Did President-elect Donald Trump name former Fox News host Tucker Carlson as his White House press secretary? No, that's not true: The statement saying Carlson was Trump's pick for the role was fabricated. Trump had not announced his new press secretary at the time of writing on November 14, 2024. Lead Stories did not find an announcement naming Carlson as his press secretary on either Trump's X or Truth Social accounts, where his other appointments and nominations were announced.
The claim appeared in a post on X (archived here) on November 13, 2024. The fabricated statement, made to look like an actual Trump announcement, opened with:
I am honored to announce that I have named Tucker Carlson to serve as White House Press Secretary.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Nov 14 13:43:38 2024 UTC)
This post did not provide X users with any evidence that this was a legitimate announcement beyond the appearance looking authentic.
According to the purported statement, this announcement was released on November 13, 2024. Lead Stories could not find any evidence of a November 13, 2024, press release that named Carlson as Trump's White House press secretary on Trump's official website. The only statement released on donaldjtrump.com on November 13, 2024, was titled, "President Trump Makes 'Triumphant' Return." We searched for "Tucker Carlson" in the statement and found no mention of him. Evidence of this is below. Circling by Lead Stories:
(Source: donaldjtrump.com screenshot taken on Thu Nov 14 15:08:41 2024 UTC)
Trump announced several Cabinet picks and other selections for administration positions on his X and Truth Social accounts. For example, here are his announcements on his selection of Matt Gaetz for attorney general on X and Truth Social (archived here and here, respectively). At the time of writing, we did not find any announcement naming Carlson for White House press secretary on either Trump's X or Truth Social accounts (archived here and here, respectively).
We also searched key phrases on Google News (archived here), which did not result in any articles about Trump picking Carlson.
More Lead Stories fact checks of claims concerning Donald Trump are here.
More Lead Stories fact checks of claims concerning Tucker Carlson are here.
