By Molly Claire Goddard
9:58am PDT, Jun 23, 2025
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Ted Cruz fired back at
Tucker Carlson following their contentious interview.
The Texas senator appeared on
a recent episode of the conservative media personality's
The Tucker Carlson Show, where Carlson asked Cruz what the population of Iran is. When the politician failed to come up with the correct answer, the host condemned Cruz. Now, he's giving his side of the story.
Keep reading to see what the Texas senator said about his exchange with Carlson…MORE:
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When Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson sat down for the interview, the right-wing television personality appeared baffled by the former solicitor general of Texas not knowing the population of Iran: "You don't know the population in the country you seek to topple?" Carlson asked Cruz. "How could you not know that?"
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During an installment of Ted Cruz's "Verdict with Ted Cruz" podcast, the Republican leader claimed Tucker Carlson's question was a "gotcha moment" and alleged the reporter didn't share their whole exchange.
"It was an irrelevant gotcha," Cruz said. "What Tucker did is he released it a day before the whole interview, so he picked — out of two hours — what he thought that was the best 60 seconds because he did get me to say the words, 'I don't know,' and he felt very gleeful on that."
"He did the sort of classic Tucker, 'What!? How can you not know that!?'" Cruz continued. "Looking as if I had admitted to, I don't know, committing treason or something."
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Ted Cruz explained that he would have guessed the population of Iran is 90 million. He also noted that the actual stat is 89 million. However, Tucker Carlson claimed it was 92 million.
"I think it's funny because I assume he Google searched it right before the interview," he said.
The conflict between Cruz and Carlson has highlighted a significant split in the Republican party over President Donald Trump's decision to take military action against Iran in favor of Israel.
"[Carlson] didn't want to stand with Israel," Cruz said. "He was deeply opposed to Israel and he was deeply opposed to President Trump's policy."
