Twitter podcaster Tucker Carlson is pounding home the theory that Democrats and the D.C. establishment are plotting to kill Donald Trump, this time claiming that we’re “speeding toward assassination” because “permanent Washington” has decided they “just can’t have” Trump as president again.

Appearing on anti-woke comedian Adam Carolla’s YouTube show this week, Carlson weighed in on his sitdown with Trump that aired on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, last week. That interview was planned by both Carlson and Trump—both of whom have their own grievances with Fox News—as counter-programming to the right-wing network’s GOP presidential primary debate that Trump skipped.

At one point, Carolla asked the former Fox News star what “the future holds” and whether “they are going to let Trump be president,” prompting Carlson to begin raging about the impeachments and criminal indictments the ex-president has faced. And, of course, Carlson also tossed in some Jan. 6 trutherism for good measure.

“They protested him, they called him names. He won anyway. They impeached him twice on ridiculous pretenses,” the far-right nationalist pundit exclaimed. “They fabricated a lot about what happened on January 6 in order to impeach him again. It didn’t work. He came back. Then they indicted him. It didn’t work. He became more popular. Then they indicted him three more times. And every single time his popularity rose.”

According to Carlson, the only thing left for the so-called ruling class to do is kill Trump.

“If you begin with criticism, then you go to protest. Then you go to impeachment. Now you go to indictment and none of them work. What’s next?” Carlson said, purely just asking questions. “I mean, you know, graph it out, man! We’re speeding toward assassination, obviously, and no one will say that!”

He added: “I don’t know how you can’t reach that conclusion. You know what it’s been like. They have decided—permanent Washington. Both parties have decided that there’s something about Trump that’s so threatening to them, they just can’t have it.” Carlson’s assertion that Washington elites are conspiring to murder the current GOP presidential frontrunner comes after he posed that very same question to Trump during their friendly Twitter chat.

“They started with protests against you, massive protests, organized protests by the left, and then it moved to impeachment twice,” Carlson proclaimed to Trump. “And now indictment. I mean, the next stage is violence. Are you worried that they’re going to try and kill you? Why wouldn’t they try and kill you? Honestly.”

Since his abrupt ouster from Fox News, the one-time most-watched host on cable news has at times struggled to retain his cultural relevancy as he’s been shunted off to the hinterlands of Elon Musk’s social media platform. For instance, a gushing biography of him barely made a whimper on the best-seller charts, selling a mere 3,000 copies in its first week.

At the same time, though, Carlson has already pulled in investors to his new media venture, and nabbed seven-figure ad deals. And besides his chummy interview with Trump, Carlson has leaned further into controversy while posting obsequious sitdowns with Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán and accused human trafficker Andrew Tate.

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