This former Republican strategist believes Tucker Carlson could be the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee

The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson, a former GOP strategist and scathing critic of former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, has not been bullish on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as a 2024 presidential candidate. Wilson has been predicting that if DeSantis enters next year's Republican presidential primary, Trump will crush him.

To firebrand author Ann Coulter, the Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro and other DeSantis cheerleaders, DeSantis is the Republican Party's best chance to move on from Trump. But Wilson, in a November 2022 interview with The Guardian, predicted that when all is said and done, the GOP will "bend the knee" to Trump and give him their 2024 presidential nomination. And when Trump was indicted on 34 criminal counts stemming from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Jr.'s investigation of the Trump Organization and alleged hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, Wilson predicted that Republicans would view Trump as a martyr and rally around the ex-president.

But now, according to Wilson, the MAGA movement has a new "martyr": Tucker Carlson, who was fired by Fox News even though he was the right-wing cable news channel's top-rated opinion host. And Wilson believes that if Carlson decided to run for president, he would have a good shot at the nomination.

Wilson told The Guardian, "Tucker is one of the very small number of political celebrities in this country who has the name ID, the personal wealth, the stature to actually declare and run for president — and in a Republican primary run in the same track Donald Trump did: the transgressive, bad boy candidate, the one who lets you say what you want to say, think what you want to think, act how you want to act, no matter how grotesque it is. Among Republicans, he's a beloved figure. He's right now in the Republican universe a martyr — and there ain't nothing they want more than a martyr."

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Wilson is no fan of Tucker Carlson. Once very active in the GOP, the Never Trump conservative believes his former party took a dangerously authoritarian turn with Trump's 2016 campaign and the rise of the MAGA movement. And Wilson views Carlson as one of the leading promoters of MAGA ideology.

If Carlson ran for president, Wilson warns, a "worst-case scenario" would be the former Fox News host winning the GOP nomination.

Wilson told The Guardian, "People used to say, 'Trump? There's no way he'll run. He's a clown. He’s a reality TV guy. Nobody ever is gonna take that seriously'.… right up until he won the nomination. And then they said, 'Oh, don't worry, it can't be that bad. What could possibly be as bad as you think?' Well, everything. And so, I think we live in a world where the most irresponsible thing you can do is look away from the worst-case scenario. I do believe that if Tucker ran for president, there is an argument to be made that he's the one person who could beat Trump."

The Never Trumper argues that as a presidential candidate, Carlson would fare much better among GOP voters than DeSantis.

"(Carlson) has an understanding of the camera," Wilson told The Guardian. "He has an understanding of the news media, infrastructure and ecosystem. He can present. He can talk…. (Carlson) is unlike Ron DeSantis. He can talk to people, you know? He is the guy who can engage people on a on a human basis. Ron is not that guy."