Diplomacy, Demons, and Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson has once again taken the internet by storm, this time for a fiery exchange with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas over Iran, Israel, and isolationism writ large. The interview was a perfect example of Tucker’s skills as an interlocutor; he is cobra-like in his ability to strike at seeming inconsistencies but pivots and proves impossible to pin down when confronted with his own, all while maintaining an appearance of friendly sincerity. Tucker is a master assassin when he chooses a target. 

The subjects of the Tucker-Cruz debate were worthy ones. Should America enter Israel’s war with Iran? Have the implications of regime change in Iran been fully considered, especially considering the domino effect of previous Middle Eastern misadventures? What chain of events led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine? What constitutes “American interests”? Knowledgeable conservatives can and do disagree in good faith on these issues, and public debate is important in an era of know-nothing, conspiratorial influencers. 

Tucker has been criticizing the Trump administration on these subjects, piquing the president enough that he fired back. “I don’t know what Tucker Carlson is saying,” Trump, who knows Tucker personally, told reporters. “Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen.” The president followed that up with a post on Truth Social: “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that, ‘IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!’”

Tucker Carlson was once a brilliant political essayist, but these days, “kooky” is a sadly accurate way to describe his trajectory. I’m not referring to his non-interventionist views, of which there is a long tradition on the American Right. I’m referring to his expressed view that, for example, the U.S. government may have entered into an agreement with aliens or extraterrestrial spiritual forces. Or his claim that the atomic bomb was likely invented by demons during a discussion with Steve Bannon:

Nuclear weapons are demonic, there’s no upside to them at all, and anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant or doing the bidding of the forces that created nuclear technology in the first place, which were not human forces, obviously. Let me ask you this. What was the moment we can point to that nuclear technology was invented? I’ve never met a person who can isolate the moment where nuclear technology became known to man. German scientists in the 1930s? Really? Name the date? It’s very clear to me that these [nuclear weapons] are demonic.

That is trademark Tucker. He makes an outrageous or controversial claim and then asserts that this claim is “obvious” and that “anyone” can see it is true, when this is manifestly not the case. Tucker’s demonological view of the Manhattan Project and speculation about the U.S. government’s parley with dark extraterrestrial forces are not isolated. He has also claimed that he was “physically mauled” by devils who attacked him in his sleep while he was in bed with his wife and two dogs and left bleeding “claw marks.” 

Tucker is equally certain that dark forces control America. He is unequivocal in his belief that the CIA (and likely other intelligence services) were behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Once “they” killed the president, he has often stated, every president must operate with the knowledge that “they” could kill him, too. Thus, according to Tucker, the United States is no longer a democracy. This belief forms the foundation for much of his worldview. The JFK files are a nothingburger? Kash Patel says Epstein killed himself? Trump is backing Israel on Iran? Well, after Dallas, what can you expect?

Despite all this, Tucker frequently finds dark forces remarkably difficult to discern, as his trip to Russia to interview Vladimir Putin highlighted. Tucker embarked on a Potemkin train station visit and a giddy Moscow grocery store trip, where he raved about the magnificence of the shopping carts and the rock-bottom food prices. That, of course, was all in service of his main point: that Putin cares more about Russia than America’s leaders care about the United States. The evidence was right there in the gleaming murals of Moscow’s propaganda-packed Kiyevskaya metro station. What more evidence do you need?

I’ve taken a train out of that station. If Tucker had done so, he would have seen cinder block houses with tin roofs scant miles from Moscow. He didn’t, of course. 

Tucker has the right and journalistic responsibility to hold a politician’s feet to the fire, but it is illustrative to compare Tucker’s interrogation of Ted Cruz to his chummy conversations with figures like Andrew Tate or his wide-eyed deference to Vladimir Putin. Tucker prides himself on being a flint-eyed purveyor of Realpolitik, but there are plenty of public figures who hold his non-interventionist positions without also believing that the U.S. government may have cut a deal with demons; that dark spiritual forces created the atomic bomb; that Andrew Tate is a persecuted innocent and Vladimir Putin is a fellow non-interventionist. 

That track record goes a good deal further than “kooky.” Tucker Carlson is many things, but a realist he is not. It’s about time more conservatives noticed.