Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson believes the indictment against former President Donald Trump is not just political but “ideological” and based on comments he made regarding the U.S.-led coalition invasion of Iraq.
Carlson made the remarks in the third episode of his Twitter show published on June 13, the same day that Trump pleaded not guilty in a Miami court to charges in the federal government’s classified document case.
Carlson described Trump’s appearance in court as the “first step of a process” designed to put the former president in prison for the “rest of his life” and said the Republican—who is currently leading in 2024 election polls—had made himself “the blood enemy of the largest and most powerful organization in human history, which would be the federal government” in 2016.
The former Fox host then shared a clip of Trump during a February 2016 Republican candidates debate in Greenville, South Carolina.
During the clip, Trump can be seen telling the audience: “We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East. They lied, they said there were weapons of mass destruction. There was none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.”
The United States-led invasion of Iraq, which was closely supported by the United Kingdom, began on March 20, 2003, after former President George Bush’s claim that former Iraq President Saddam Hussein and his regime were harboring weapons of mass destruction.
Trump ‘Sealed His Fate’ With War Comments
Hussein refused to step down as president and went into hiding before being captured by U.S. soldiers in early December 2003. He was then handed over to the new Iraqi government, which tried him for crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death by hanging in December 2006.
However, the war in Iraq continued to rage until 2011, and resulted in more than 4,700 U.S. and allied troop deaths, and the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, although the Department of Defense puts the number of American soldiers killed at 4,475.
