Donald Trump self-styles himself as a deal artist. The MAGA-MAHA movement is an incongruous collection of interest groups bound together by his cult of personality. His supporters believe they’ll get as much out of the alliance as Trump gets out of them, though this often leads to disillusionment (see: Musk, Elon). But this week, as Trump’s second term in the White House is at its most anxious hour yet—and he weighs joining Israel’s war against Iran—his transactional coalition is facing its biggest loyalty test. Nowhere are these fissures more evident than in Trump’s feud with one of his most influential supporters, Tucker Carlson.
Over the past week, the former Fox News host turned media entrepreneur publicly broke with Trump over the Iran issue, claiming Trump was violating his campaign promise to keep America out of messy Middle East conflicts. On Friday, Carlson’s newsletter declared that Trump was “complicit in the act of war,” citing America’s longtime financial support of Israel. On Monday, Carlson continued his isolationist campaign on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. “Let’s focus on my country, where I was born,” he told Bannon. Carlson ominously predicted the Iran situation would tar Trump’s legacy the way the failed Iraq war stained George W. Bush’s presidency.
Carlson’s critiques were civil by the standards of today’s scorched-earth political culture, but that didn’t stop Trump from firing back insults.
“Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that, ‘IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!’” Trump wrote on Truth Social late Monday. At the G7 summit in Canada, Trump took a dig at Carlson’s ouster from Fox News, telling reporters: “I don’t know what Tucker Carlson is saying. Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen.” One source familiar with the matter says Trump has ignored Carlson’s phone calls in recent days. (Carlson denies this.)
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
No matter what Trump decides on Iran, he seems to be making the calculus that he can afford to alienate core factions of his base. Last Saturday, Trump told The Atlantic that “America First,” his long-held isolationist slogan, actually means whatever he says it does. “Considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that,” he said. (In fact, Charles Lindbergh popularized the slogan to oppose the United States’ entry into World War II.) Trump has also called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and hinted that the US could soon enter the war.
“Don’t try explaining the MAGA doctrine to Trump,” says Sam Nunberg, a former adviser to the president who remains close to Carlson. “Trump doesn’t care what Tucker says. Look, Trump had the most powerful businessmen telling him not to do tariffs, and what did he do?”
Nunberg says that Trump is banking on there being no political cost to alienating supporters like Carlson: “Where are they going to go? They’re not going to vote for the Democrats.”
Roger Stone, another ally to both Carlson and Trump, says that while he understands Carlson’s opposition, Iran is a difficult case. “You cannot deny the regime is evil. Whether they’re getting a bomb tomorrow or in five years, it’s a country run by homicidal maniacs. They don’t care if they live as long as they kill you,” Stone tells me. “So for Tucker to say Iran isn’t a danger, I can’t agree with that.”
On the other hand, Stone does have one critique for Trump’s attacks on their mutual friend. He says the president was grasping when his barb focused on how Carlson had taken his show online.
“Far more people see him on X than they did on Fox,” Stone says.
