U.S. President Donald Trump at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., April 17, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci
Tucker Carlson has a long history of praising U.S. President Donald Trump publicly but reportedly saying disparaging things about him behind closed doors. Recently, however, the far-right podcaster and former Fox News host has been publicly giving Trump vehement criticism because of his war against Iran, attacking it as a major betrayal of the "America First" movement and even apologizing for endorsing Trump in the United States' 2024 presidential election.
Carlson declared, "It's a moment to wrestle with our own consciences. You know, we'll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I'm sorry for misleading people."
The New York Times' Michelle Goldberg examines Carlson's recent attacks on Trump in an April 24 opinion column. While she isn't sorry to see a prominent right-wing media figure turning against Trump, the liberal columnist — a frequent guest on MS NOW —warns that the former "Trump superfan" is promoting a dangerous and antisemitic conspiracy theory.
"For those of us who have spent the last 10 years horror-struck at the mass delusion that Trump is a great man rather than a singularly rapacious and volatile charlatan," Goldberg argues, "Carlson's words might seem cathartic. Over the past decade, conservatives have been angrily insisting that our mad emperor is elegantly clothed rather than obscenely naked. Now, finally, there's growing agreement about his obvious unfitness. Indeed, some former Trump superfans are suddenly wondering if he might be the Antichrist."
Goldberg continues, "I'm all for embracing converts to the anti-Trump cause. But if you listen to the dialogue between Tucker and his brother, (Buckley), it's clear that rather than honestly reckoning with their role in America's derangement, they’re developing a new conspiracy theory to explain it away."
Tucker Carlson and his brother, Goldberg warns, are "blaming Jews" for Trump's failures as president and for the war against Iran.
"Trump, they strongly imply, has been compromised — maybe even blackmailed and physically threatened — by Zionist or globalist forces seeking the deliberate destruction of the United States," the Times columnist notes. "On Tucker's podcast, Buckley described a systematic undermining of America through the George Floyd protests, mass migration and now, the war with Iran…. Now, as the American right contemplates the entirely foreseeable catastrophe that an unbridled Trump has visited on America, some are creating a new stab-in-the-back myth about Zionism to make sense of it…. But it wasn't Israel or Zionist donors or some shadowy internationalist cabal that made Trump a buffoonish maniac who glories in threats of violence."
Goldberg adds, "If the second Trump Administration is worse than the first, it's largely because the establishment figures once demonized by Carlson as deep-state subversives are all gone. Trump is who he always was. He's just more politically unfettered than before."
