One of the founders of the Lincoln Project said on Friday that he believes Fox News' Tucker Carlson will be the Republican party's frontrunner for the 2024 presidential nomination.
While appearing on MSNBC's Deadline: White House, Steve Schmidt spoke about the ongoing presidential election and how he thinks things could fare in the coming years.
"Look, we have almost 48 percent of this country that's voted for a statist, authoritarian movement with fascistic markers that's hostile to American democracy, to the rule of law — that venerates an individual, that's a cult of personality," Schmidt said. "I think that Tucker Carlson is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in 2024."
Schmidt is one of the founders of the Lincoln Project, the conservative group that opposes President Donald Trump.
Schmidt also suggested that Republican candidates "will kowtow to the conspiracy" that Trump "was stabbed in the back by unseen malicious forces of the deep state, that the election was stolen, that it's illegitimate forever."
He continued, "More than a majority of the Republican party will believe this was an illegitimate election because they have been poisoned by the [Rupert] Murdoch operation, by OAN, by Sinclair, by the toxic sludge of sewage and crap and disinformation and lies that flows on Facebook into the screens of the American people."
Schmidt's comments come amid the ongoing results of the 2020 presidential election between Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
Biden currently leads Trump in both electoral votes and popular votes, with just a few states left to be called. These states include Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada. Arizona was called by Fox News and the Associated Press as a Biden victory, but several other media outlets have said that the race in the state is too close to call.
While the presidential race has not yet been called for either candidate, this is not the first time Carlson's name has come up when discussing the 2024 presidential race.
During an interview with the The Independent in September, Vernon Robinson, a former Republican candidate for Congress, made similar comments about the Fox News' personality.
"Tucker Carlson will be the Republican nominee," Robinson told The Independent, while adding that Carlson would "solidify America First."
Meanwhile, Trump's former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney recently made comments contradicting both Schmidt and Robinson, and said that he would "absolutely" expect Trump to run for a second term in 2024, if he were to lose the 2020 election.
Newsweek reached out to Fox News and the Lincoln Project for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Matthew Impelli is a Newsweek staff writer based in New York. His focus is reporting social issues and crime. In ... Read more
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