Tucker Carlson Is Not Your Anti-War Ally

The problem, of course, is that this is a fantasy for babies and the liberal consultancy-turned-influencer class (a frequent overlap). Tucker Carlson hasn’t suddenly grown a morally fortified spine, and Candace Owens isn’t “shredding” the president out of any sense of the common good. Their complaints, such as they are, are about Trump’s challenges in enacting a MAGA agenda they wholeheartedly endorse. That is to say, their criticism of Trump’s wartime conduct is fundamentally constructive, offered in the hopes of seeing the agenda that drew them to Trump in the first place fulfilled. They don’t want the war to end because it is fundamentally immoral, but because they see its execution as having become detrimental to their broader, ultranationalist cause.

These are professional colonizers of the attention economy successfully infiltrating spaces well past the ossified limits of their usual X.com output. They are not your allies. They are parasites of opportunity, leaping at a dovetailing series of interests wherein their racially motivated projects of ultranational ethno-religious homogeny can be sublimated under a more palatable anti-war umbrella.

There is a danger here, beyond that of seriously annoying people (me) every time Tucker’s smirking mug gets shoved into my timeline. These liberal media facilitators—people and groups with whom I am supposed to feel some sense of common cause—are only cutting themselves and their ostensible positions of authority off at the knees.

By repeatedly framing Carlson’s anti-war broadcasts as laudatory and worth watching, the implication is that people on the left should look rightward for inspiration. Compare the framing for Pod Save America’s recent interview with leftist streamer Hasan Piker, which Favreau shared on Bluesky by threading the episode after quoting Ezra Klein’s recent assertion that “conversation is not a reward to be bestowed upon those with whom we agree.”

Liberal audiences are, in essence, being told that conservative anti-war rhetoric riddled with bad-faith propaganda and fueled partially by inward-facing, right-wing score-settling is as legitimate and worthwhile as anything from the left—including, by extrapolation, the rest of the messaging coming from the same blue-tinged media figures sharing Carlson in the first place.

The fractures exposed by Carlson and company on the right are political pressure points to be exploited, yes, but that’s a far cry from uncritically lifting proponents of the Great Replacement theory and other flavors of white nationalism as voices worthy of consideration per se. Creating a false parity between sincere anti-war sentiment and right-wing opportunism serves to diminish sincere voices from the left. And for what? Increased follower counts? More engagement on Bluesky and Threads? There’s a trade-off happening here, but it’s a lopsided one.

Tucker Carlson is many things. He’s a bigot and a hypocrite and a vector for misery and harm across multiple communities. We know he’s willing to hold his nose and work to accomplish Trump’s agenda over personal qualms because that is exactly what he’s done in the past—professing how much he “passionately” hates the president in leaked texts, while working hand in glove to expand Trump’s political footprint. That he claims to agree in principle—but not specifics—about something as blatantly indefensible as a voluntary war of imperial adventurism is hardly worth whatever damage he will surely inflict with the newfound reach and authority he hopes to earn with this superficial pacifism. He and those like him want nothing more than to be seen and cited by liberals as a moral authority—all to make his immoral philosophy seem more palatable for an audience primed by popular podcasters to be receptive and open-minded to his polished propaganda.

Let me be clear: If you are opposed to the war in Iran, you do not agree with Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene, or any of the other MAGA mainstays seeking reputational rehabilitation. If anything, they agree with you. With us. With those who haven’t spent years seeding the ground for Trump to do the exact thing they now vociferously claim to oppose. The territory is already being ceded. The inroads are already being made. But why should someone like Carlson get undue credit for belatedly arriving where many of us have been for ages? Why are we being asked to give that to him?

Tucker Carlson isn’t your anti-war buddy. He’s not your strange bedfellow during unprecedented times. He’s not your friend. And anyone who tells you that he and his ilk are the anti-war voices worth listening to above all others? They’re probably not your friend either.