Star presenter Tucker Carlson turns away from Donald Trump and apologizes for his former support. He is not the first conservative to speak out against the US president. With the Iran war, he permanently frightened his own camp.
A little joke is currently making the rounds among political observers in the USA and it goes something like this: It’s bad enough if you, as a devout Republican, take on the Pope. Even worse if you mess with Tucker Carlson. Donald Trump has achieved both.
The feud with Leo XIV may have turned some Catholics against Trump. But the fact that the church leader spoke out against the Iran war and Trump’s policies probably surprised few of the president’s supporters. Carlson is a different story. The former Fox News star host has long been one of Trump’s loudest supporters. He serves as an idol to many in the “Make America Great Again” movement, and it is questionable whether Trump would have won the 2024 election without Carlson’s support. Carlson is followed by 17.5 million people on X and has 5.5 million subscribers on YouTube.
“I’m sorry for misleading people,” Carlson said. He was well aware that Trump had character weaknesses. Nevertheless, he was convinced that the Republican would be a good choice as president for the USA and the world. That finally changed with the Iran war. The fact that he once supported Trump will “torment him for a very long time,” explained the 56-year-old.
Carlson was one of the most vocal opponents of the attack on Iran from the start. He always propagated the line that the USA should stay out of conflicts on the other side of the world. During the war, Carlson’s opposition to Trump intensified. He described the president as a “devilish psychopath” after he threatened Iran, among other things, with the extinction of its civilization. Trump himself won the presidential election because of his promise not to involve the USA in long wars.
When the attacks began in late February, he promised a time frame of four to five weeks for the conflict. Almost two months later, the weapons are resting. However, the important Hormuz shipping route remains closed, a negotiated solution is off the table for the time being and an escalation seems possible. “Trump had no plan from the start,” Carlson said.
Carlson’s relationship with Trump has been described as ambivalent for years. When Carlson once fiercely defended Trump on Fox News during his first term in office, he also wrote in text messages that he “hates the president with a passion.” This time there may be no way back. The star presenter has probably finally turned away from Trump. There has long been a rumor circulating that Carlson is considering running for office in 2028, but he denies this.
Carlson is by no means the first ultra-conservative Republican to turn his back on Trump. The influencer Candace Owens has turned away, as have the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and the former MP Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“They are stupid people, they know that, their families know that and everyone else knows it too,” said the US President.
