Tucker Carlson questions a slew of Republican presidential candidates, but not Donald Trump,

who skips the event.

Ron DeSantis contemplates a campaign shakeup, and Joe Biden nipples a child in Finland.

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So over the weekend at the Family Leadership Summit, Tucker Carlson had the opportunity

to interview a bunch of Republican candidates for president. Essentially all the major

Republican candidates for president, with the exception of maybe some minor candidates like

Chris Christie and of course one very big major national candidate, Donald Trump, who did not show up to be questioned by Tucker Carlson. Now Tucker, of course, is very warm toward Trump. He's made that clear on a wide variety of podcasts of late. And so it'd been interesting to see Tucker actually asked Trump some difficult questions as we'll get to in just a minute. Trump actually stumbled over himself a little bit this weekend when he was on with Maria Barteromo. But what was kind of fascinating about Tucker's interviews with the various

candidates is how much Tucker and his issue set have become sort of national priorities, at least

among Republicans in the primaries, apparently. The reason I say apparently is because there's not a ton

of support to the idea, just statistically speaking, that the base Republican voter cares deeply about issues like, for example, the war in Ukraine. The base Republican voter may have some strong feelings about the war in Ukraine, but it doesn't make the top 10 list of priorities. It's become more of a litmus test in the same way that in 2016, support or opposition to the Iraq War became a litmus test. But it really isn't sort of the top issue, but it became a top issue in Iowa at this particular family leadership council event.

There are a couple of issues that became kind of key issues that the American public and Republicans just don't care all that much about.

Which may be sort of Tucker's point is the idea that domestic concerns ought to trump foreign concerns.

But Ukraine took censor stage at this event over the weekend in Iowa. And it was sort of

fascinating to see how the race has launched for various candidates based on issues like this. Again,

I'm going to say that Ukraine is not a top issue for anyone because by polling data, it isn't

the top issue for nearly anyone. Here's the latest polling data from Gallup on Americans' top issues. Economy in general, 14%. High cost of living or inflation,

10%. Federal budget deficit, 3%. Lack of money, 2%. Gap between rich and poor, 2%. Okay, then you look at

the non-economic problems. The government report leadership, 18%. Immigration 8%, unifying the country,

...