Tucker Carlson told conspiracy theorist Alex Jones “of course” he doesn’t want to run for president, though he he is leaving the door open to be involved in the 2028 presidential election.

Carlson joined Jones for a livestream on X on Tuesday where Jones asked about talk of a 2028 run for him. Carlson’s chances of winning the 2028 Republican presidential nomination jumped to nearly 10% on the prediction market platform Polymarket earlier this month amid Carlson’s heavy criticism of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Carlson’s chances on Polymarket now sit at around 6%.

The former Fox News host made things official this week when he declared he’s done with the Republican Party, taking issue with the Iran war and more.

“I would not support the Republican Party. There’s no chance I would support the Republican Party,” Carlson said on the Can’t Be Censored podcast. “I’m not going to support the Democratic Party — I’m not sure what I’m going to do.”

He added:

How could I or any American voter support a political party that’s not loyal to the United States. That puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its own citizens. It’s not possible to vote for people like that, and I’m not going to.

Carlson told Jones he has no interest in running for president himself.

“I don’t want to run for president. I do want to be involved in offering an option of some kind. I don’t know what that would look like, but it’s not democracy when, no matter who you vote for, you get the same result,” he said.

Jones pressed his guest and told him he’d perform far better than other rumored 2028 candidates like California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“Tucker, you know, you’d beat Gavin Newsom, you know, you’d beat Marco Rubio. I mean, you need to run for president,” Jones said.

“If the options are Gavin Newsom and Marco Rubio, I don’t think, I mean, this is — I know Trump is very convinced that Gavin has his shot and Gavin has an advantage in that he’s a sociopath who will say anything without while passing a lie detector test,” Carlson said.

He argued the United States is an “empire” facing a crisis in its “leadership class,” then saying the first step to fixing it is to “stop” supposed discrimination against white men.

“[The system] is not producing impressive people. And every empire is the same in this one regard,” he said. “When its system fails to produce a leadership class capable of running this huge thing that the ancestors built, then it collapses. And so we need to fix that, like immediately. And the first thing to do is stop discriminating against white men. They built all of this in the first place. They have a pretty good track record. So knock it off. Give them a fair shot.”

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