NPR’s Scott Detrow speaks with Jason Zengerle, New Yorker journalist and author of a book about Tucker Carlson, about the conservative pundit’s sharp break with President Trump.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Tucker Carlson now says he is, quote, “tormented” by his previous support for President Trump. The conservative media personality has criticized the president over the U.S. war with Iran among other issues, and here is part of what he said on his podcast this week.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, “THE TUCKER CARLSON SHOW”)
TUCKER CARLSON: I do think it’s like 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.
DETROW: Now, this is not the first time Tucker Carlson has rebuked Donald Trump. But to journalist Jason Zengerle, this time does feel different. He’s a writer at The New Yorker and author of a book about Carlson’s career called “Hated By All The Right People.” Welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
JASON ZENGERLE: Thanks for having me.
DETROW: When you talked to us when the book came out, you said that when Carlson says something, you often wonder whether he says it because he actually believes it. I’m curious how you run these latest comments through that Tucker Carlson filter.
ZENGERLE: I mean, (laughter) it’s complicated. He believes it, and he’s also sort of making a political move. I mean, I do think he – I think he is sincerely quite angry about the fact that Trump has gone to war in Iran. This is something that Tucker, you know, opposed publicly, opposed privately. He tried to talk Trump out of it. So he is – he feels betrayed by that. At the same time, he is anticipating that this war is not going to go well and that it’s going to disillusion a lot of conservative voters, and he is positioning himself to come in and say, you know, I remain true to this faith, and I am here to redeem you.
DETROW: When you say positioning himself, do you think he’s sincerely thinking about something like running for president?
ZENGERLE: I do. I – you know, like the last time I was here, the only way I could have seen him running for president in the past would have been if JD Vance, who I think is someone he had a very close relationship to – if Vance sort of, you know, took a different ideological path and they were no longer in lockstep. I think the Iran war has completely upended that calculus. I think he probably thinks that Vance will be saddled with this war, and that will make him unelectable. And yeah, I could definitely see Carlson running for president in ’28.
DETROW: Is it fair to think of an isolationist policy and opposing the type of action like a war with Iran as, like, the rare ideological constant point in Tucker Carlson’s career over the last few decades? I mean, he’s changed on so many other different positions.
ZENGERLE: Yeah. I mean, the way he’s talking about this, it’s very similar to the way he talked about the Iraq war and, you know, the mistake he made in supporting that. And he has been a real opponent of interventionism and – you know, and he, I think, sort of imputed those beliefs onto Trump in a way that they probably didn’t exist.
DETROW: And of course, paired with what’s going on with Iran right now is how Tucker Carlson thinks and talks about Israel.
ZENGERLE: Yeah, Israel is very much at the center of this dispute with Trump. He’s arguing that Trump is doing this at the behest of Israel, not because he considers Israel an ally necessarily, but because, you know, Israel is either physically threatening him or has sort of blackmail on him or has bought him off. I mean, he’s setting up a real kind of stabbed-in-the-back narrative about the U.S. and Israel if this Iran war goes in a bad direction. And it’s quite dangerous.
DETROW: I’m sure there are a lot of people listening who, for a decade now, have thought, this is it. This is what breaks up the Trump movement. This is what gets the MAGA supporters out of line. And of course, every single time, that hasn’t happened. I want to play one clip from Jonah Goldberg, a center-right commentator who was speaking to Morning Edition earlier this week about not just Carlson, but Meghan Kelly and Marjorie Taylor Greene and other people who are big on, you know, the media and online world breaking with Trump on this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
JONAH GOLDBERG: They don’t have a lot of wide support. It turns out that those people are essentially entertainers, too, and they don’t command large swaths of the GOP electorate, and they don’t represent them either.
DETROW: What do you think of that?
ZENGERLE: I think that’s right. I think that, you know, Tucker thinks that MAGA is an ideological movement and that it has core ideological principles, and that’s what people who vote for Donald Trump are voting for. The flip side of that is that MAGA is a cult of personality, and people who are voting for Donald Trump are voting because they love Donald Trump. And whatever Donald Trump says MAGA is, that’s what they think MAGA is. You know, Tucker is forcing this question. It hasn’t worked out for anybody else who’s tried to sort of break with Trump and, you know, claim sort of the mantle of the MAGA movement for themselves. But at the same time, no one of his sort of stature and his influence and with his following has tried it yet. So I think it bears – you know, it’s worth watching.
DETROW: New Yorker journalist Jason Zengerle – his book on Tucker Carlson is called “Hated By All The Right People.” Thanks so much for talking to us.
ZENGERLE: Thanks a lot.
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