One day before he is set to surrender to authorities for the fourth time in five months to face criminal charges, and as his fellow 2024 Republican rivals squared off on a debate stage in Milwaukee, former President Donald Trump attempted to keep the spotlight in a wide-ranging, conspiracy-filled interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

The interview on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, lasted about 45 minutes and touched on lies about the results of the 2020 presidential election, former Vice President Mike Pence’s disloyalty, President Joe Biden’s health, the prospect of civil war, whether Trump believes his political enemies will try to kill him, and Jeffrey Epstein — the deceased, politically connected financier and sex offender who befriended Trump, former President Bill Clinton, billionaire Bill Gates and others among the rich and powerful.

Twice Carlson asked the former president if he believed his political enemies were trying to kill him. Twice, Trump demurred and launched into tangents about his legal troubles, his 2016 political rival Hillary Clinton, China, and the investigation into connections between his 2016 presidential campaign and the Russian government.

“Are you worried that they're going to try and kill you? Why wouldn't they try and kill you? Honestly,” Carlson asked seven minutes into the interview at Trump’s Bedminister, N.J., golf course.

“They're savage animals. They are people that are sick, really sick,” Trump said of his political foes and the prosecutors who have charged him with 93 felonies in three states and Washington, D.C. “I've seen what they do. I've seen the lengths that they go to.”

But when Carlson asked again, later in the interview, Trump struck a different tone.

“I think the people of our country don't get enough credit for how smart they are,” Trump said, citing his poll numbers’ stability despite his repeated arrests. “And I'm not sure I would have said this 10 years ago. But they get it.”

Addressing his criminal cases, Trump called them “trivial, nonsense, bull****.”

The former president, the first to face criminal charges in U.S. history, has been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in New York, 40 felony counts connected to his retention of classified documents after leaving office and alleged obstruction of the FBI’s investigation in Florida, four felony counts for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Washington, D.C., and 13 felony counts in a racketeering investigation alleging he illegally plotted to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

Furthering his widely disproven and debunked lies about widespread election fraud, Trump insisted Democrats and others will conspire against him to rig the 2024 election.

“They’ll try. They’re gonna be trying,” Trump said. “But if somebody else got in, other than me, they'll go at him just as viciously as they did me. These people are sick. They will go after them and a lot of people say they won’t be able to hold up.”

“I do get credit for holding up quite well,” the 78-year-old former president added.

Pointing to his Republican primary polling, Trump said he is able to weather the prosecutions and perceived political persecution because “people get it, the people see it’s a fraud.” 

And when Carlson asked about the prospect of civil war in the United States, Trump fondly recalled Jan. 6, 2021 — the day his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” assaulted police and sent lawmakers running for their lives and barricading themselves in offices. Over 1,100 people have been arrested and at least 366 incarcerated for crimes connected to the attack, including seditious conspiracy, according to the Department of Justice. 

“You know, Jan. 6 was a very interesting day because they don’t report it properly. I believe it was the largest crowd I've ever spoken before,” Trump said. “A very small group of people went down there. And then there are a lot of scenarios that we can talk about. But people in that crowd said it was the most beautiful day they've ever experienced. There was love and that there was love and unity. I have never seen such spirit and such passion and such love.”

“And I've also never seen simultaneously, and from the same people, such hatred of what they've done to our country,” he added.

Is open conflict possible, Carlson asked at the interview’s end.

“I don't know, because I don't know what, you know — I can say this: There's a level of passion that I've never seen. There's a level of hatred that I've never seen,” the 2024 GOP frontrunner said. “That's probably a bad combination.”

Trump takes on the field

As eight of Trump’s GOP rivals duked it out in Milwaukee during what a super PAC backing Trump dubbed the ​​“2024 Vice Presidential Debate,” Trump made it clear he was not a fan of most of them in his interview with Carlson and in posts to his social media network.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson was “Aida” — a nickname without explanation — and “weak and pathetic” in the interview. DeSantis’s campaign was “gonzo.” Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who served as a political advisor to Trump in both of his previous presidential campaigns, was “a savage maniac” and a “lunatic.”

“Chris Christie was horrible tonight. He was booed at a level never seen before at such a debate,” Trump posted to social media after the debate. “He should have walked off the stage - Nobody wanted to hear from him!”

On the stage, Christie was one of two candidates, along with Hutchinson, who said they would not support Trump as their party’s nominee if he was convicted of a crime. Others went as far as to say they would pardon him if they were elected president.

When it came to Pence, who resisted pressure from Trump to attempt to use his purely ceremonial role in the Electoral College process to turn the election results to the then-president’s favor, Trump was merely “disappointed.”

“Mike Pence had the absolute right to send the votes back to the legislatures,” Trump told Carlson, repeating a widely rejected argument that scholars believe would violate the Constitution, among other laws. “I haven't spoken to him in a long time. I was very disappointed.”

Later, Trump denied he ever pressured Pence.

“I never asked Mike Pence to put me above the Constitution,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Who would say such a thing?”