Tucker Carlson shared why he spent 1 1/2 years reading the Bible — and holy moly.
The right-wing TV personality explained to orthodox christian writer and fellow conservative Rod Dreher in a video interview published to Dreher’s YouTube channel ― fittingly on Halloween ― that the reason why he finally decided to crack open the Good Book was because he was once attacked by a “demon.”
The subject was broached when Dreher asked Carlson, “Do you think the presence of evil is kickstarting people to wonder about good?”
“That’s what happened to me,” Carlson said before launching into his tale.
According to the former Fox News pundit, he was attacked “while I was asleep with my wife and four dogs in the bed” and was “mauled — physically mauled” while his wife and dogs continued to sleep peacefully.
When Dreher asked Carlson if he was attacked by a “demon,” Carlson replied, “Yeah, by a demon — or something unseen that left claw marks on my sides.”
“I was totally confused,” Carlson continued. “I woke up and I couldn’t breathe, and I thought I was going to suffocate, and I walked around outside, and then I walked in, and my wife and dogs had not woken up, and they’re very light sleepers.”
Carlson said once back inside his home he had “these terrible pains on my rib cage and on my shoulder.”
“I was just in my boxer shorts, and I went and flipped on the light in the bathroom, and I had four claw marks on either side, underneath my arms and on my left shoulder, they were bleeding.”
Carlson said that although he isn’t particularly religious, he “knew it was spiritual immediately,” and decided to call his assistant who is “like, the only Evangelical Christian I know” to discuss his experience.
“And she said, ‘Oh, yeah. No, no, that happens. Yeah. People are attacked in their bed by demons,’” Carlson recounted.
Carlson expressed utter shock about his assistant’s revelation while talking to Dreher recalling that his response to her was: “‘What?! What are you even talking about?’”
Carlson said that although he has “very low levels of trust for Christian pastors,” soon after the experience he was “seized with this very intense desire to read the Bible.”
He said that he decided to “read it and see what’s in there myself” without “any study aids or anything” and free of “other people’s opinions.”
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“So I spent a year and a half reading, and then I started rereading it, and it was a, just a transformative experience for me,” Carlson said. “But I’m not, you know, holding myself out as someone from whom you could get theological advice, because I don’t know, I don’t understand any of it. But yeah, that happened.”
Regardless of how one may feel after hearing Carlson’s story, the implication that Carlson’s confrontation with an evil demon prompted him to “wonder about good” doesn’t exactly check out.