Don’t Give MAGA Defectors Credit They Haven’t Earned |
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Don’t Give MAGA Defectors Credit They Haven’t Earned
They’ve seen the light and no longer support the president—but they still believe in his worst ideas and policies.
Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson at Turning Point’s annual AmericaFest conference in Phoenix, Arizona, in December 2025.
For the record, Tucker Carlson will sleep fine tonight. I know that in a recent podcast video released just a few days ago he sounded positively guilt-ridden—saying he’s “sorry for misleading people” into supporting Trump, “implicated” in Trump’s wars across the Middle East, and will be “tormented…for a long time” over having campaigned for Trump in 2024. And 2020. And also 2016, presumably. As we know from a trove of his texts disclosed in Dominion Voting Systems’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Carlson privately badmouthed Trump as early as 2021. So did his recent apology cover helping elect a man he described, in those text messages, as “a demonic force,” and “a destroyer“ whom he “hate[d]…passionately,” and couldn’t wait to “ignore” once Biden took office, as we learned from text messages revealed by Dominion Voting Systems’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News? Should we just assume that he’s feeling contrition for hitting send on a text wherein he called Trump the “undisputed world champion…at destroying things,” and then going on TV that night and telling his audience of racist marks and rubes to vote for him? And doing the same thing the next night? And the next. For not one, not two, but three elections?
He seems to have slept like a baby then. A rich baby who knew exactly what he was doing, and still does.
Will the Iran War Destroy MAGA? Jeet Heer
Will the Iran War Destroy MAGA?
Carlson was always going to sleep fine. But he’s unremarkable that way. A whole grift of MAGA mouthpieces is now disavowing their longtime support for the president. That includes Alex Jones, Candace Owens and former representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, each of whom has recently called for Trump to be removed from office. As well as podcast bros Andrew Shulz, Tim Dillon, Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and Dave Smith, who used their enormous influence to champion Trump when it counted most. but now keep repeating versions of “this is not what I voted for.” In a single rant earlier this month, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly accused the president of being “gullible,” “bamboozled” and “too weak to say no” to Israel’s war plans in Iran, while Ann Coulter assailed him for “committing war crimes” in the Middle East. They’re joined by Trump supporters who have told pollsters and reporters that they’re angry about the president depicting himself as white Jesus, or fighting with the pope, or, most of all,........