BLOOMINGTON, IN — Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson debated attendees on a variety of hot-button issues for hours at a sold-out Turning Point USA event at Indiana University on Oct. 21.
But first, he opened his speech by commending the late Charlie Kirk’s ability to bring together the different factions of the right, which Carlson said he was less successful at doing.
“A lot of us, including me, are a lot more divisive and hot-headed,” he told the crowd.
Kirk was supposed to speak at IU as part of his American Comeback Tour, which was to bring his “prove me wrong” debate style to college campuses across the country. After he was assassinated in September at Utah Valley University, the first stop on his tour, TPUSA announced Carlson would speak at IU instead.
Tucker Carlson debates attendees on abortion, Trump
Carlson left no political stone unturned Tuesday evening, touching on immigration, abortion, Israel and even aliens to often-raucous applause.
One attendee asked Carlson about texts discovered in court filings in which Carlson wrote that he hated President Donald Trump “passionately.”
Carlson replied that the texts came after he repeated an election fraud claim from the Trump administration on air that he didn’t fact-check. When CNN reported that the claim wasn’t true, his embarrassment led him to send the texts, he said.
After several instances of interrupting, Carlson called the challenger “annoying.”
In another conversation, Carlson and an audience member found a sliver of common ground.
In response to a question about what “woke” means, Carlson agreed on the importance of having a definition, before describing “wokeness” as “an attempt by the powerful to make the less powerful shut up.”
The attendee then moved to the topic of how billionaires can influence elections, which Carlson also agreed with. He didn’t align himself with a specific political party, either.
“I kind of hate the Republican Party,” he said, adding that Democrats, however, are “evil.”
In between exchanges, Carlson criticized foreign aid to Israel and Ukraine and said the pace of immigration was replacing the current population. He even responded to a question about evidence of aliens, which he described as “spiritual entities” from the Old Testament.
Abortion was another hot topic. One attendee said he agrees with Carlson on mostly everything except abortion. Carlson called the act of terminating a pregnancy “ritualistic.”
“The worst thing you can ever do, in life and in the justice system, is to punish the innocent,” he said.
The attendee closed the conversation by saying he would be “reflecting” later.
The final question posed to Carlson was about how media operate, which the attendee described as chasing each new “outrage.”
“Do you ever feel trapped in this system?” the attendee asked.
Carlson replied that he did sometimes feel “captive” by the channels he worked at.
“In general, I think it’s bad to treat people as groups; it’s bad to dehumanize them. Those are beliefs that grow from my faith, and I mean that,” he said. “I’ve definitely done that a lot, but I’m not proud of it.”
He then pivoted to talking about housing, immigration and oligarchs.
“It’s totally possible that I’m working toward evil and don’t know it,” Carlson said. “But I don’t believe that. I actually think I’m doing the right thing.”
Mike Braun urges conservative values in school
Before Carlson took the stage, Indiana Gov. Mike Braun kicked off the event by urging young people to embrace values of faith, family and community — values he said Kirk was never afraid to champion.
“Don’t ever be embarrassed of Main Street and the values we embrace,” he said.
Braun described Kirk as someone who went “into the lion’s den” to talk to people he disagreed with to bring them to his side. Continuing that spirit is critical, he said, especially on college campuses.
“It’s up to you to be the foot soldiers,” he said, “that we take what he meant and grow it into the place where this is more common on universities than the other stuff you often see in universities.”
If not, Braun cautioned, Indiana may begin to look more like New York City.
Braun’s comments come as universities face rising scrutiny from the right for a perceived liberal bias. In Indiana, lawmakers have passed laws they’ve said will promote intellectual diversity and most recently increased the governor’s control of the IU Board of Trustees.
Ahead of Braun’s speech, he signed a proclamation to mark Oct. 21 Turning Point USA Civic Engagement Day, a commemoration of the organization’s “contributions to civic education and youth engagement.”
Contact Marissa Meador at mmeador@gannett.com or find her on X at @marissa_meador.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Tucker Carlson spars with audience on Trump, wokeness at IU event
Reporting by Marissa Meador, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
