“Tucker has lost his way. He’s not MAGA. MAGA is saving our country. MAGA is making our country great again. MAGA is America first, and Tucker is none of those things. And Tucker is really not smart enough to understand that.” President Donald J. Trump, March 5, 2026
For the better part of three years, as Tucker Carlson drifted further and further into weird anti-Semitic and anti-American conspiracy theories, we’ve been asking “What’s gotten into Tucker?” Now that he’s gone from what he claimed was “asking questions” to officially joining the Islamist enemies of America, we think we know the answer.
It was bad enough when Tucker introduced anti-Semite quack “historian” Darryl Cooper as “the most important popular historian working in the United States today.” But even that wasn’t enough for Tucker: “I want people to know who you are, and I want you to be widely recognized as the most important historian in the United States today because… because I think that you are.”
OK, so fact-free anti-Semitism and pro-Nazi World War II revisionism make one “the most important historian in the United States today.”
Got it, it’s not a crime to be crazy or stupid, and for Tucker it may even be a good business model.
But becoming an apologist for the Islamization of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and its 47-year long war on America and the West is at a minimum stupid, and long term is unlikely to be good for Tucker’s business.
However, as Gregg Roman observed in “Tucker Carlson Has Become Tehran’s Most Effective English-Language Propagandist,” his must-read essay for the Middle East Forum, that’s exactly what Tucker has become.
As Mr. Roman pointed out, the President’s assessment is correct, though it does not go far enough. The problem with Tucker Carlson is not that he has “lost his way.” It is that he has found one. And the way he has found leads directly to Tehran.
In the days following the launch of Operation Epic Fury, Tucker sat down and delivered two broadcasts. The first was a 90-minute monologue. The second was a 40-minute theological conspiracy presentation followed by an hour-long interview.
Together, as Mr. Roman documented, they reproduced, point for point, the strategic messaging of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Not approximately, not in broad strokes, but point for point:
And then, in the second broadcast, the escalation: the war is really about rebuilding the Jewish Third Temple on the ruins of Islam’s third-holiest site, a conspiracy involving Hasidic organizations, the Secretary of Defense, IDF soldiers wearing temple patches, and evangelical preachers calling for the annihilation of Gaza. The logical terminus of this narrative, charged Mr. Roman, is not policy criticism, but a blood libel for the digital age.
Carlson’s central thesis is blunt: “This happened because Israel wanted it to happen. This is Israel’s war. This is not the United States’ war.” He describes Netanyahu’s seven visits to the White House as evidence that the Prime Minister of a nine-million-person country manipulated the world’s superpower into fighting his personal war. The framing reduces the president to a puppet, the Pentagon to a marionette theater, and the American national security establishment to a collection of dupes or accomplices.
To sustain this thesis, Carlson must erase something: the American dead and the plain meaning of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s rhetoric, policies and constitution. Click here for a presentation prepared by CHQ Editor George Rasley for the American Security Council Foundation on why war with Iran was inevitable.
These are not the original insights of a contrarian thinker, noted Mr. Roman, and we agree. They are the pillars of Tehran’s information warfare strategy, refined over four decades and tested in a dozen proxy conflicts, now finding their most effective English-language delivery system in a man who visited the White House three times so far this year to lobby the president of the United States against the operation that may liberate 85 million people from theocratic tyranny.
Fortunately, that President now says Carlson is “not smart enough to understand” what he was trying to prevent.
And what Tucker is “not smart enough to understand,” we explained in our recent article “Trump Is Right On Iran.” Click here for a presentation prepared by CHQ Editor George Rasley for the American Security Council Foundation on why war with Iran was inevitable.
Here’s the short version: The weakness of Iran’s system of Wilayat al-Faqih has never been more obvious and the opportunity to undermine it from within rarely greater. If we want to end the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, the time to decapitate the Iranian theocracy and assist the Iranian people in replacing it with something else is now.
Everyone who is realistic about the now 47-year-old war Iran’s theocratic regime declared on America knows that regime change is the only way to permanently stop Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons.
Once the Islamic Republic restarted its nuclear weapons program after last year’s Midnight Hammer attack on its major nuclear facilities the regime sealed its fate. This is something, as President Trump pointed out, Tucker Carlson is “not smart enough to understand,” or as we suspect, for reasons known only to him, he’s decided to join the other side.
For the better part of three years, as Tucker Carlson drifted further and further into weird anti-Semitic and anti-American conspiracy theories, we’ve been asking “What’s gotten into Tucker?” Now that he’s gone from what he claimed was “asking questions” to officially joining the Islamist enemies of America, we think we know the answer.
It was bad enough when Tucker introduced anti-Semite quack “historian” Darryl Cooper as “the most important popular historian working in the United States today.” But even that wasn’t enough for Tucker: “I want people to know who you are, and I want you to be widely recognized as the most important historian in the United States today because… because I think that you are.”
OK, so fact-free anti-Semitism and pro-Nazi World War II revisionism make one “the most important historian in the United States today.”
Got it, it’s not a crime to be crazy or stupid, and for Tucker it may even be a good business model.
But becoming an apologist for the Islamization of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and its 47-year long war on America and the West is at a minimum stupid, and long term is unlikely to be good for Tucker’s business.
However, as Gregg Roman observed in “Tucker Carlson Has Become Tehran’s Most Effective English-Language Propagandist,” his must-read essay for the Middle East Forum, that’s exactly what Tucker has become.
As Mr. Roman pointed out, the President’s assessment is correct, though it does not go far enough. The problem with Tucker Carlson is not that he has “lost his way.” It is that he has found one. And the way he has found leads directly to Tehran.
In the days following the launch of Operation Epic Fury, Tucker sat down and delivered two broadcasts. The first was a 90-minute monologue. The second was a 40-minute theological conspiracy presentation followed by an hour-long interview.
Together, as Mr. Roman documented, they reproduced, point for point, the strategic messaging of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Not approximately, not in broad strokes, but point for point:
The war serves only Israel. The Gulf States are the real victims. America should declare victory and leave immediately. Dual-loyalty fifth columnists dragged the country into a foreign war. The Ayatollah’s death is a tragedy that will unleash chaos. The neocons are possessed by demonic blood lust, etc., etc.
And then, in the second broadcast, the escalation: the war is really about rebuilding the Jewish Third Temple on the ruins of Islam’s third-holiest site, a conspiracy involving Hasidic organizations, the Secretary of Defense, IDF soldiers wearing temple patches, and evangelical preachers calling for the annihilation of Gaza. The logical terminus of this narrative, charged Mr. Roman, is not policy criticism, but a blood libel for the digital age.
Carlson’s central thesis is blunt: “This happened because Israel wanted it to happen. This is Israel’s war. This is not the United States’ war.” He describes Netanyahu’s seven visits to the White House as evidence that the Prime Minister of a nine-million-person country manipulated the world’s superpower into fighting his personal war. The framing reduces the president to a puppet, the Pentagon to a marionette theater, and the American national security establishment to a collection of dupes or accomplices.
To sustain this thesis, Carlson must erase something: the American dead and the plain meaning of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s rhetoric, policies and constitution. Click here for a presentation prepared by CHQ Editor George Rasley for the American Security Council Foundation on why war with Iran was inevitable.
These are not the original insights of a contrarian thinker, noted Mr. Roman, and we agree. They are the pillars of Tehran’s information warfare strategy, refined over four decades and tested in a dozen proxy conflicts, now finding their most effective English-language delivery system in a man who visited the White House three times so far this year to lobby the president of the United States against the operation that may liberate 85 million people from theocratic tyranny.
Fortunately, that President now says Carlson is “not smart enough to understand” what he was trying to prevent.
And what Tucker is “not smart enough to understand,” we explained in our recent article “Trump Is Right On Iran.” Click here for a presentation prepared by CHQ Editor George Rasley for the American Security Council Foundation on why war with Iran was inevitable.
Here’s the short version: The weakness of Iran’s system of Wilayat al-Faqih has never been more obvious and the opportunity to undermine it from within rarely greater. If we want to end the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, the time to decapitate the Iranian theocracy and assist the Iranian people in replacing it with something else is now.
Everyone who is realistic about the now 47-year-old war Iran’s theocratic regime declared on America knows that regime change is the only way to permanently stop Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons.
Once the Islamic Republic restarted its nuclear weapons program after last year’s Midnight Hammer attack on its major nuclear facilities the regime sealed its fate. This is something, as President Trump pointed out, Tucker Carlson is “not smart enough to understand,” or as we suspect, for reasons known only to him, he’s decided to join the other side.
