Overview

• In a clip released June 17, Tucker Carlson challenged Sen. Ted Cruz to name Iran’s population during an interview on the Israel-Iran conflict.
• The excerpt went viral on social media and spawned thousands of memes, including an AI-generated comic Cruz shared featuring Luke Skywalker.
• On his June 20 podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz, the senator said he declined to memorize population tables and deemed the exact figure irrelevant to Iran’s regime-change threat.
• Cruz noted Carlson’s assertion of 92 million was about 3 million higher than the actual population, which he said he had approximated at 90 million.
• The full interview, set for later release, addresses Cruz’s support for regime change in Iran and America’s role in escalating tensions.