Tucker Carlson, the right-wing media commentator who warned US President Donald Trump in his first term against a US strike on Iran, last week called Trump’s fears of Tehran building a nuclear bomb overblown. He insisted, and insists, that neither Iran nor Ukraine warrants US military resources.
At that time, Carlson described a divide in Trump’s orbit between “those who casually encourage violence, and those who seek to prevent it – between warmongers and peacemakers.” On Wednesday, the conservative commentator took a swipe at another hawkish Republican, humiliating Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on his program for not knowing basic facts about Iran even as he pushes for US attacks on Tehran.
The divide on matters of war within the Republican Party – and within Trump’s cabinet – has cracked even deeper this week, not long after his Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, unilaterally released a video promoting the idea that an American attack on Iran would be unwise. In her estimation, as the top US intel official, Iran was nowhere near completing a nuclear weapon.
In her video, Gabbard spoke of “political elite and warmongers” who are “carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers” and that the world is “on the brink of nuclear annihilation.”
On Tuesday, when reporters aboard Air Force One asked about her comments, Trump lashed out, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having a weapon.”
Gabbard’s point of view, while a stunning departure from her boss’s messaging, put her in good graces with the far-right, red-hat-wearing, isolationist wing of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, such as the often-lampooned Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has railed against “one single dollar” sent to Ukraine, for example.
Former Fox News personality Carlson, who famously cozied up to Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in February, has been taking up that mantle in interviews with other hawks on his social media broadcasts.
On Wednesday, Carlson called out Cruz for not knowing the population of Iran or its ethnic makeup, before lending his support to an attack on Tehran.
While Trump has refused to put any additional pressure on the Kremlin to try to end its invasion of Ukraine, he has issued an ultimatum of “unconditional surrender” to Iran, and had public spats with several Republicans who disagree on that approach.
Carlson’s split with Trump over Iran didn’t sit well with the president, as it rarely does on policy matters. (Last week, Trump rescinded an invitation to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) for a White House picnic after the libertarian senator expressed policy disagreements with Trump’s budget bill.)
On Monday, flying back early from the G7 meeting in Canada, Trump hit back at Carlson, his once-pal and preferred pundit:
“I don’t know what Tucker Carlson is saying,” Trump told journalists. “Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen,” in a jab at the fact that Carlson lost his job at Fox in 2023, and has been broadcasting his show on YouTube ever since. (His YouTube channel has about 4.1 million subscribers.)
While the news personality is in little danger of losing his job as a YouTube content provider over disagreements with Trump, Gabbard is in an entirely different position.
While Trump has made no secret that former Democratic US House of Representatives member from Hawaii is in his Cabinet to display party diversity in his ranks, he also told Gabbard from day one that he is considering eliminating the position of Director of National Intelligence and folding the role into another intelligence agency.
She has been put on notice.