Tucker Carlson says he doesnât hate his former close friend, President Donald Trump, but feels âbetrayedâ by the administrationâs recent military actions in the Middle East.
Carlson, the former Fox News host and one of the most influential conservative media voices in America, was once closely aligned with Trump and even served as an informal adviser.
Now, Carlson has become one of Trumpâs most vocal conservative critics, especially over the presidentâs foreign policy and military actions in the Middle East.
He recently apologized for helping Trump get elected, saying Trump has moved away from his earlier âAmerica Firstâ promise to avoid foreign wars and has instead taken a more aggressive approach.
âI donât hate Trump. I hate this war and the direction that the U.S. government is taking,â Carlson told The Wall Street Journal in an interview released Saturday. âI feel betrayed.â
Carlson said he believed Trumpâs campaign promise of âno new wars,â especially in the Middle East, was sincere. He now argues that Trump has since been influenced by neoconservatives and Israel, and has moved away from that original anti-war position.


âWhy canât the U.S. government act on behalf of its own citizens?â Carlson asked the WSJ. âThis is a generational problem that didnât start with Trump. If anything, Trump just proved the system was stronger than him.â
Carlson has also faced his own criticism. Last October, he hosted Nick Fuentes, a known Holocaust denier, on his podcast and accused some U.S. politicians who support Israel of being overly influenced by a âbrain virus,â which led to accusations of antisemitism and calls from some conservatives to distance him from the movement.
At the same time, Carlson had been privately and publicly urging Trump for months not to enter another war in the Middle East. He reportedly visited the White House three times to speak with Trump directly and stayed in frequent contact with him.
Despite those efforts, Carlson told the WSJ he failed to change Trumpâs direction. He points to âFebruary 28â as the breaking point, the day U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a move that, in his view, deeply divided conservatives who believed Trumpâs âAmerica Firstâ stance meant avoiding new wars.
Carlson described the man he helped elect to a second term as âcharming, intelligent, and an existential threat to self-government.â
âTrump has proven his own point, unfortunately, which is that the people running your government are only about themselves,â he said. âYou can run an authoritarian system that way. You cannot run a liberal democracy that way.â
On his end, Trump has dismissed Carlson and other former MAGA allies as having a âlow IQâ for criticizing his handling of the Iran war. Carlson responded to that remark earlier this month in an interview with Newsmax, calling Trump a âslaveâ who âcanât make his own decisions.â
“Iâve always liked Trump and still feel sorry for him, as I do for all slaves,â Carlson said April 10. âHeâs hemmed in by other forces. He canât make his own decisions. Itâs awful to watch.”
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
