Donald Trump has warned of a threat of conflict in the US after saying that he expects the Democrats to steal the 2024 election from him.
The former US president also suggested to Tucker Carlson, in a Twitter interview with the far-right former Fox News host staged to undermine the first Republican primary debate in Milwaukee, that he is concerned “the left” will try to kill him.
In a rambling interview, speckled with discussion of conspiracy theories from whether the billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in his jail cell to the role of federal agencies limiting the amount of water in washing machines, Trump took aim at critics on all sides in his traditional derisory fashion.
But the social media broadcast took a dark turn when, after discussion of the numerous criminal charges against Trump and divisions in the US, Carlson asked if he thinks the US is headed to “civil war” and “open conflict”.
Trump said he didn’t know but then added: “I can say this. There’s a level of passion that I’ve never seen, there’s a level of hatred that I’ve never seen, and that’s probably a bad combination.”
Carlson responded: “That is a bad combination.”
Earlier in the 46-minute interview broadcast on Twitter, Carlson asked Trump if he is concerned “the left”, after impeaching and then indicting him, would try to kill him.
“They’re savage animals. They are people that are sick, really sick,” Trump responded. “You have great people that are Democrats. Most of the people in our country are fantastic. And I’m representing everybody … But I’ve seen what they do.”
Carlson, who is engaged in a protracted dispute with his former network after being taken off air, launched the interview five minutes before the Republican debate aired on Fox. If that was an attempt to upstage both Trump’s rivals in the 2024 election and Carlson’s ex-employer, then it would appear to have been successful. The interview had more than 80m views on Twitter within two hours of being posted.
Carlson opened with a question about why Trump wasn’t at the Milwaukee debate.
“You see the polls that have come out and I’m leading by 50 and 60 points and some of them are at one and zero and two. And I’m saying do I sit there for an hour or two hours or whatever it’s going to be and get harassed by people who shouldn’t even be running for president?” he said.
“I just felt it would be more appropriate not to do the debate.”
It was perhaps remarkable that the conversation was taking place at all. Just five months ago, Carlson was revealed to have said of Trump in a text message: “I hate him passionately.”
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” the then Fox News prime-time anchor said in a message to a colleague in early January 2021 as the former president continued a futile battle to remain in office. “I truly can’t wait.”
But the two men set aside their differences to jointly take on their respective enemies – Fox and the rest of the Republican primary field.
Despite the array of charges he faces for trying to rig the 2020 presidential election, Trump continued to maintain the false claim that it was stolen from him by the Democrats.
Trump also defended the crowd that gathered to hear him speak on 6 January 2021 immediately before the mass assault on Congress that shocked the US and the world and is now the subject of one of Trump’s indictments. Trump suggested that he told the protesters to behave “peacefully and patriotically” but “a very small group” went to the Capitol.
