Tucker Carlson speaks at a campaign rally for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden on October 27, 2024, in New York City.
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Tucker Carlson sometimes speaks plainly. Sometimes he speaks in code. When he broke with Donald Trump over the Iran war last week, he did both.
The day after Easter, during a monologue on his internet show, Carlson assailed Trump for defiling “the holiest day in Christian life” with a rabid social media post that threatened to bomb power plants and bridges—civilian targets—if Tehran did not open “the Fuckin’ Strait” and that mocked Islam. An outraged Carlson expressed many of the obvious criticisms. He proclaimed that Trump had “shattered” a “uniquely joyful and peaceful moment for Christians” and that Trump’s “vile” vow to conduct “a war crime” was “unacceptable…under moral law.”
He accused Trump of receiving a thrill by threatening such violence. He called the post “evil” and declared, “No decent person mocks other people’s religion… No president should mock Islam… This is a mockery of Christianity.” He also slammed Christian leaders, most notably evangelist Paula White, the director of the White House Faith Office, for daring to compare Trump to Jesus. “Did Jesus command the disciples to go out and kill people?” he sharply asked.
This was a harsh critique that people on the right and left, Democrats, Republicans, and independents, and folks of all faiths or none could share. Here was Carlson as a Christian peacenik anti-interventionist.
But there was something else going on in that 44-minute-long rant. Carlson opened with the fact that during his second inauguration, Trump did not place his hand on the Bible when he swore his oath to defend the Constitution. “That should have been maybe a clue that we need to pause and think about, what is this?” Carlson remarked. He suggested that Trump “didn’t put his hand on the Bible because he affirmatively rejects what’s inside that book, and what’s inside that book are limits on human behavior.” Trump, he said, was not accepting a basic premise of the Old and New Testament: “You are not God, and you cannot assume his powers.”
Hmmm, who might recoil at the Bible, who might be repulsed by the supposed Word of God? Carlson did not answer that. But when railing against Trump’s social media post as the work of “evil,” he noted, “God creates, and Satan destroys.” It seemed he was associating Trump with Beelzebub. And he wondered aloud where Trump’s threats against Iran and the current stalemate will lead. He answered his own question: “Nuclear weapons… You wipe out a country of 92 million… You could have a global nuclear war… All things being equal, that’s where we’re heading.”
Carlson was casting Trump as a Satan-adjacent, Bible-hating, evil force slouching toward nuclear Armageddon.
And there’s more.
Asserting that nuclear war is the plan, he insisted, “There are a million signs, but the most obvious is the dumbest neocons in Trump’s orbit are saying it out loud.” He maintained that these unnamed neocons are “messengers” peddling “the policies of others.” He didn’t identify the others, but it could be Israel or Satan. Or maybe both. (Historically, prominent neoconservatives have been pro-Israel hawks and Jewish.)
Carlson did refer to one of these diabolical neocons by name: Fox News host Mark Levin, a fervent fan of the Iran war and a cheerleader for Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime. He noted that Trump has called on his followers to watch Levin, and he explained that it’s useful to do so because Levin’s show “has been a place where the future is revealed,” though the show is “probably” not written by Levin himself. That is, Levin is fronting for someone or something, and Trump is in league with this cabal.
On an Easter weekend episode of Levin’s show, Carlson pointed out, Levin reviewed the tremendous casualties of the biggest battles of World War II—the Battle of the Bulge, 80,000 to 90,000; Okinawa, more than 50,000—and told his viewers these numbers convinced President Harry Truman that it would be best to drop the newly invented atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki rather than mount a massive invasion of Japan.
Carlson claimed that this observation from Levin was “an argument for [using] nuclear weapons” against Iran and that Levin was test-driving this idea for Trump. Doing so at Easter time, Carlson huffed, was giving “the finger to Christianity.” Levin did not directly call for using nuclear weapons in Iran. But Carlson proclaimed his comments delivered a clear message: This is the plan.
To recap: a nefarious band of neocons in league with the Bible-hating Trump are pushing for an “insane” nuclear war.
And there’s even more.
“Could there be a spiritual component to what we’re watching?” Carlson asked his viewers. He suggested the Iran war was more than a geostrategic blunder. He referred to it as “a very stealthy yet incredibly effective attack…on belief in Jesus,” part of a “sustained effort to exterminate…the Christian faith.” He even said that Trump himself might see “this in bigger terms…as the fulfillment of something or the elevation to some higher office beyond president of the United States. That’s entirely possible.” Pointing to evangelical supporters of Trump, he asked, “Who are these people encouraging the president of the US to see himself as a millennialist figure…as part of the End Times story.”
Carlson has always been a cagey fellow. He didn’t explicitly say that Trump was the anti-Christ and in cahoots with evildoers, such as neocons and Israel, to destroy Christianity. But that’s how I read the tea leaves he’s dishing. It’s not that difficult to connect his dots to see—aha!—Trump is a leading figure in the grandest conspiracy theory: the Devil scheming to use nuclear weapons to annihilate the true faith.
Carlson has a long history of embracing and peddling conspiracy theories. He has claimed the Democrats are trying to replace white Americans with immigrants; the January 6 riot was a false flag operation; the Biden administration developed secret plans to round up and imprison conservatives; the United States maintained secret bioweapons labs in Ukraine (a false assertion the Kremlin pushed); and the US government was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks.
His latest tale is the hugest conspiracy theory of all. Trump is not merely screwing up bigly in the Middle East. He is a key player—if not the key player—in the titanic clash between God and Satan. No doubt, for Carlson, Trump’s subsequent social media post, in which he said a “whole civilization will die tonight” was further proof of the mighty spiritual warfare underway.
Naturally, Trump could not not respond to Carlson. In a long post on Thursday, he called Carlson and Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones—former Trump stans who have dumped Mr. MAGA over the war—“losers” with “Low IQs” and “NUT JOBS” and “TROUBLEMAKERS” who lost their television shows and “will say anything necessary for some ‘free’ and cheap publicity.” He excommunicated them: “They’re not ‘MAGA.’”
Reacting to Trump’s retort, Carlson’s email newsletter suggested that the president was being blackmailed by “anti-Christian” Israel or that “something far more morbid” was afoot. But now Carlson leaned away from the anti-Christ notion and observed that Trump was “under a level of pressure that most people cannot fathom, with rabid Israel Firsters viciously harassing him… Their shameless pursuit is steadfast enough to make even a man like Donald Trump go mad.” His newsletter noted, “Rather than engaging in petty name-calling, we want to give the president some grace.”
Yet in the same issue, the newsletter promoted a video from conspiracy-monger Alex Jones in which he insisted that Trump has “totally changed” and was “being led around by the nose by Netanyahu and by Mark Levin and others.” Jones prayed that God would “free him from the demonic influences that he’s under”—more satanic skullduggery. He called for Trump to be removed from office.
I’m a bit confused. First, Carlson tells us Trump is an agent of satanic destruction that is aimed at the extermination of Christianity, suggesting he might be the anti-Christ. But then he characterizes Trump as being driven mad due to the pressure applied on him by “anti-Christian” Israelis. At the same time, he also promotes the claim that Trump is possessed by demons, which might make him the anti-Christ or might not. (Earlier this month, Carlson did an interview with a priest who conducts exorcisms, and they discussed the widespread demonic possessions of politicians. During that show, Carlson attributed his firing at Fox News to the work of demons.) In any case, we’re in woo-woo land. And after Trump posted a meme that depicted Trump as Jesus, a new issue of Carlson’s newsletter said Trump was “lost” and asked people to pray for him.
When Carlson addressed the 2024 Republican presidential convention as a Trump champion, he declared that Trump had survived the assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, due to “divine intervention.” So less than two years ago, Trump was saved by God. Now, according to Carlson, Trump is possibly trying to extinguish God and Christianity. That’s some turnabout.
Carlson has jumped from one extreme to another. Trump critics may welcome his assault on Trump. But as he so often does, he’s playing a dangerous game, demonizing (literally!) his foes, as he situates himself as a true defender of the Christian faith. Where will this take him and the slice of MAGA that feeds on the paranoia and conspiracism he pitches? God only knows.
