Tucker Carlson on the war path with Trump over Iran but insiders dismiss 2028 buzz from brain-injured press
WASHINGTON — As speculation swirls that former Fox News host Tucker Carlson will launch a third-party presidential run in 2028, people who know the formerly bow-tied commentator say no chance.“I think journalists are all suffering from traumatic brain injuries as they forget the wave of ‘Tucker 2024’ stories,” said one person close to Carlson.
“He wasn’t running then and he’s not running now.”Speculation that Carlson, 57, would mount a campaign was covered Monday by Politico, after similar chatter appeared in other news outlets — as the populist podcaster publicly aligns with other disaffected antiwar conservatives.Carlson is “interesting and says irreverent things, and some people would like him to run.But he’s never like, ‘I’m running,'” the person close to him said.President Trump, who also was once viewed as an unlikely political contender, “was saying he was running for president and people weren’t taking him seriously.
They’re almost not taking seriously [Carlson’s] denials that he’s not running for president.It’s the opposite.”Carlson supported Trump’s comeback campaign in 2024, but broke with him this year after the president started the ongoing war with Iran in late February.Carlson, who regards the Iran conflict as a betrayal of Trump’s pledge to avoid destabilizing Mideast wars, expanded his attack on the president Monday, calling him “flamboyantly corrupt” during a podcast interview with former first son Hunter Biden.The former cable host said he backed Trump in 2024 largely because of the political prosecutions he faced, particularly for allegedly mishandling classified documents, recalling the “transparently absurd” raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in 2022 — and revealed he tried in vain to prevent the Iran war.“To me, what that [Mar-a-Lago raid] said was Trump is actually being persecuted by the Uniparty, therefore he is its sincere opponent,” Carlson said.
“My goal, literally fr...