Ted Cruz Was Surprised to Be Challenged During His Interview With Tucker Carlson

You would have to imagine that, at least on most issues, Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson agree with one another. Cruz is one of the most conservative members of the Senate, and Carlson was fired from Fox News in part because he was too controversial and conservative even for that network.

During a recent interview between the two, though, things got quite heated as Carlson pushed Cruz over the unfolding war between Israel and Iran. Now, many want to better understand the interview and what the two of them disagreed about. Here's what we know.

Cruz and Carlson were discussing Israel's attack on Iran and whether the United States should get involved when things started to get heated.

"How many people live in Iran by the way?” Carlson asked, with Cruz responding that he didn't know.

“You don’t know the population of the country you seek to topple?” Carlson asked.

“How many people live in Iran?” Cruz responded, clearly hoping to catch Carlson for not knowing the answer to his own question.

Carlson responded, though, saying, "92 million." Cruz then said simply, "OK."

“How could you not know that?” Carlson responded, clearly smelling a little blood in the water.

“I don’t sit around memorizing population tables,” the senator said in response.

“Well, it’s kind of relevant because you’re calling for the overthrow of the government," Carlson said, pointing out that Cruz and many Republicans have called for regime change in Iran.

The two then began arguing about the "ethnic mix" of Iran, which eventually led Cruz to say, “I am not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran!”

“No, you’re a senator who is calling to overthrow the country, and you don’t know anything about the country!" Carlson said in response.

By this point, the two were shouting at one another, and it's clear that Carlson doesn't have the same hunger for war that Cruz appears to be feeling.

That video was just the teaser of a full interview between the two, and hours after it started spreading online, Carlson released another sneak peek in which he argues with the senator about whether we should be spying on our closest allies.

“Is it in America’s interest for Israel to spy on us, including on the president?” Carlson asks in that clip.

It “is in America’s interest to be closely allied with Israel because we get huge benefits from it,” Cruz responded, before Carlson cut him off.

Cruz, meanwhile, has clapped back at Carlson's release of the clip, saying that the host is sharing a "gotcha" moment from the full interview.

“He released a snippet playing a ‘gotcha’ on the population of Iran,” . “I declined to play that silly game.”

Although the MAGA folks are in power, it's clear that they don't agree on everything. As President Trump weighs whether the U.S. should get involved in a war with Iran, it will be interesting to see which faction of his coalition he's more willing to listen to.