Trump shocks Tucker by opening up about friendly relationship with Gavin Newsom

A day after Tucker Carlson spent his opening monologue criticizing California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Fox News host was surprised to hear that the Democrat “got on great” with Donald Trump when he was president and often praised him — at least, according to Trump.

Newsom, often a villain in the eyes of Fox News anchors, contributors and guests, received a warm mention from the former president when responding to Carlson’s question about potential Democratic presidential candidates should Joe Biden not run for re-election. (Biden has said he intends to do so.)

“You have a very ambitious man in California, but he’s done a terrible job with the state,” Trump said of the governor, who was elected in 2018, won a recall election in September 2021 and secured a second term last fall.

“I always got on well with him, you know, when I was president. Got along really well,” Trump told Carlson, wide-eyed. “He was always very nice to me. Said the greatest things. He’d say things like, ‘He’s doing a great job.'”

“About you?” Carlson asked in disbelief.

“About me. That’s why I never got to hit him because he was so nice to me. Just lying in wait, right? But he was very nice to me – relatively speaking. Some of them weren’t. We have good work for the governors did it. But they talk about him.”

Trump’s comments came in his first interview since he was charged with 34 counts of forging business records in Manhattan last Tuesday. He also made a well-known claim when he insisted that the court clerks at his indictment were so upset with his situation that they not only “cried” but apologized to him.

Interestingly, the Mar-a-Lago interview was conducted by Tucker Carlson and not by Sean Hannity, a former informal Trump aide whose in-person and phone conversations with the ex-president have been far more frequent than Carlson’s.

During their conversation, neither Carlson nor Trump openly referenced the Fox News anchor’s opinion of the twice-indicted former president, as she wrote in a January 2021 message to an unnamed staffer: “I hate him passionately.”

That revealing remark was included in documents released last month as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Carlson’s characterization of Trump during the Jan. 6 riot as a “demonic force” has also grabbed the headlines of Fox News, which has campaigned numerous times for those involved in the deadly riot throughout its weekday broadcasts and at Fox Nation have participated documentary.

Getting those lyrics out may have helped bring the couple closer together. Carlson “doesn’t hate me, or at least doesn’t hate me anymore!” Trump posted on Truth Social last month.

For his part, Carlson has gushed about Trump in recent weeks, declaring his “love” for him during a radio interview and calling Trump’s performance at a McDonald’s in Ohio “incredible.”