Did Donald Trump successfully reset his 2024 campaign in his interview with Tucker Carlson? “When we spoke last week, Ed, I was a bit concerned about Trump’s demeanor,” Adam Baldwin says, but “he changed my mind in this interview with Tucker.” The Happy Warrior returned, but will it be enough — and will it last? After all, I point out, Tucker and Fox are fairly friendly turf. “It’s a little different than going on with, say, Don Lemon, or even Lester Holt or David Muir at ABC.”
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Welcome back to my VIP video series “The Amiable Skeptics,” featuring my friend Adam Baldwin! Adam is well-known for his long and storied Hollywood career, starting with My Bodyguard, and especially for his roles in Full Metal Jacket, Firefly, its film sequel Serenity, Chuck, and The Last Ship.
Adam thinks that Trump will be a “shoe-in” for the nomination if he can maintain that equilibrium, while I’m more skeptical. “It should be a fair fight,” I say. “I mean, this is not a re-election campaign,” and the GOP should have a full debate over which direction to go. Adam agrees: “Debates in the primary, I think, only strengthen the ultimate nominee for the general [election].” We discuss how foreign policy will play out in the GOP primary debates, and handicap some of the other contenders as well, especially Tim Scott and his newly launched exploratory committee.
Trump will have some questions to answer about his first term too, I point out, especially in the growth of the government-industrial censorship complex on his watch. The news that the State Department attempted to get LinkedIn to play ball in March 2020 — when Trump was president and Mike Pompeo ran State — is a reminder that Trump never did get around to draining the swamp, I argue. “Somebody was asleep at the switch in the Trump administration while this crap was going on,” I say. “That’s, that’s one of the things that you have to ask is why this was going on under Pompeii and under Trump.”
“Well, because the deep state is deep and it’s been there a long, long time,” Adam replies. “Obviously he knows that this was going on, but he was so distracted by the Russia, Russia [issue] … the impeachment hoaxes were all part of cutting him off and distracting him from things like draining the swamp and building the wall and, you know, it worked.”
There’s plenty more in the conversation, including some discussion of Twitter and Elon Musk, the true intent of the Russia-collusion panic, Joe Biden’s fake Irish outrage, and a preview of our next episode: are we actually fighting World War III? Or is it World War IV?
Be sure to watch it all, and join the conversation in the comments!
