“The room smelled like barbecue, like cooking meat” said one source in the room for Iowa’s Family Leader Summit, broadcast by The Blaze, organized by Iowa kingmaker Bob Vander Plaats, and hosted by Tucker Carlson, erstwhile Fox News host turned master of ceremonies for what is traditionally a faith-forward, Christian-heavy, Iowa-focused event. This was not the event Carlson intended to put on, however, and the audience was on his side for the subversion of expectations.
Carlson ripped apart three candidates in a row before lunch. Tim Scott, the aspirational throwback candidate, found himself defending the “defense industrial complex” and having the Episcopalian Tucker react with cold amens to his Bible verse-heavy schtick. Asa Hutchinson found himself burned to a crisp at the stake over his transgender policy history, Carlson reducing the amiable southern governor into a flailing pile of ash. And Mike Pence? Poor Mike Pence, forced into the box of defending Republican foreign policy all the way up until 2016 and the general Heritage Foundation booklet for ideas against a far more capable and adroit interlocutor.
Remember, Tucker Carlson is not running for president — he’s too busy doing more important things like interviewing Andrew Tate — but one gets the sense that he would very much relish the opportunity. The first several hours were like an Iowa-based live performance of his show, going hammer and tongs after the candidates for their unwillingness to separate themselves from the foreign policy blob. Questions about education, farm policy and even China were few and far between — this was about Ukraine and whether you would go along with Carlson’s understanding of the war.
The surprises came after lunch with the second half of the field. For whatever reason — some in the room speculated that he had read responses to his foreign policy heavy focus in the morning, or that he simply felt he couldn’t nuke everyone on stage — Carlson held back noticeably when interviewing Nikki Haley, who came across as polished, charming, and authentic compared to the earlier candidates. Despite her foreign policy focus under the Trump administration and her reputation as a neoconservative, Haley was left untouched by any Carlson wrath, and even managed to get the crowd and her questioner on her side on a number of points.
Her solid performance didn’t do much to impress the commentators at The Blaze, however, most notably failed Arizona candidate Kari Lake, who decried Haley’s refusal to say that Donald Trump actually won in 2020, and that Joe Biden didn’t get 81 million votes. As a Trump surrogate, Lake was rock solid. As someone who repeatedly invoked the importance of telling the truth, she was an abject failure at doing the same.
Next up was Vivek Ramaswamy, the candidate who owes the most to Tucker’s style and his promotion, and it showed. He read like an avatar of online conservative speak, with off the wall ideas and total assurance as to his capability to upend the entrenched powers in Washington despite no expertise to back it up. If you viewed him as a Trump surrogate, as some do, he came off very well with the big man absent.
Then there was Ron DeSantis. The real question going into this event was whether DeSantis would have a faceplant moment and if anyone else would explode upwards — neither happened. The Florida governor was serious, polished, prepared, handling off-track questions about cryptocurrency with aplomb and contrasting himself with Trump, Joe Biden, and Gavin Newsom without hesitation. No one who already supported DeSantis came away with their mind changed.
If the event accomplished anything, it was a stake in the heart of the Mike Pence effort — and not just because his fundraising numbers, released hours after his performance, showed that he is barely beating Asa Hutchinson in the financial arena. At $1.2 million, it’s very possible that Pence could miss out on the August debate — an ignominious performance for the former Vice President, but one that indicates, as another Iowa source in said, “The man just has no lane, and God or mother won’t let him admit it yet.”
The Iowa Family Leader event in 2015 was a game changer because it showed what Donald Trump could get away with: insulting John McCain’s status as a prisoner of war and living to tell the tale. In 2023, it may be a game changer by revealing that Donald Trump doesn’t even need to come here any more to make his case. Or it might signal a reversion to the norms: if you ignore Iowa, you pay the penalty. The DeSantis team certainly hopes so.
