November 5, 2024, was one of the most joyous days of my life. Like 77,302,580 of my fellow Americans, I felt that, under the Democrats, the nation was heading in a disastrous direction: millions of illegal immigrants pouring in unchecked, college campuses checkered with Hamas and Hezbollah flags, Iran and its terrorist tentacles appeased while American allies like Israel were censured, children preyed upon by ideological zealots pushing radical trans ideology and advocating mutilations. The list goes on.
Donald Trump’s re-election felt like more than a mere electoral victory. It was a profound affirmation of American values and an unequivocal rejection of the lunatic ideas of the left, ideas designed to undermine faith, family, and nation. With Trump back in office, I believed, it was morning in America once again.
What a difference a year makes.
Not that the president is to blame. On the contrary: In his ten months in office, Trump has unleashed an unprecedented and stunningly successful project of civilizational reclamation—arresting and deporting undocumented migrants, sending the National Guard to restore order to cities failed by progressive policies, striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, and defunding universities that cheer on violence and stifle free speech and inquiry. Rather than applaud the president’s accomplishments, however, many former supporters have turned on him—and not only on him but, more alarmingly, on America itself, which they see as riddled with terrible defects and controlled by evil forces. And, alas, even high-profile politicians who ought to know better are slouching toward this benighted view, the mirror image of the left’s reflexive bigotry, America-hatred, and rank pessimism.
Like all cultural phenomena unfurling in real time, this malady is hard to capture in precise detail. But the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. The story goes something like this: In the beginning were the crackpots, and the crackpots went berserk.
Consider Nick Fuentes. He’s the uber-influential podcaster and Holocaust revisionism hobbyist who caused a stir in 2022 for dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. But he changed his tune shortly before the 2024 election, voicing concerns that a second Trump administration would be staffed by “Jews” and “gays.” Now he calls Trump a “weird guy” who’s “not right in the head” and accuses him of shilling for Israel and its account of the October 7 attacks—which, Fuentes has repeatedly suggested, were a false-flag operation designed to justify the so-called genocide in Gaza.
Crazy hokum, you say; an outlier of no significance. I give you Candace Owens, another of the contemporary right’s most influential voices. In 2018 Owens hailed Trump as “the savior” of the free world. In 2024 she posted a photo of herself, beaming, with the president. These days she calls Trump “a chronic disappointment” and speculates that an Israeli plot lies behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
You’re free to dismiss Owens, too. You’re free to argue that two—or four, or eight—loud pundits with followings on X do not a movement make. Perhaps that’s true (though I think that politics works very differently these days). But then there’s Tucker Carlson.
Full disclosure: I used to like Carlson. A lot. I was happy to ignore his occasional dips into the grotesque—like blaming a handful of Jewish investors, and them alone, for all that ails America’s economy—because I found him joyful and fierce and committed to the great American cause. I appeared on his show, and I exchanged friendly messages with him thereafter.
Then something went terribly wrong. Early in 2024 Carlson traveled to Russia, where he famously wandered through the streets of Moscow, exclaiming that such cleanliness and order could never be attained in miserable old America. He sat down for a softball interview with Vladimir Putin, nodding politely as Putin shared his own version of European history, which included accusing the Poles of provoking the Germans to invade in 1939.
You can call this a one-off. After all, it’s probably useful for the American public to know the thoughts of Russia’s leader. But Carlson had more to say and do. Later in 2024, just a few months before a critical election, Carlson hosted Darryl Cooper, a self-styled internet “historian,” who argued that we’ve been misled for decades about World War II. It turns out that not Adolf Hitler but Winston Churchill—influenced by unnamed people who just happened to control the money and the media—was the “chief villain” and cause of the war.
You can say that there’s nothing wrong with airing new and controversial views of history. But consider the tendency of Carlson’s thought. Unperturbed by Russia, China, or any of America’s actual foes and rivals, Carlson has spent a considerable amount of airtime in 2025 obsessing over Israel and the Jews. People like Ben Shapiro, he said, were “focused on a conflict in a foreign country as their own country becomes dangerously unstable. . . . I’m shocked by how little they care about the country.”
Among the many Israel-hating guests Carlson has hosted was Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos. She used the opportunity to argue, with no evidence whatsoever, that Israel was actively planning to “blow up” the holy Muslim sites on the Temple Mount.
When he appeared on Carlson’s show, Republican senator Ted Cruz was treated to a torrent of hostile gotcha questions and name-calling. The president of Iran, by contrast, was treated warmly, with nary an inconvenient question in sight.
In July Carlson mused at a public event about the Jewish billionaire Bill Ackman, asking out loud how Ackman had acquired his wealth. The answer is simple and readily available—Ackman is a skilled and successful investor. But Carlson portrayed him as something altogether different: “If you’re getting rich by loaning money to people at incredibly high interest rates, that’s something you’re going to have to talk to God about.” It’s the old charge of rapacious moneylending by Jews, recycled for a twenty-first-century audience and aimed at a figure who very publicly threw his support behind Trump in 2024.
This is vile stuff, but my concern is not for Jews. We’ve withstood far worse than the insinuations of Carlson and his guests. And, for better or worse, we’re hardly 2 percent of the American population. It’s America itself I’m worried about, because as Donald Trump himself made all too clear, we need a tight-knit political coalition on the right to fend off a destructive left. That means accommodating differences and disagreements, of course. But just as it begins its ascendance, our coalition is being undermined by Carlson and his ilk, pundits who masquerade as conservative, yet are anything but.
How, pray tell, is MAGA optimism about the future of our country served by an unhinged cackler who rarely misses an opportunity to peddle his catastrophic vision of America—a vision that serves no cause but his own ratings and clout—while cozying up to America’s worst enemies?
Sadly, Carlson’s influence appears to be on the rise. In January Vice President JD Vance hired Carlson’s son, Buckley, as a senior member of his staff. And while hosting Charlie Kirk’s podcast after his murder, Vance invited Carlson as his first and honored guest, even though Carlson now spends much of his airtime vociferously criticizing the very administration Vance serves.
President Trump appears to know better. He dismissed Carlson as “kooky” when the two disagreed over Iran policy in June, demonstrating that he is willing to part ways with Carlson on both policy and rhetoric. The fact that Vance seems to be traveling in the opposite direction is disheartening.
A masterful coalition-builder like the president will tell you that building a movement requires a compelling vision—in MAGA’s case, an unapologetic love of our great country. This vision has been a smashing success, because it’s what Americans want. The coalition fighting to reclaim America from the barbarians who currently control too many of our institutions is large and diverse, as it should be. But coalition-building requires boundary-drawing. The MAGA movement cannot tolerate—let alone promote—people who pretend they are “just asking questions” while undermining every single tenet of American greatness.
If you’re not sure who the good guys were in World War II; if you believe that Moscow is preferable to Miami; if you’re kind to a head of state who calls America the Great Satan and fawn over a dictator who tells you that America is a puppet state run by the CIA, while being aggressive with a Republican senator from Texas—maybe you’re not a trusted partner in the effort to restore America. If you’re convinced that the Jews, whose prophets gave this great and godly nation so much of its moral might, are nothing more than Christ-killers whose only loyalty is to Israel—well, you may be many things, but you’re not a conservative, not an American patriot, and certainly not a legitimate part of any movement that wishes to preserve the great energy of MAGA.
Trump seems to understand all of this. Here’s hoping his would-be successors follow his lead before it’s too late.
Editor’s note: Since this column was written, Tucker Carlson hosted notorious anti-Semite Nick Fuentes on his show. Fuentes has campaigned against Donald Trump and JD Vance.