Nicole Charky-Chami
April 24, 2026
RAW STORY
Right-wing broadcaster Tucker Carlson. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)
New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg described how there is something more troubling behind right-wing podcaster and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson's recent apology for misleading people in his support of President Donald Trump.
In a column published on Friday, Goldberg described how the conversation between Tucker and his brother, Buckley, a former Trump speechwriter, exposed much more of their message — a false narrative.
"I'm all for embracing converts to the anti-Trump cause," Goldberg wrote. "But if you listen to the dialogue between Tucker and his brother, it's clear that rather than honestly reckoning with their role in America's derangement, they're developing a new conspiracy theory to explain it away."
Conservatives have mainly stood by Trump over the last 10 years, Goldberg argued, but only recently has MAGA shown a growing understanding that Trump could be unfit to lead as commander-in-chief.
The brothers have argued that the president's recent decisions show he has been influenced by foreign actors.
"Trump, they strongly imply, has been compromised — maybe even blackmailed and physically threatened — by Zionist or globalist forces seeking the deliberate destruction of the United States," Goldberg wrote. "On Tucker's podcast, Buckley described a systematic undermining of America through the George Floyd protests, mass migration and now the war with Iran."
"I don't want to minimize the malign role Israel has played in persuading Trump to launch his catastrophic war on Iran," Goldberg explained. "As former Secretary of State John Kerry has said, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel tried to persuade previous American presidents to strike the Islamic Republic, but only Trump was vain and gullible enough to agree. America's hand-in-glove relationship with Israel has become a liability, and we should end it."
"But it wasn't Israel or Zionist donors or some shadowy internationalist cabal that made Trump a buffoonish maniac who glories in threats of violence," Goldberg wrote. "If the second Trump administration is worse than the first, it's largely because the establishment figures once demonized by Carlson as deep-state subversives are all gone. Trump is who he always was. He's just more politically unfettered than before."
Now, Tucker and Buckley Carlson are pushing more disinformation, and "some former Trump acolytes are defaulting to an older conspiracy theory: The ones in control are the Jews." That aspect is most concerning, according to Goldberg.
"This need that some MAGA apostates feel to rationalize their previous poor judgment can be harmless, if irritating. It's dangerous only when they insist on creating a scapegoat," Goldberg added.
Trump has fired back at Carlson, calling him a "Low IQ person" on Truth Social, as the feud between the two continues to escalate.
Tucker Carlson isn't fooling anyone
Tucker Carlson in Palm Beach Florida in 2018 (Gage Skidmore)
Tucker Carlson in Palm Beach Florida in 2018 (Gage Skidmore)
April 23, 2026
ALTERNET
Tucker Carlson told the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee that Trump is “a wonderful person. I know him well. By the way, the funniest person I’ve ever met in my life, actually. You can’t be funny without perspective or without empathy, which is true.”
But on Tuesday, Carlson admitted that he’ll be “tormented” for a long time by his support for Trump in the 2024 presidential election and that “I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”
Well, thank you, Tucker. I — and I’m sure many others — appreciate your apology.
And we hope your torment continues.
By the way, I’ve got to ask: Are you also tormented by — and apologetic for — supporting Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen?
And what about your minimizing the presence of white nationalists among those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021? And your claim that the attack on the Capitol “barely rates as a footnote?”
Are you now tormented and apologetic for any of this?
And while we’re at it, Tucker, what about your racist screeds? Does any of the filth you’ve spewed for years make you ashamed?
You pushed the “great replacement theory,” claiming that immigrants made America “poorer and dirtier.”
You said a Black Democratic politician spoke like a “sharecropper.”
You told your viewers that America is a “civilization under siege” — by violent Black Lives Matter protesters, by diseased migrants from south of the U.S.-Mexico border, and by refugees importing alien cultures.
When hundreds of refugees from Africa began crossing into Texas from Mexico during the first Trump administration, you warned that Africa’s high birthrates meant the new arrivals might soon “overwhelm our country and change it completely and forever.”
Amid the nation’s outrage over George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, you called those who protested the murder “criminal mobs.”
When Kyle Rittenhouse murdered two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, you asked rhetorically, “Are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder?” And: “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”
Are you troubled by any of this, Tucker? Are you apologetic? Ashamed?
And if not, why the hell not?
Why should anybody believe you when you say you’re now “tormented” and “sorry” for misleading people about Trump if you express no remorse for supporting his blatant lies about the 2020 election, for backing the rioters at the Capitol, for justifying the murders of protesters, and for poisoning America with your bigoted screeds?
Tucker, we know you’d like to be the Republican candidate for president in 2028 and you think distancing yourself from Trump on his idiotic war is the way to do it — especially with JD Vance as your likely opponent in the primaries.
Well, I have news for you, Tuck. You’re not fooling anyone with your newfound conversion. You’re the same intolerant, dogmatic, puerile fanatic you always were. And just as dangerous for this country and the world as ever.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
Tucker Carlson told the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee that Trump is “a wonderful person. I know him well. By the way, the funniest person I’ve ever met in my life, actually. You can’t be funny without perspective or without empathy, which is true.”
But on Tuesday, Carlson admitted that he’ll be “tormented” for a long time by his support for Trump in the 2024 presidential election and that “I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”
Well, thank you, Tucker. I — and I’m sure many others — appreciate your apology.
And we hope your torment continues.
By the way, I’ve got to ask: Are you also tormented by — and apologetic for — supporting Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen?
And what about your minimizing the presence of white nationalists among those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021? And your claim that the attack on the Capitol “barely rates as a footnote?”
Are you now tormented and apologetic for any of this?
And while we’re at it, Tucker, what about your racist screeds? Does any of the filth you’ve spewed for years make you ashamed?
You pushed the “great replacement theory,” claiming that immigrants made America “poorer and dirtier.”
You said a Black Democratic politician spoke like a “sharecropper.”
You told your viewers that America is a “civilization under siege” — by violent Black Lives Matter protesters, by diseased migrants from south of the U.S.-Mexico border, and by refugees importing alien cultures.
When hundreds of refugees from Africa began crossing into Texas from Mexico during the first Trump administration, you warned that Africa’s high birthrates meant the new arrivals might soon “overwhelm our country and change it completely and forever.”
Amid the nation’s outrage over George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, you called those who protested the murder “criminal mobs.”
When Kyle Rittenhouse murdered two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, you asked rhetorically, “Are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder?” And: “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”
Are you troubled by any of this, Tucker? Are you apologetic? Ashamed?
And if not, why the hell not?
Why should anybody believe you when you say you’re now “tormented” and “sorry” for misleading people about Trump if you express no remorse for supporting his blatant lies about the 2020 election, for backing the rioters at the Capitol, for justifying the murders of protesters, and for poisoning America with your bigoted screeds?
Tucker, we know you’d like to be the Republican candidate for president in 2028 and you think distancing yourself from Trump on his idiotic war is the way to do it — especially with JD Vance as your likely opponent in the primaries.
Well, I have news for you, Tuck. You’re not fooling anyone with your newfound conversion. You’re the same intolerant, dogmatic, puerile fanatic you always were. And just as dangerous for this country and the world as ever.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
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