In the midst of a fairly sober interview about the prosecution of attempted Trump assassin Cole Allen on CNN's State of the Union, host Jake Tapper attempted to nudge Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for D.C., into commenting on Tucker Carlson and Jonah Goldberg and harsh anti-Trump commentary online. Pirro wouldn't bite.
Tapper apologized early on for relaying that Allen suggested Trump was a rapist, a pedophile, and a traitor, and then turned the talk to Tucker:
JAKE TAPPER: There's obviously a lot of incendiary language out there, horrific language out there. I just quoted from some of it from the alleged shooter, who didn't get that from nowhere. That's a lot of crazy people saying a lot of horrific things. I want to play Tucker Carlson, your former colleague at Fox, last month talking about the president.
TUCKER CARLSON clip: Here's a leader who's mocking the gods of his ancestors, mocking the God of gods, and exalting himself above them. Could this be the Antichrist? Who knows?
TAPPER: That seems incendiary too, no?
JEANINE PIRRO: Look, the -- whatever Tucker Carlson says is not relevant to me right now. I really don't care about what he says. All I care about are the facts, the evidence, and what I can prove. All of this other stuff is noise.
No one ardently wants to make Tucker more relevant than the elitist media right now, who are so desperate to paint the picture of a Trump coalition collapsing. It's more worth discussing how Tucker went from the bowtied McCain moderate Republican who hosted a prissy show on PBS to pro-Trump Fox News star to whatever he is now -- "Tucker Qatarlson," says Mark Levin.
After asking Pirro how she responds to “deranged conspiracy theories on the left and the right” claiming these assassination attempts are staged, he turned to special pleading for his CNN colleague Jonah Goldberg’s claims about how Tucker’s “Antichrist” business” is worse than other outrages, like James Comey's wiseacre "86 47" Instagram post. Goldberg cartooned that as an innocent "hey look at these shells."
It should be obvious that "Antichrist" is a hotter take than the everyday Hitler/fascist gristle on CNN. Tapper's seeking to play down Comey's post, as if that can't be interpreted as a metaphorical riff on assassination. If Donald Trump put "86 Comey" or "86 44" on his Truth Social account, the reaction would be much different.
First, Jake Tapper asked Jeanine Pirro about Tucker suggesting Trump is the Antichrist. She wasn't biting. Then he did special pleading for Jonah Goldberg, who said "Antichrist" is more incendiary than James Comey's "86 47." We can agree "Antichrist" is bigger than the usual… pic.twitter.com/dhGn9jvlay
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) May 3, 2026
TAPPER: But is what Tucker said -- another former colleague of yours, Jonah Goldberg, says that, to him, and I'm paraphrasing here, what Tucker said about the Antichrist is more incendiary than what James Comey posted on Instagram. While not defending what James Comey posted on Instagram, do you see Jonah's point?
PIRRO: You know, I'm really not here as a political pundit anymore. I'm here as a prosecutor. My job is to decide whether or not I have evidence and whether -- I have got 30 years in this, a prosecutor, a DA, a judge, and now the United States attorney. My job is to not talk about talking heads and what they say. My job is to come here and offer to you, CNN, any evidence that we have that will answer the questions you have.
Tapper might have been hoping for one of those sassy Mediaite headlines like "Former Fox Host Trashes Other Former Fox Host." Pirro knew what was being attempted, and shut it down.
