Edgy and Unscripted, Tucker Carlson Fires Up the Convention Crowd

Tucker Carlson’s return to prime time kicked off with a roar.

Mr. Carlson, a Fox News star until his firing 15 months ago, brought the Fiserv Forum to its feet when he emerged onstage at the Republican convention on Thursday evening, his support from the Make America Great Again crowd clearly intact. The grin on his face suggested just how much he relished his return to the limelight.

Mr. Carlson is freshly embedded in former President Donald J. Trump’s inner circle, and he delivered an unscripted monologue straight out of his old Fox News show, complete with off-color jokes and dark visions of a nation at risk of falling into tyranny should Mr. Trump not prevail in November.

And on a night when convention organizers were keen to present a softer, more humanized version of Mr. Trump — emphasizing his love of family and music — Mr. Carlson broached harder-edged topics, making thinly veiled cracks about President Biden’s age and nodding to Republican conspiracy theories that the 2020 election had been stolen.

“You could take, I don’t know, a mannequin, a dead person, and make them president,” Mr. Carlson said to laughter. “You could. You could! I’m just saying, it’s theoretically possible. With enough cheating, that could happen.”

The audience loved it, bathing Mr. Carlson in cheers. There were whoops when he dropped the fact that he was speaking extemporaneously, a rhetorical flourish meant to underscore an image of authenticity. (His teleprompter stayed blank throughout his nearly 12-minute appearance.)

Mr. Carlson went on to praise Mr. Trump as “the funniest person I ever met in my life,” adding a line that chimed with the softer themes of the evening: “You can’t be funny without perspective or without empathy.”

Mr. Trump, though, did not hear the plaudits in person: He was not in the hall for Mr. Carlson’s appearance.

One of Mr. Carlson’s attempted jokes did seem to fall flat. With a smirk, he called Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, whom he lobbied for as a Trump running mate, “one of the only politicians in Washington who is actually very close to his own wife.”

The line landed awkwardly, given the conspicuous absence of Melania Trump from this week’s convention, although the former first lady arrived at the convention hall later in the evening.