Trump and Tucker: Split for Good?

Tucker Carlson was arguably the most prominent media personality to support the reelection of United States President Donald Trump, but the relationship between the two appears ruined.

Even as Carlson embraced conspiracy theories around Jewish supremacy and Holocaust denial and President Trump embraced a close relationship with the State of Israel, the two disagreed but stopped short of disowning each other. This is now history.

• Last month, Carlson called the launching of the Iran war “disgusting and evil.” President Trump responded that Carlson had “lost his way” and is “not maga.”
• On Sunday, the president wrote an obscenity-laden social media post. The next day, Carlson called the president’s statement “vile on every level,” saying it was blasphemous to post it on Easter morning and disrespectful to Islam.
• Regarding the president’s later threat that Iranian “civilization will die” if there is no ceasefire deal, Carlson called on U.S. officials to disobey the president’s orders. “If you work in the White House or the U.S. military, now it’s time to say no, absolutely not, and say it directly to the president: No,” he said on his podcast April 7.
• Responding to Carlson’s comments, Trump said: “Tucker’s a low-IQ person that has absolutely no idea what’s going on. He calls me all the time; I don’t respond to his calls. I don’t deal with him. I like dealing with smart people, not fools.”

“MAGA: Split Over Israel” shows that such sharp disagreements over the Iran war trace back to religious disagreements over the Jewish people.

• Figures like Carlson believe the Catholic Church and its derivatives have replaced the Jews as God’s people, so America expending its power to help the Jewish state amounts to collaborating with an enemy.
• Others emphasize the religious and cultural links between America and Israel, and support America siding with Israel in Middle Eastern wars.

President Trump seems to be siding with the pro-Israel wing for the moment—strongly enough to publicly disavow the Carlson wing. But Carlson and other anti-Israel commentators are influential; losing their support could cost President Trump politically.

If the war, midterms or another major issue goes awry for the president, he may have to submit to the anti-Israel bloc’s political pressure, which could hurt the special America-Israel relationship.