MAGA tears apart Tucker Carlson at Pennsylvania Trump rally
The setting was a Trump rally at a Mack Trucks facility in Lower Macungie, PA. As I fished through my clothes to find my cell phone, one of President Donald Trump’s supporters approached me.
“Is it true that you interviewed Tucker Carlson?” she asked. As an icebreaker, I had picked a shirt with an image from my 2019 interview with the then-Fox News host, and confirmed that I had indeed talked to him at length about his criticisms of the Republican Party — which, at the time, was for being too pro-capital and anti-labor.
The woman, who never identified herself, nodded knowingly.
“He's not a Republican anymore,” she responded. “He doesn't back Trump. I don't like him anymore.”
She was far from the only person to approach me and express her disdain for Carlson. Since our conversation in 2019, Carlson has been fired from Fox News, started his own podcast and — as of earlier this month — openly renounced the Republican Party. Speaking on the podcast he titled Can’t Be Censored, Carlson accused Trump of betraying America by going to war with Iran. As Carlson put it, he believes the war was waged not to help America but to help America’s ally, the Jewish state of Israel.
“I would not support the Republican party, there's no chance I would support the Republican party,” Carlson said in his Thursday episode, with him reposting the clip to X on Monday. “How could I support a political party that is not loyal to the United States. I voted Republican my entire life, I have been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican party, but there is no defending this. I'm out.”
Dan, a 68-year-old retired tractor engineer who attended the rally, told me that he backs everything Trump does. His friend Joe, who was also in his 60s and worked in landscaping, asked what Carlson had said, so I read both him and Dan the aforementioned quote. Dan reiterated his support for Trump, saying that the Iran war was waged for national security.
“There was an imminent threat,” Dan said. His words echoed those of a different Trump supporter, who wished to remain anonymous and who I met on the seemingly-interminable line into the event, who told me that while he respects Carlson, “I sure disagree” with him in separating from Trump.
These were not the only two Trump supporters at the Mack Trucks event who favored Trump over his critics, especially when it comes to the president’s claims about national security. Another Trump supporter who spoke to AlterNet said that he backed Trump’s actions on border security, saying that he was doing so to protect “our grandbabies.” Another Trump supporter, who described herself as a “senior” named Carolyn, told AlterNet that she has backed all of Trump’s policy stances tracing all the way back to 2016 — including the controversial war against Iran.
Speaking to AlterNet yesterday about the rise of anti-Israel sentiment from both the left and right in America, former Trump lawyer and erstwhile Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz attributed all anti-Israel sentiment to anti-Semitism.
“The antisemite to the right, antisemite to the left have more in common than they are different,” Dershowitz said, then comparing the current movements to those of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. “And that goes back to [Joseph] Stalin and [Adolf] Hitler. Stalin and Hitler had only one thing in common, that they both hated Jews.”
On that note, I made my departure, determined to get home before the ongoing trickle turned into a torrential downpour. Politics aside, though, I left with my spirits uplifted: Despite my scare, I eventually located my missing cell phone.
