Tucker Carlson harshly criticizes GOP's “One Big Beautiful Bill”
“I hate the whole thing. This is not how to legislate,” Carlson says, later adding: “I would encourage the White House to try and blow that up.”
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Citation
From the June 13, 2025, edition of the All-In Podcast
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST, THE TUCKER CARLSON SHOW): I hate the whole thing. This is not how to legislate. You shouldn't have a bill this big. It's impossible to get your mind around it. No one can read it. No one understands it. It favors professional staff over legislators, and it totally leaves the public out. It'll be a decade before anyone understands what it means. The lobbies love it. It's Washington at its ugliest. Not this specific bill, though. It is an example of it, but just this is just not the way to do it, and it's not the way it has been done throughout American history. I mean, there's no reason to aggregate it all together like this. It becomes totally unmanageable and totally undemocratic.
JASON CALACANIS (HOST): So can you now — yeah.
CARLSON: Well, it's insane. It's totally insane. Do — can, I mean, can you tell me what's in it? No. I mean, you know, all of us know like 11 things we've read on Twitter or whatever, but, like, the truth is even the professional staff that wrote it couldn't, if you had dinner with them over three hours, really give you a comprehensive sense of what's in it. And remember, when it passes, and I think it likely will, you know, it's the law. So —
CALACANIS: And that is by design in order to make it impossible —
CARLSON: Of course it's by design. Of course it's by design.
CALACANIS: So unpack that.
CARLSON: Well, I mean look, it's — you know, it's just overload. You can't, I mean, every single part of this — this is the economy of the city that I've lived in my whole life. Every single part of this is there by design. It's been managed. It's been thought through. It's been written artfully. And by artfully, I mean deceptively. So you can't understand its purpose or its benefit. And literally, it is years before the ramifications become clear. And, again, this is why we have committees, you know? A committee masters a subject and then, theoretically, produces legislation that bears on that subject with, you know, knowledge and depth and hopefully wisdom. The Congress is not designed to pass legislation in this way, and we've evolved to this.
And I guess I would encourage the White House to try and blow that up. I think it'd be better for everybody if, you know, legislation was passed piecemeal as it always has been. I think part of the problem is the leadership in the Congress, and nobody wants to say it, is just embarrassing. It's totally embarrassing. And I would say the conference isn't united either. I mean, this is part of the problem with Trump's agenda. It's the beauty of Trump's agenda in my opinion, but it's, you know, it's so different from what your average 65-year-old Republican was raised believing. It's so different from what Fox News is telling you. It's the mirror image of what The Wall Street Journal editorial page is telling you. There are just not that many members of the House or the Senate who are truly on board with Trump's message even now. And, of course, they kowtow to the man, but when it really comes down to it, they hate his stated agenda.