About

Tucker Carlson Asking, "How Many People Live In Iran?" refers to memes and jokes about broadcast journalist Tucker Carlson asking Texas Senator Ted Cruz about the population and ethnic distribution of Iran. Tucker Carlson released a combative interview with Ted Cruz in mid-June 2025, where he pressed the Republican Senator about his opinions on the U.S. and the Israel-Iran Conflict. After Cruz expressed his belief that Iran requires a regime change, Carlson began to press him on facts about Iran, asking, "How many people live in Iran?" to which Cruz replied, "I don’t know the population," and Carlson rebutted, "You don’t know the population of the country you seek to topple?" Internet users began spreading exploitable memes and phrasal template jokes inspired by Carlson's line of questioning soon after the clips went viral online.

Origin

On June 17th, 2025, Tucker Carlson posted a clip from his interview with Texas Senator Ted Cruz to his X^[1] account, writing, "Ted Cruz on Iran. Full interview tomorrow." The video gathered over 36 million views and 161,000 likes in two days. A transcript of the interaction is shown below:

Tucker: How many people live in Iran?
Cruz: I don’t know the population
Tucker: You don’t know the population of the country you seek to topple?
Cruz: How many people live in Iran?
Tucker: 92 million. How could you not know that?

On June 18th, Ted Cruz posted an AI-generated comic showing Tucker Carlson asking Star Wars character Luke Skywalker the population of the Death Star to his X^[6] account, gathering over 17 million views, and 87,000 likes.

Also on June 18th, 2025, X^[2] user @loganclarkhall tweeted an image of Tucker Carlson crudely edited to add a stillsuit nose plug from Dune, alongside a caption that read, "You say you want to cultivate desert power and you don’t know how many spice fields are on Arrakis?" The post gathered over 70,000 likes in a day.

Spread

On June 18th, 2025, X^[3] user @FOMO_sacer tweeted a photo of Tucker Carlson frowning with his mouth open during an interview with Texas Senator Ted Cruz, alongside a caption that read, "how many people live in dimes square? what is the ethnic composition of dimes square?" The post gathered over 2,000 likes in a day. The tweet references the contentious New York City micro-neighborhood Dimes Square.

That same day, X^[4] user @witte_sergei posted a version of the "Tucker Carlson Asking" meme, writing, "You support regime change in Mongolia but you don’t even know how many cavalry the Great Khan has? What’s the ethnic makeup of the horde?" The tweet contained AI-generated images of Carlson wearing Mongol armor, and Ted Cruz dressed as a "eunuch in the emperor’s diplomatic service." The post gathered over 17,000 likes in a day.

Also on June 18th, X^[5] user @CoorsLightCEO posted an image of Tucker Carlson during his interview with Ted Cruz, writing, "How many people work at DocuSign?" in reference to an electronic signature company. The tweet gathered over 5,000 likes in a day.

Template

Various Examples

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External References