Sen. Tim Scott took time out on Saturday to offer an explanation as to why he suddenly stood up during a GOP candidate forum interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson a day earlier.
Scott was taking part in the Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines, Iowa, and engaged in a roughly 30-minute interview with Carlson on a variety of topics, including the chaos along the U.S.-Southwest border and the ongoing fentanyl crisis, where he stood for most of it, while Carlson sat.
When asked by Carlson if he had concerns about the United States potentially heading towards war with Russia due to President Joe Biden’s authorization for the military to mobilize reserve troops, Scott explained his motivation for standing.
“My mama wanted a preacher, so I’m going to stand up and do it the Southern way,” Scott said, according to the Western Journal.
That led Carlson to holler jokingly at the South Carolina Republican, “Preach!”
“Hallelujah!” Scott responded as he then addressed the audience like a preacher.
“Tucker’s face cracking me up as Scott gets up and starts pacing, lol,” one Twitter user noted.
“Tucker’s face when he gets up to talk. ‘Where’s this guy going? I had more questions,’” said another.
“The way Tim Scott stood up and walked around to speak in a ‘preaching’ manner during this sit down interview just seemed a little weird & slightly disrespectful towards Tucker,” another wrote.
Carlson also interviewed some other GOP presidential hopefuls, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley.
At one point, Carlson asked Haley a blunt question “that caught her off-guard,” according to the Daily Signal.
“Who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline?” the former Fox News host asked during a discussion on climate change and energy policy.
A section of the pipeline, which carried natural gas under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, was blown up in September 2022.
“I mean, I don’t know, do you?” she said with some levity.
Laughing, Carlson said evidence suggested that the Biden administration was responsible, but the White House and various federal agencies, including the Pentagon, have denied involvement.
Earlier, the discussion dealt with climate and natural resources needed to power the U.S. economy
“You dealt with this question all the time at the UN, the question of, ‘how does the world respond to climate change?’” he began. “But there are really two questions. One, is the climate changing…but the deeper question is why? We had glaciers 10,000 years ago, the climate has always changed dramatically since the formation of the Earth.
“Do you think humans are causing this change, and do you think we can stop or slow it down? Is there actual evidence?” he asked directly.
Haley took a breath and paused for some seconds before responding.
“I mean….I don’t…” she began.
“Honestly, I don’t know how much is being changed or not, as much as I know that putting electric vehicles on the road is not the answer to what you’re doing,” she finally said.
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She went on to say that the more significant problem is the U.S., at present, must go “hat in hand” to Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela to get oil.
“We should be energy independent, no matter what. I don’t care what anybody says about the environment,” Haley said. “This is a national security threat of not having energy independence.”
Carlson and Haley also discussed reforming the federal government and election integrity.