There was an election spook-tacular on Halloween night in Glendale, Arizona, as former President Donald Trump sat down with Tucker Carlson in the latest Tucker Live Tour event.
In what will likely be one of the final major interviews Trump does before the American people cast their votes on Nov. 5, the pair talked about what keeps Trump motivated, what Trump believes about God, what Trump views as the most important issue and what’s at stake this election, and more.
Carlson first asked what keeps Trump motivated amidst the lies, opposition, and attempts on his life.
“Who the hell knows,” Trump replied.
Trump acknowledged he could be sitting on a beach somewhere, but chooses the political life. On the beach, the former president said he’d “get pretty bored pretty easily.” Trump said these days he has “one thing in mind: Make America Great Again. That’s all I think about.”
“I always like to look forward,” Trump continued. “I don’t like to look so much in the present. I don’t like to look in the past so much, other than you have to learn from the past—it’s history. You have to learn otherwise, you’re a very poor person. But I like to look forward. I like to think of the positive. I think you have to have sort of the positive power of positive thinking.”
With two attempts on Trump’s life this election cycle, however, Carlson suggested it might be difficult not to dwell on the past. Carlson suggested providence has played a role in Trump’s persistence. “How have your views about God changed in the last eight years?” Carlson asked Trump.
“Look, I’ve always been a believer,” Trump said. In typical Trump fashion, however, the former president launched into a story about how Pastor Robert Jeffress told him that though the former president may not be the best Christian and may not know the Bible as well as he should, Trump has done a lot for Christians and for religious freedom. Trump believes this continues to be behind the large amount of support he receives from evangelicals.
As for the biggest issue facing the nation in the upcoming election, Trump said the border is an even bigger threat than inflation. “Inflation,” Trump told Carlson, is “a country buster.” Nevertheless, “I happen to think that the border is the single biggest issue,” Trump told Carlson. “I think the border is a bigger issue than inflation.”
Trump said he resolved to run for a second term, “when I watched what [Joe Biden and Kamala Harris] were doing and how they were destroying this country at the border.”
“Prisons from all over the world are being emptied out into our country—all over the world,” Trump added.
Thousands packed inside Desert Diamond Arena while others joined online to listen to Carlson and Trump’s conversation as the Trump campaign makes one final push in the all important state of Arizona. Trump is looking to sweep the Sun Belt while picking up one of the Rust Belt states to carry the presidency. Without Arizona, 538’s election model predicts Trump’s path becomes much more difficult, winning only 15 of 100 contests if Arizona goes for Vice President Kamala Harris.
The evening’s proceeds are going to hurricanes Helene and Milton relief efforts as the damage from the storms has caused added tumult to next week’s election in the American southeast.
Carlson and Trump weren’t the only prominent political figures to address the crown Thursday night. Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his former running mate Nicole Shanahan, Charlie Kirk, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, provided opening remarks to the pair’s conversation.
“This is a very, very special evening,” Kirk said in his remarks. “Do you know the first ever MAGA rally was held in Phoenix, Arizona, and tonight is … Donald Trump’s last visit, as a candidate, to Arizona, completing that nine-year journey.”
“Why did Donald Trump choose Arizona as the first ever MAGA rally?” Kirk asked rhetorically. “It’s because Donald Trump’s values have not changed.”
“From the golden escalator to this stage tonight, Donald Trump was clear that our country will be invaded no longer, and we will not put up with our sovereignty being jeopardized,” Kirk added. “That’s why he came to Arizona. This state helped launch the movement that has swept the globe.”
When it was Lee’s turn to take the stage, the Utah senator was in the holiday spirit. “Look, if you’re like me and most of the people throughout this great country, you like treats, but you’re sick and tired of the tricks. No more tricks from Washington.”
Lee also made an impassioned plea for Republican’s Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake.
“They go together, don’t they? Donald Trump and Kari Lake,” Lee said. “We need them both, both of them, because in order to bring about Donald J. Trump’s policies, we’ve got to move things through the Senate.”
As for Lake’s opponent, the Utah senator told the crowd, “Ruben Gallego is right there, thick as thieves with Kamala Harris on religious freedom and everything else. We cannot let Arizona elect him.”
When it was Kennedy’s turn, the former presidential candidate pulled back the curtain on why he left the Democratic Party and came to align with Trump. “The Democratic Party I grew up with was the party of cops and firefighters and working people, and now that’s the Republican Party,” Kennedy told the audience.
Unlike the Democratic Party of his youth, “the Democratic Party today is no longer the party that is skeptical of the CIA,” Kennedy said. “They’ve become the party of the swamp, they’ve become the party of Wall Street, of Big Tech, of Big Data, of Big Pharma, of Big Ag, Big Chemical, and the military-industrial complex. And they’re the party not of civil rights but of division that is tearing our country apart.”
“Immediately after his shooting at Butler, he called me three hours later on the telephone, and he asked me to meet with him the next day in Milwaukee,” Kennedy told the audience. “And we had a two and a half hour meeting then and a number of subsequent meetings. And during those meetings, he urged me to unify our parties and to work with him to reclaim the values that Robert Kennedy stood for, that John Kennedy stood for.”
MAGA, Kennedy said, has made him feel like he’s part of a family. “I’ve lost a lot of friends and a lot of family, but I have a much bigger family now.”