Iran War: Tucker Carlson Explains Why Trump Betrayed MAGA

After five weeks of muddled messaging, President Donald Trump finally has addressed the nation Wednesday night on makes the case for his war against Iran. That message was still garbled. He did not articulate a clear exit plan from the conflict, blamed the Strait of Hormuz problem on other countries and denied that regime change was the point.

Among those who make a clear case against the war is a longtime ally of Trump and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who now hosts a mega-popular podcast, The Tucker Carlson Show.

In an interview with Today, explainCarlson told Vox’s Noel King that the war “doesn’t serve American interests in any conceivable way. And let me just say that if it somehow does serve the interests of the United States, I’d like to hear it.”

Carlson told Noel that he had taken his argument directly to Trump, to no avail. “I personally went to see the president three times in the month before that and made the case,” he said. “And in the end it had no effect. So I tried. But I haven’t been in contact with the president since.”

In addition to the war, Carlson and Noel discussed the conservative moment’s Nazi problem —and how much guilt he bears for it. Plus, whether he’s considering a presidential run, and why MAGA voters support the war.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s a lot more in the full podcast, so take a listen Today, explain wherever you get podcasts including Apple Podcasts, Pandoraand Spotify.

You don’t think the US should be at war with Iran. Why not?

I haven’t heard a consistent case from anyone, and I’d say it’s not just the Trump administration. My strong feeling, after watching this closely, is that there has not been a tidal wave of support for this war from the Trump administration. The president made the decision to do it, but he wasn’t surrounded by advisers urging him to do it. Just the opposite. I don’t think there was any enthusiasm for it.

So why are we in this war?

He did it, as the foreign minister explained, because we were pushed into it by the Netanyahu government, by Benjamin Netanyahu. Now, to be perfectly clear, this is not a way to excuse the president. He is the commander in chief of the US military. Trump made the decision; it was the wrong decision.

But if you ask why he made that decision, it’s because he was pushed into it by Benjamin Netanyahu, which raises the second obvious question: Where did Netanyahu get the power as the prime minister of a country of 9 million to force the president of a country of 350 million to do his bidding?

I can’t answer that question, but I can tell you what happened because the Secretary of State said it and the Speaker of the House said it, and I looked into it. And what happened was the Israelis went to the White House and said: We’re going to do it. We are going to move against Iran.

At that point, the US really only had two choices. One is to follow and the other is to say no to Israel and force them not to, because as Marco Rubio explained on camera, if you let Israel go it alone, you were sure that American forces and citizens and interests in the Gulf would be destroyed.

But be that as it may, Benjamin Netanyahu made the decision about the timing of this. This is another way of saying he was in charge. And I’m just here to say I think it’s wrong, and I think the majority of Americans think it’s wrong.

President Trump has been talking about Iran since the late 1980s. ON Guardian maintenance recently resurfaced from 1988, and he asked, “If you were a politician, what would your platform be?” He says, “I will be hard on Iran. They beat us psychologically, making us look like a bunch of fools. One bullet hit one of our men or ships and I did a number on Kharg Island.”

It sounds a lot like how he (now) talks about doing a number on Kharg Island. You are aware of it. Donald Trump is the president of the United States. Can’t this war just be what he wants?

I do not deny him agency. I stated his agency, which is fact, not opinion. He is the commander in chief. He gives the orders. Donald Trump made the decision.

It is also true that Israel forced that decision. That’s what happened. It is not a question of whether Donald Trump hated Iran or loved Iran and now hates Iran? He was consistent about it.

The question is whether a regime change war against a country of nearly 100 million people on the Persian Gulf was a) feasible, h) a good idea for the United States and c) a good idea for the world. And Trump has consistently said, No, that’s a terrible idea. He was very specific about it: War over regime change in Iran is a bad idea. So this is the change. It’s not that he woke up one morning and was angry with Iran. What do you do about it is the question.

Not long after the US arrested Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, you did a monologue and you said that the US, a rich country, needs serious men to run it, people who are wise and understand interests, not volatile, silly, emotionally incontinent people.

In light of the way this war has been launched, given the lack of coherent messaging as you described it, the apparent lack of a plan to get out of Iran, do you think we have serious men making wise decisions in the White House?

Of course, we don’t see wise decisions.

I think Venezuela, I think the war in Ukraine, I think all of these build on each other, but I think that the Venezuela operation prepared us for what happened in Iran. It sent the message that you can bring about regime change almost for free. And as we learn in five weeks, that is not possible in Iran, and the consequences are potentially catastrophic.

I don’t think anyone paying close attention has slept well in the last month. I wish I could say, Okay, we made our point and we killed their religious leader. And somehow that’s virtuous, I think. And that’s a win and we’re leaving.

As an American, I would like to see that because I want to get out of this with as little damage as possible, but I don’t see how you can do that without leaving Iran stronger than it was in real terms. They have no navy, they have no air force – fine, but they control 20 percent of the world’s energy. How does that not make them stronger than they were in February?

You figure it out in moments like this. Who can think clearly, who can accept unfortunate truths, digest them and make wise decisions based on them or who retreats into fantasy?

Who do you see doing this? The former. In the White House. In the administration.

I don’t know. I went to see the president in person three times in the month before that and made the case – not too different from the case I just made to you. And in the end it had no effect.

I haven’t been in contact with the president since then, so I don’t know. But I do think there are people, I know there are people in the White House who may disagree with me on all kinds of issues, but they want to do the best for the country. They are not crazy. And I’m sure they give, I hope they give good advice. But the question at this point is how do you get out of this?

It is not easy. This only happened in 2003. I was there, both in Washington and in Iraq in its aftermath. And it shocks me that we’re doing this thing again, especially under a president who understood exactly what happened in 2003, ran all three elections against a war in Iraq, because he was stupid. He was the only Republican who campaigned against the war in Iraq. That’s why he won the nomination, in my opinion, in 2016.

It’s unbelievable to me that the president who knew, and said he knew over and over and over again that it was wrong, that he just did the same thing.