Tucker Carlson ‘has lost his way’

OPINION:

Israelis are spending much of their days and nights hunkered down in bomb shelters, but they are hopeful that the conflict in which they are now engaged will leave them and their children safer.

Iranians are doing their best to get by as the U.S.-Israeli military operation deprives their country’s rulers of their military capabilities, but they are hopeful that those rulers will soon be replaced by decent leaders.

Tucker Carlson watches this great battle against the world’s leading sponsors of jihadi terrorism and calls it “evil and disgusting.” He declared that President Trump’s demand that Iran’s ruler surrender can be interpreted by Iranians only as “foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter.”

Such rhetoric may have stretched Mr. Trump’s patience beyond the breaking point. Last week, he told reporter Jonathan Karl: “Tucker has lost his way. I knew that a long time ago, and 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.”

This is significant because Mr. Carlson has been an adviser to the president and remains an influencer on the right.

Like so many on the “progressive left,” however, he demonstrates a perverse sympathy for America’s sworn enemies and a venomous antipathy toward the tiny nation the Pentagon calls America’s “model ally.”

Full disclosure: My disappointment with Mr. Carlson is partly personal. I’ll tell you more. First, I want to clarify who he has become.

In July, roughly two weeks after U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear weapons facilities, he conducted an interview with Masoud Pezeshkian, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

He failed to press Mr. Pezeshkian on his regime’s nuclear activities, human rights record, assassination and kidnapping plots, even those conducted on American soil. Instead, he allowed Mr. Pezeshkian to toss off without challenge a series of lies and false allegations.

The interview was immediately disseminated by Iranian, Russian and Chinese media.

In February 2024, Mr. Carlson journeyed to Moscow, where he took in the “Spartacus” ballet at the Bolshoi Theater and gushed over the products and prices at a Moscow supermarket. He also was wowed by the Kiyevskaya metro station, built in Soviet times (a portrait of Vladimir Lenin remains on display) to celebrate the “eternal friendship” between Russians and Ukrainians.

“How does Russia have a subway station that’s nicer than anything in our country?” he marveled in a video, even as Russian artillery was raining down on Ukrainian men, women and children.

Mr. Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin offered no challenging questions about the Russian dictator’s aggression, misrepresentations of history or the many opponents and critics he has eliminated.

Days later, in a remote prison colony north of the Arctic Circle, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died. Last month, five European governments confirmed that it was “highly likely” the cause was epibatidine, a toxin found in South African poison dart frogs but not generally available in even the swankiest Russian supermarkets.

If you’re thinking what I’ve described is simply Mr. Carlson’s laid-back journalistic style, consider that, last month, the man paid a visit to Israel — sort of.

He never left the airport’s VIP lounge and later complained that Israeli security officials mistreated him. A U.S. Embassy spokesperson disputed that. Later, leaked security footage showed Mr. Carlson smiling and hugging airport staff.

In the airport lounge, Mr. Carlson recorded an almost three-hour interview with U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee. According to research by independent analyst Salo Aizenberg, he spoke for 60% of the time, interrupted Mr. Huckabee more than 500 times and made 36 demonstrably false statements.

Mr. Huckabee commented afterward: “I was expecting a thoughtful conversation and that he would ask questions and give me the opportunity to actually respond, just like he did with the little Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes or the guy who thought Hitler was the good guy and Churchill the bad guy.”

He added on X: “Wasn’t aware that Tucker despises me. I do get that a lot from people not familiar with the Bible or history. Somehow, I will survive the animosity.”

Now, a few words on my personal connection. I was acquainted with Mr. Carlson back when he was a young, bow-tie-wearing conservative commentator. Ambassador Richard Carlson, his father, was for several years a valued colleague at the think tank I founded shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Journalist Joel Mowbray traveled with the late Carlson in Israel for 10 days in 2003. He recently recalled: “Dick Carlson didn’t question the patriotism of Jews who supported Israel. Dick Carlson didn’t hate Christians who supported Israel, not least because he was one of them.”

Mark Dubowitz, now chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, recalls that in 2004, “Dick co-authored my first op-ed with me, defending Israel’s security barrier against suicide bombings.”

The two went together to The Hague, where they “staged a mock trial highlighting Israeli and American victims of Palestinian terrorism.”

Is Tucker Carlson now rebelling against his father? Is his brand of anti-Americanism coupled with Judeophobia, Zionophobia and Israelophobia based on sincerely held beliefs, or is it a means to make barrels of money? It’s possible that these motivations are mutually reinforcing.

All we can conclude is that Tucker Carlson has become, as Mr. Trump has implied, a lost boy — lost to his father’s legacy, the cause of Israeli survival, the Iranian people’s struggle for freedom, reason and the effort to make America great again by defanging a regime that for 47 years has vowed “Death to America!”

This does not make me hopeful for him.

• Clifford D. May is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the “Foreign Podicy” podcast.