Tucker Carlson expressed regret for supporting Donald Trump, calling the Iran war “absolutely disgusting and evil” and a “display of low character” on the president’s part.
Joe Kent speaks in exclusive interview with Tucker Carlson
Former National Counterterrorism Secretary Joe Kent spoke with Tucker Carlson and claimed that major dissenting voices were silenced before the Iran war.
Tucker Carlson expressed regret for helping Trump become president for a second term.
The right-wing commentator and ousted Fox News host has become increasingly critical of President Donald Trump in recent years, particularly regarding the Trump administration’s war with Iran. Carlson, 56, said he and fellow Republicans are “involved” in Operation Epic Fury, which Carlson called “absolutely disgusting and evil.”
“You and I and others who supported him, you wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him, so we definitely have a hand in this,” he said during a conversation with his brother Buckley Carlson, a former Republican speechwriter, on the Monday, April 20 episode of “The Tucker Carlson Show.” “It’s not enough to just say, ‘I changed my mind,’ or, ‘Oh, this is bad, I’m not going to do it anymore.’ It’s a very small thing, but in a very real sense, you and I and millions of people like us are like the reason this is happening right now. ”
In response to a request for comment, the White House pointed to Trump’s April 9 Truth social post in which he criticized Tucker Carlson and other conservative commentators who have broken with Trump over the war, including Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens and Alex Jones, as “low IQ” and “stupid people.”
Carlson told his brother, who wrote a speech for Trump in 2015, that the current situation is “a time to wrestle with our own conscience.”
“We’re going to suffer from that for a long time,” he said. “That’s going to happen. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people. It wasn’t intentional. That’s all I can say.”
Similar regrets were expressed in the comments on the episode, which has been viewed more than 500,000 times, with viewers citing the war, the president’s relationship with Israel, the response to Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and the response to the Epstein file as breaking points.
“The question is, what is this?” Carlson asked. “Was this always the plan? I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist, but there were definitely signs of low character. I knew it.”
Although Mr. Tucker supported Mr. Trump in the 2024 election, he most notably fell out with Mr. Trump in 2025, when he and other MAGA figures cited his 2024 White House campaign promise to “prevent World War III” and press for the U.S. military to stay out of the Israeli-Iranian conflict. At the time, the former Fox News host accused President Trump of being “complicit in an act of war” in a newsletter.
Trump fired back at Carlson while answering questions from reporters. President Trump said, “I don’t know what Tucker Carlson is saying. I want him to get on the TV networks and talk about it so people can listen.”
Then in 2023, when Carlson still had a show on Fox News, reports emerged that he and other hosts privately criticized Trump’s claims of election fraud after the 2020 election. On Jan. 6, 2021, the day a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was about to certify the election results, Carlson texted producers that Trump was “a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us.”
Contributor: Francesca Chambers, USA TODAY
