Tucker Carlson spent years as Donald Trump’s most loyal cable cheerleader, the kind of guy who looked into the camera and made authoritarianism sound like common sense.
These days, he’s sitting across from Megyn Kelly calling the president incompetent and speculating about when, exactly, it all ends.
Appearing on The Megyn Kelly Show this week, Carlson offered his most pointed assessment yet of Trump’s political future. “Just remember that Trump turns 80 next month. You know, and I hope he has a great birthday. I don’t wish Trump ill. However, he will be gone relatively soon. And we’ll still have this country. I don’t think things are going well,” Carlson said.
The remarks came during a conversation in which Kelly had asked about Trump’s declining approval ratings and the upcoming midterms, framing it as: “Trump’s terrible approval numbers with the midterms, all but lost already. What happens to Trump now?”
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Carlson’s answer was essentially: time, and a birthday in June.
The Iran war has been the clearest fault line in what was once a very cozy relationship. Both Carlson and Kelly have turned sharply critical of Trump’s handling of the conflict, and neither has been subtle about it.
Kelly told Carlson: “I don’t trust a word President Trump says about this anymore. He’s told us 31 times that the Iran war is over. Okay. Only to then tweet about how we’re going to bomb them into oblivion.”
Carlson agreed without hesitation, adding: “So like the dumbness on display just boggles my mind. And the rest of the world watching this is like, really, these people are running the globe. Like they’re not equal to the task.”
Carlson went further, criticizing Trump for attacking Joe Kent, whom he called “the bravest man I know,” and suggesting that Kent’s late wife had been “sent there by the Trump administration to fight another one of Israel’s wars.” It was the kind of line that would have been unthinkable from Carlson two years ago, which is more or less the whole point.
Carlson also warned that a post-Trump Democratic leadership could be worse, saying: “Imagine other leaders who are both malicious and competent,” a backhanded compliment that manages to insult Trump and the left simultaneously, a skill Carlson has always had.
Trump, for his part, has not taken the criticism quietly. In April he unloaded on both Carlson and Kelly, calling them “losers,” “nut jobs,” and “low IQ” individuals. He called Carlson a “hand-flailing fool” and a “broken man” who has “never been the same” since Fox News showed him the door. He suggested they were simply “trying to latch on to MAGA” and that they “don’t have what it takes.”
Featured image via YouTube screengrab
