Gov. Gavin Newsom], could be somebody else.”

The mention of Newsom led him to say that people used to care if you had a bad record but today it “doesn’t really mean anything.”  That’s hard to hear, but it would explain a lot.

He said that Kim Jong-Un now has “massive nuclear power” and that he kept us from having nuclear war with North Korea.  Kim Jong-Un was “expecting” to go into a nuclear war.

When asked if foreign leaders look at Biden and speculate that others are running the government, Trump said, “Well, somebody else has to be.”

Trump lamented the decaying state of Democrat-run cities, saying, “You know, Republican-run cities are doing very nicely, because they arrest people when you have crimes.”

Looking at the double standard of justice as applied to him and Biden, “I think the people of our country don’t get enough credit for how smart they are,” he said.  And he believes Biden is compromised “because China knows so much about him... [Biden] in many ways is a Manchurian Candidate…and he’s afraid to tell Russia to get out of Cuba.  He’s afraid to tell China [who is building military installations in Cuba] to get out of Cuba.”

‘If I’m President, they’ll get out.”

He noted that Chinese incursion goes far beyond Cuba and is “all over South America.”  China also controls the Panama Canal, which, under President Carter, we sold to Panama for one dollar, after we’d lost 35,000 American canal construction workers to malaria.

He said that “radical left lunatics” are destroying America with electric cars and “the windmills all over the place” --- “which by the way don’t work, and...for the most part, they’re made in China.”  THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP.

As for elections, he said the only reason not to want Voter ID is to make it easier to cheat.  He also said “we should go back to all-paper ballots,” noting that France did that after an ill-fated attempt to have electronic voting.  “Any time you have mail-in ballots, you’re gonna have massive cheating,” he said.

Their policies are so bad, he said, that they have to cheat.  Nobody wants the policies they’re trying to force on the American people.  And he knows they’ll go after any candidate, even if it’s not him.  “If somebody else got in,” he said quietly, “other than me, they’ll go at him, just as viciously as they did me.  These people are sick.”

“I do get credit for holding up quite well, I must tell you.”

Fun topics include Chris Wallace vs. Mike Wallace, the joy (not necessarily) of driving an electric car, Mitch McConnell (not flattering), the “laptop from hell” and the “classic earmarks” letter, and the FBI’s “insurance policy” against his win in 2016.  “When I fired Comey, it was like throwing a rock into a hornets’ nest,” he said.  All in all, this interview was much more entertaining, thoughtful and un-focus-grouped than the “official” GOP presidential primary debate.  Don’t miss it!

https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson