Ted Cruz Says Tucker Carlson Pressing Him on Iran Was an ‘Irrelevant Gotcha’ Moment: ‘He Felt Very Gleeful’ | Video

Sen. Ted Cruz is still not over the public humiliation inflicted on him by Tucker Carlson earlier this week. The Texas senator took to his own podcast, “Verdict with Ted Cruz,” Friday to give his side of the story.

In a viral clip released of Cruz’s sit-down interview with the former Fox News host turned podcaster, Carlson asked the senator what the population of Iran was before expressing shock at the senator’s admission that he didn’t know the exact figure off the top of his head.

“You don’t know the population in the country you seek to topple?” the conservative media personality asked. “How could you not know that?”

Cruz said that the clip was one “gotcha moment” out of two and a half hours of conversation.

“It was an irrelevant gotcha,” he said on his podcast Friday. “What Tucker did is he released it a day before the whole interview, so he picked, out of two hours, he thought that was the best 60 seconds cause he did get me to say the words, ‘I don’t know,’ and he felt very gleeful on that.”

Listen to the moment here:

The senator noted that after Carlson realized that Cruz did not know the figure he was “vibrating.”

“He did the sort of classic Tucker, ‘What!? How can you not know that!?’” he continued. “Looking as if I had admitted to, I don’t know, committing treason or something.”

Cruz said that for what it’s worth he would have guessed the population was 90 million. He also made a point to note that the actual population of Iran is 89 million, and Carlson claimed it was 92 million, “which I think is funny because I assume he Google searched it right before the interview,” he added.

He also added that the reason Carlson put that clip out first was because a large portion of the former Fox News host’s views on Israel did not align with the president’s which, according to Cruz, became clear from the rest of the interview.

“[Carlson] didn’t want to stand with Israel,” the senator said. “He was deeply opposed to Israel and he was deeply opposed to President Trump’s policy.”

Earlier this week, the senator responded to the embarrassing viral moment Wednesday with a “Star Wars”-themed AI meme, which depicted Tucker Carlson opposite Luke Skywalker. In the meme, Carlson asks, “What is the population of the Death Star?”  

You can listen to the full episode of “Verdict with Ted Cruz” here.

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