Donald Trump acknowledged that Elon Musk and Robert F Kennedy Jr could be “influential figures” in a potential second administration as he sat for a lengthy interview with conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson in battleground state Arizona on Thursday.
Trump also insulted his opponent, Kamala Harris, and called Liz Cheney a “war hawk” who should be placed in the line of fire to “see how she feels about it”. The former congresswoman has become one of his most prominent Republican critics.
Carlson asked Trump to address speculation that he would hire Musk, the Tesla boss who has endorsed him and poured tens of millions of dollars into a Super Pac supporting his campaign, and Kennedy, who ran for president as an independent before ending his campaign and endorsing Trump in August.
“You think Bobby Kennedy and Elon Musk will be influential figures, without being specific about what those roles will be in your administration?” Carlson asked.
“Yeah, I do,” Trump replied.
The encounter with Carlson came as Trump looked to seize the advantage in a state with a historical Republican tilt that he lost when Joe Biden defeated him four years ago. Polls have lately showed him with a slight advantage in Arizona, and the conversation with Carlson was billed as a fundraiser for Hurricane Helene recovery efforts – an issue of importance in North Carolina, another swing state.
Carlson, a former conservative commentator on Fox News who has become even more overtly political since his firing last year, was a friendly interviewer, delivering a tribute to Trump before a crowd of supporters in a 19,000-capacity indoor arena in Glendale, a suburb of Arizona’s capital and largest city, Phoenix. He then sat down with the former president for a conversation that served largely to give him space to promote his candidacy and plans for a second administration.
The former president spent much of the interview hurling invective at his opponents, calling Harris “a low IQ individual” and “dumb as a rock”.
He also brought up Cheney, whose father, former vice-president Dick Cheney, was an architect of the US invasion of Iraq, which he also criticized. “She’s a radical war hawk,” he said. “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
But Trump dodged other attempts by Carlson to nail down his policies, including his feelings on the FBI and CIA, which the commentator said “worked against you on behalf of the Democratic party from the minute you got elected in 2016 and they’re still doing it … What will you do about that?”
Trump was more willing to talk about his assertion that “the enemy from within”, as he calls his political opponents, are truly dangerous. Harris has seized on his usage of the term, and his proposal to deploy the military against them, to argue that he is a fascist who is seeking “unchecked power”.
“We do have an enemy from within. We have some very bad people, and those people are also very dangerous. They would like to take down our country. They’d like to have our country be a nice communist country or fascist in any way they can, and we have to be careful of that. But they’re the greatest con artists, because [as] soon as I said an enemy from within, they said … oh, he’s saying an enemy from within. These are sick puppies, I’m telling you,” Trump said.
He also appeared to lay the groundwork for claiming fraud, should he lose Tuesday’s presidential election. Polls have him and Harris within their margins of error in the swing states that will decide the presidency, but Trump told Carlson he’s clearly ahead, and implied only “cheating” could stop him from winning.
“I think we’re leading by a lot, and … we can keep that cheating down, because there are a bunch of cheats. If we can keep that cheating down, we’re going to have a tremendous victory … I think it’ll go down as one of the greatest victories of all time.”
On Wednesday, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team Howard Lutnick downplayed the possibilities of either Musk or Kennedy ending up in Trump’s second cabinet during an interview with CNN. Musk would probably “help” the government rather than work for it, while Kennedy, a conspiracy theorist and opponent of vaccines, would be given health data, but not be put in the running to lead the health and human services department.
