Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested President Donald Trump’s willingness to support gas tax increases might be a clear-cut indication that he is not interested in running for re-election.
“What if Donald Trump had decided he’s had enough? Too many investigations, too much nastiness, too few upsides. It wouldn’t be a crazy conclusion,” Carlson asked during a Thursday night edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
He went on to offer a variety of reasons why the president might be souring on a re-election bid, including Trump’s support for gas tax increases and cuts to Medicare.
“Let’s see, he might start by proposing more than half a billion dollars in Medicare cuts. That’s something that nobody outside the libertarian symposia circuit really wants to see. Then he’d slash funding for the E-Verify program that would allow companies to keep hiring illegal alien labor in violation of a key campaign promise,” Carlson said, referring to a series of ideas people in Trump’s world floated recently.
Carlson also suggested Trump could “release a bunch of drug dealers back onto the streets” in the middle of the drug epidemic, and continue military intervention in Syria.
Trump’s 2020 budget proposal suggested cuts to governmental programs. In particular, the president is seeking a roughly $1.9 trillion cut to programs, including major cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.
He added: “You’d raise gas taxes. In fact, the administration is proposing just that. According to news reports, the White House is negotiating with Democrats to hike taxes on gasoline in order to fund ‘infrastructure.’ This is one of those ideas that everyone in Washington loves. It costs them nothing … If you live outside the coastal cities and you’re not rich, higher gas prices are a disaster.”
Trump supported a 25-cent-per-gallon hike in the gas tax, media reports from 2018 show. Trump also said he was “open to other ways” to pay for a major infrastructure build-out. Republican lawmakers generally oppose gas tax hike proposals, with some saying it would punish Americans’ pocketbooks. A 25-cent gas tax hike would increase the tax from 18.3 cents to 43.3 cents per gallon.
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