The most watched man in the history of cable news walked away from a $10 million a year Fox News salary in 2023, built his own independent platform, and now answers to nobody. Tucker Carlson used that freedom this week to say exactly what he thinks of the sitting president of the United States.
Since launching Tucker on X and The Tucker Carlson Show after leaving Fox News, Carlson has spent much of 2026 steadily dismantling his relationship with Donald Trump. Speaking with Sky News anchor Yalda Hakim, he pinpointed the moment the friendship ended: February 27, the day before the Iran war began.
“I spoke to him the 27th. I haven’t talked to him since. I don’t hate him. I feel sorry for him. What he did is a catastrophe. He knew it would be and he did it anyways.”
That is a long way from the standard “we just grew apart” explanation.
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For Carlson, the Iran war was where everything fell apart.
He has repeatedly argued that Trump abandoned the “America First” vision that helped return him to the White House, particularly through the administration’s military campaign against Tehran. He also accused Trump of “overselling” the conflict “like it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet in Atlantic City,” while noting that Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz, something it did not control before the war began.
As scorecards go, that one is genuinely hard to argue with. Carlson, however, was still getting warmed up.
During a sit down with Jack Neel, he laid out a theory about two kinds of tough guys: the ones who make loud threats and the ones who simply act. His conclusion about Trump came without much buildup.
“Shut up, b*tch. I don’t take you seriously. No, I’m not being mean. But like, come on.” He also made clear that Trump is “super sophisticated about certain things and obviously buffoonish in other ways, but he’s not stupid and he’s not senile.”
Trump, predictably, did not let it slide.
He grouped Carlson alongside Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones on Truth Social, claiming they all share “low IQs,” before declaring: “They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too!”
The feud, though, did not begin with a Truth Social post.
Back in April, Carlson sat down with his brother Buckley, a former Trump speechwriter, and apologized to his audience on air. “We’ll be tormented by it for a long time,” he said. “I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional.”
Public accountability on that scale is rare from someone who spent years projecting unwavering certainty from a primetime television studio.
Looking back, that apology now feels like the beginning of something much bigger.
Carlson, who once described himself as a “consistent defender” of the Republican Party for 35 years, recently concluded: “There’s no defending this, because it’s immoral and it’s exactly the opposite of what a political party in a democracy is charged with doing.” He ended with the line that has Republican strategists watching nervously ahead of the midterms.
“I’m out, and if I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out.”
Featured image via YouTube screengrab
