Tucker Carlson’s pivot away from MAGA has earned him unlikely praise, but is he being genuine?

There’s a famous satirical article from The Onion whose headline reads, “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point.”

The face of the man featured in that article has since become social media shorthand for agreeing with a person one finds otherwise despicable—and it’s popped up quite a lot lately in Bluesky posts about the far-right pundit and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

After U.S. ally Israel attacked Iran on June 13, and President Trump teased the possibility of intervening on Israel’s behalf, Carlson pivoted away from his usual support for the president. Rather than maintain MAGA orthodoxy around the urgent need to aid Israel’s militarily, he’s been staunchly critical of Trump’s willingness to lead the United States into war—leaving Carlson’s critics in the rare position of giving him some credit.

In fact, viral clips from the podcaster’s recent interviews offer a fascinating glimpse of how Fox News might look if it weren’t pot-committed to MAGA.

That glimpse, however, is likely just a mirage.

Although Carlson had already turned heads—including Trump’s—with his verbal aversion to attacking Iran, the MAGA split truly began during a June 18 interview with Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

The host of The Tucker Carlson Show surprised his guest with a series of combative questions, demonstrating Cruz’s unfamiliarity with the region, before giving him the third degree over his unconditional support of Israel.

A bipartisan coalition of social media users ended up embracing the interview, united by their distaste of war, Cruz, or both. Indeed, just the clip of Carlson seemingly aghast that the senator does not know the population of “the country [he] seek[s] to topple” has been viewed 18 million times on TikTok alone.

Room for agreement?

If Carlson seemed opposed to a hypothetical U.S. attack on Iran before one actually materialized, he did not moderate his position afterward. On the June 27 episode, just a week after Trump’s bombing strike against three nuclear facilities in the region, Carlson released an interview with controversial Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, unpacking the attack.

Considering that Carlson has given a platform to Holocaust revisionists as recently as last fall, and that Greene herself came under fire in 2021 for previously using anti-Semitic tropes, both the host and guest came across measured and reasonable in their criticism of the Israeli government, and what Trump appears willing to do on its behalf.

At one point, speaking about embattled Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Carlson noted, “He’s way more popular in Congress than he is in Israel,” and applauded Greene for standing apart from her peers in their support for the leader. 

According to a recent CNN poll, 88% of Democrats disapprove of Trump’s strikes against Iran while 82% of Republicans are in favor of the decision. It’s easy to imagine many of those Democrats agreeing with Carlson on this topic.

Has the former Fox News all-star truly broken up with MAGA? Could Carlson become the long-fabled Joe Rogan of the Left? Don’t count on it.

Taking the recent viral clips alone as evidence of a purported pivot is like looking at a puzzle through a keyhole. It ignores everything else the pundit has said recently.

Need we be reminded that this is the same person who mainstreamed Great Replacement Theory in American discourse, demanded that Dr. Anthony Fauci be prosecuted for supposed COVID crimes, and believes he was once attacked by demons?

Sure, it may be tempting to praise his condemnation of ”war-crazed Republican senators,” but not when he also suggests that a “huge percentage” of them are “secretly gay.” (as if being gay were either a character defect or something that historically connotes an abiding love of war).

Furthermore, as the collegial interview with Greene demonstrates, Carlson is far from the only high-profile MAGA member to split with Trump over the Israel-Iran war. Fellow far-right pundits like Candace Owens and Steve Bannon have strongly criticized the president for breaking his campaign pledge to start no new wars, even if some of them have already fallen back in line.

Counterpoint or counterprogramming?

Perhaps there’s a good reason why Carlson might be more animated about all this than his counterparts.

When Carlson has spoken about his former employer Fox News recently, his tone has been bitter. He seems to hold a grudge against the network for casting him out of the mainstream and into the fringe by abruptly firing him in 2023.

Now that the pro-war coverage on Fox News has reportedly helped Trump decide to strike Iran, Carlson may see an opportunity to provide counterprogramming as a member of the independent media, free from the pro-Trump uniformity of Fox News.

If it sounds far-fetched that the network would demand its reporters support Trump, well, Carlson recently claimed that he once helped enforce support at the network.

One need only to watch Fox News’s prime-time lineup for a few minutes on any given night to conclude that there’s not much room to disagree with Trump as publicly and as vehemently as Carlson recently has, let alone any incentive for it.

On the other hand, there certainly seems to be an upside for Carlson to do so from a distance. As CNN reports, The Tucker Carlson Show jumped to No. 5 on YouTube’s weekly podcast rankings, up from a No. 18 ranking last month, and is now No. 2 on Spotify’s podcast chart, just behind Joe Rogan.

Maybe the critical coverage will cost Carlson some support in the long run, forcing him to backpedal. For now, though, it’s earning him too much positive attention to change course.

The worst person you know just made a great point—and is being rewarded handsomely for it.