Nor am I exaggerating; take a look:

Tucker Carlson has unexpectedly praised Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, calling his platform “literally Trumpian” and saying he would not vote for his GOP rival Mike Rogers “at gunpoint.”

The right-wing broadcaster hosted podcaster Saagar Enjeti on his self-titled show, in the course of which the duo discussed the race between El-Sayed and Rogers, noting that while the former had started out as a “full-blown leftist,” he had undergone an “ideological evolution.”

“I watch his campaign now, it’s America First,” Enjeti said. “When he talks about Israel, he says, ‘Israel is committing a genocide, but ultimately I want to make sure that you don’t pay more for healthcare.

“‘I don’t want your tax dollars going abroad to fund this barbaric military.’ He stands in front of a giant American flag. It’s almost Trumpian in terms of a lot of those problems.”

“Well, it is literally Trumpian,” Carlson agreed, with both men going on to predict that the progressive former public health official was likely to beat Rogers in November.

I take issue with the word “unexpectedly” in the first sentence of that quote. Nothing could be less unexpected.

I also take issue with the phrase “right-wing” that begins the second paragraph of that quote. Tucker isn’t on the conventional right and it’s not clear where to categorize him, except that if anyone is against Israel and Jews, he’s for them.

And of course El-Sayed’s “ideological evolution” from “full-blown leftist” is because he now has to pretend to tack a tiny bit to the middle in order to try to win the election in Michigan.

The idea that El-Sayed is “literally Trumpian” would be comical if it weren’t so unhinged. But I’m not of the opinion that Tucker is actually unhinged. I think he knows exactly what he’s doing, and is giving free rein to ideas and impulses he’s had for a long long time. One motive is to split the GOP and try to take over the wreckage. He doesn’t have to cater to Fox News or anyone else now; he’s free to speak his mind. I’ve already written many many pieces about Tucker, so I won’t go into what I see as his “ideological evolution,” except to refer you especially to this post and this, as well as this one.

ADDENDUM: I originally was thinking of writing a separate post on this article in Tablet about J. D. Vance’s recent address to the Republican Jewish Coalition this past Tuesday. I may still write about it separately. But for now I’ll just link to it here, because it’s relevant to the ongoing discussion of why Vance has refused to criticize Tucker Carlson at all – not just refuse to “denounce” him, by the way, but refuse to be specific about whatever disagreements he might have with him. I wonder whether Tucker’s words on El-Sayed and Rogers would be enough to get Vance to say something; I tend to doubt it, but it’s certainly possible.

The Tablet piece I just linked is well worth reading, in order to see what Vance is saying about Israel and related topics. It’s considerably worse than I had originally thought; I wasn’t aware of some of the Vance quotes discussed in that piece.

The post In case you haven’t followed what Tucker Carlson’s been saying lately (and I can understand it if you haven’t), he seems to be heartily endorsing El-Sayed appeared first on The New Neo.

Vance’s strength is his wit, intellect, and gift for political framing. He’s a verbal sharpshooter who decimated Tim Walz in their vice-presidential debate, and Jewish Republicans surely applauded his withering takedown of El-Sayed. …

Vance came across as reasonable, sincere, fair-minded, and respectful. He acknowledged Israel’s importance to American foreign policy, praised it as an ally, and connected the rise of antisemitism to unchecked Third World immigration — traditionally, one of the GOP’s most unifying issues.

Best of all, he did it without pandering.

But on the other hand, Vance failed to separate himself from Tucker Carlson, whom many Jewish Republicans feel is just as much of a dangerous antisemite as El-Sayed. The event’s emcee, ex-Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), gave him a golden opportunity to denounce Carlson’s rhetoric.

Vance declined, opting to pivot to Nick Fuentes and Joe Rogan …

By failing to cleanly separate himself from Hasan Piker, El-Sayed has shot himself in the foot. He’s now dogged by Piker everywhere he goes — and every time Piker says something offensive, El-Sayed is back on his heels. …

But what’s true about Piker is also true about Carlson: He monetizes outrage and controversy to stay in the headlines, too. That’s his business model as well.

Which means, JD Vance and Abdul El-Sayed share the same political vulnerability.

It’s puzzling why Vance refuses to bandage his wound. It wouldn’t take much. Just two or three sentences.

All he’d have to say is that Carlson has changed — and as a Christian, Vance prays for Carlson’s redemption — but OF COURSE he vehemently disagrees with Carlson about Trump being the antichrist, a slave, and/or Israel “destroying” the United States.

Carlson isn’t some quiet personal friend of Vance’s, he’s a major figure who is (or used to be) on the right, and he is a disgusting blood-libeling Jew-hater who is vocal about it nearly on a daily basis. Vance’s refusal to even criticize him in that regard is very telling, in my opinion.

Vance sometimes utters words that indicate he’s an Israel-supporter, but he has also said many things having nothing to do with Tucker Carlson that show a compromised support of Israel which is sometimes more like the position of a politician on the left than one on the right. I’ve written about it before; please see this from about a month and a half ago. In that post, I quote Lee Smith, who had written:

During his grievance-fueled performance on Rogan’s podcast, Vance lashed out once again at the Jews, alleging, among other things, that there’s an Israeli-funded plot to undermine his negotiations with Iran; some Israelis want war indefinitely for the sake of endless war; and the U.S. government has probably destroyed evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad operative. …

Now that the Iran deal that Vance favored has blown up and he’s taking heat for it, he’s showing that no one puts baby in a corner. So, he resurrects Epsteingate, predictably inspiring the dumbest people in America, and around the world, to flood social media with details from an information operation targeting Trump.

I also think Vance has shown some naivete about Iran.

I am assuming that Vance’s motive for all of this is to not alienate the Tucker wing of the GOP. That’s the kindest interpretation.

The post Tucker Carlson is to J. D. Vance as Hasan Piker is to Abdul El-Sayed appeared first on The New Neo.

From this:

Former Republican Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene posted a photo this past weekend of herself, Tucker Carlson and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., along with the statement that “the movement has come.”

Last month, Carlson said he was planning to create a new political party, the Columbia Journalism Review reported.

Greene’s photo, posted on X on Saturday, featured the three, who have been sidelined over their opposition to President Trump’s agenda and suggests discussions on a third party are continuing.

Greene in particular, but Massie as well, are personally aggrieved at Trump. I’ve dealt with Kent in this previous post. How did Kent get in there? It has to do with this photo at Carlson’s home; they’re all sitting around a dining table, beaming. You can see the photo here if you have X:

We said no more foreign wars and we meant it and supported Donald Trump because he made that promise.
But he’s betrayed us all.
Our commitment is America First for all Americans, right, left, and center.
The movement has begun. pic.twitter.com/mZXadw0kBr

— Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene?? (@FmrRepMTG) August 1, 2026

Someone in the responses there posted an AI version:

pic.twitter.com/lXNrB5rhqo

— mallen2024 (@mallen20243) August 1, 2026

This group does have followers, but how many are US voters and how many of those were ever going to vote Republican anyway is completely unknown. I see the Carlson crew as motivated by revenge and power – people who find it more fun to destroy than to be powerless. It’s easier to destroy, too; you can be a spoiler with far fewer supporters when a political race is otherwise very close. Their goals short-term are similar to the goals of the NeverTrumpers in previous elections, such as the members of The Bulwark, although their positions are not identical.

Long-term, the Carlson wing probably does want to be more than spoilers. Long-term, they have more grandiose visions.

The post The anti-Trump crew on the “right” plan to go third party appeared first on The New Neo.

It’s been cumulative, but the Rogan interview is somewhat of a turning point for me. Initially, I was – if not a Vance fan, exactly – of the opinion that he might gain the sort of experience as VP that would make him a good presidential candidate in 2028. He’s clearly a smart guy, and he’s had a way with words when talking to the regular press and pointing out their illogic and lies. In his debate against Tim Walz he was excellent, and he used a delicate and deft touch. Among his other assets, he has a wife who seems as though she would make a wonderful First Lady.

But in recent months, Vance’s refusal to say something about Tucker Carlson’s horrendous viewpoints has been very disquieting. Carlson isn’t just anti-Israel and a spreader of classic lies about Jews, but he’s a historical revisionist, a Qatar and Putin shill, and has become a platform for some of the worst ideas around these days. For a while, Carlson’s son worked for Vance (although he’s quit now), and it’s long been known that it was Carlson who promoted to Trump the idea of Vance as VP. So in a very real way Vance owes his present job to Carlson.

That meant that there was a simple explanation for Vance not speaking out against Carlson as Trump had. That reason was loyalty. Blind and unwavering loyalty is not necessarily a good thing, but as long as Vance kept neutral on the subject of Carlson, I was willing to give him a pass and to wait and see. And then Vance decided to go on Rogan’s podcast, and he began to sound somewhat like Tucker himself. Not just that, but the interview was an exercise in buck-passing, which is not a good look.

This article by Lee Smith describes it quite well:

During his grievance-fueled performance on Rogan’s podcast, Vance lashed out once again at the Jews, alleging, among other things, that there’s an Israeli-funded plot to undermine his negotiations with Iran; some Israelis want war indefinitely for the sake of endless war; and the U.S. government has probably destroyed evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad operative. …

Now that the Iran deal that Vance favored has blown up and he’s taking heat for it, he’s showing that no one puts baby in a corner. So, he resurrects Epsteingate, predictably inspiring the dumbest people in America, and around the world, to flood social media with details from an information operation targeting Trump.

Epsteingate is a reboot of Russiagate, a conspiracy-theory template holding that Trump is controlled by a foreign power. During Trump’s first term, that power was Russia. Now, in the second term, it’s Israel. Epstein became crucial to the narrative because his supposed role in running a pedophile blackmail ring at the behest of the Mossad provided a mechanism by which Israel could extort Trump and other high American officials into doing its bidding.

Smith goes on to explain why this is preposterous, but I think it’s of great interest that Vance was willing to hint at this route despite – as he himself admitted – having zero evidence of it. Vance even explicitly said that there was no evidence Trump was involved in sex with minors. But Vance has to know – unless he’s stupid, which I submit he is not – that Vance’s wink and nod about Epstein and the Mossad, and Israeli influence on the US, not only appeals mightily to the Jew-hating Tucker wing but is an indirect way of saying Trump is controlled by Israel.

I very much doubt Trump is happy about that.

More from Smith, on the origins of the story Vance is pushing or at least nodding along when Rogan mentions it:

The rumor that Epstein was a high-level global intelligence asset—as opposed to a rich pervert and con man—seems to have started with Steve Bannon, who left the first Trump White House in disgrace after leaking to the press. Bannon has ignored calls to release the 15 hours of interviews he reportedly taped with Epstein, presumably because they show Epstein was not a spy—or, at the very least, because Bannon failed to press the late sex offender to address a rumor he continues to popularize. The idea the Jewish financier pimped out underage American girls to compromise liberal elites for the purpose of advancing Israeli interests was most ardently promoted by Vance’s political patron, Tucker Carlson.

This is the Jew-hating Tucker wing. They have their own agenda, and I believe it is somewhat parallel to the DSA agenda for the Democrat Party. The goal is to take over the Republican Party. I don’t think they’ll succeed, but it won’t be for lack of trying. And now I strongly believe that Vance has hitched his wagon to him.

Vance is pragmatic, and may back off from this. It’s a long way to 2028 and a lot can happen. But he has shown, at the very least, that he’s willing to go very low in his own pursuit of power and need to excuse himself from responsibility for the failure of the negotiations with Iran.

It gets worse [emphasis in original]:

And to explain why his memorandum of understanding failed, Vance sourced the reading at a supermarket checkout counter. “There’s a literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing,” said Vance, pointing to a recent article in Time magazine. In fact, the story is about a former Trump deputy paid by Israel to pay pro-Israel influencers to post pro-Israel content, to combat the rising tide of campaigners on the right targeting Israel and paid for by Qatar.

Tom Cotton, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told the media he is “not aware of any intelligence about a secret information operation to try to change American public opinion on negotiating under the memorandum of understanding.” Also, no one prevented Vance from negotiating the MOU, because it got signed. Yes, there was plenty of criticism on social media, but as Cotton said, it was the Iranians who blew up Vance’s deal by continuing to blow up ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which they declared to be their own private waterway—contrary to long-standing treaties that guarantee freedom of the seas.

But Vance insists it’s on Israel. “There are some people within their system, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, who are manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going on indefinitely,” he told Rogan. “Not toward any objective, but just indefinitely.”

Vance challenges anyone to show how he’s antisemitic. But claiming that Israelis want war for the sake of war, indefinitely, toward no specific objective, is a pretty good place to start. Vance’s denials are part of the act: I didn’t say something recognizably antisemitic; it’s on you to prove that the classic antisemitic conceit I used is antisemitic, you paranoid freak. My point is clearly just that Israelis simply kill people for no reason or purpose because they enjoy spilling blood, and they will continue doing so forever, to satisfy their perverted, inhuman lusts.

That is the part that seems to me to be the most revealing of Vance’s actual position.

Rubio, on the other hand, seems to actually have some integrity, and to have thought more deeply on these sorts of issues. Not only that, but he has a great deal of experience in government and in particular in foreign policy. He’s the child of Cuban refugees, and knows a lot about Communism and its effects. Plus, he’s quite expert on Latin America and has been active in dealing with that part of the world.

Rubio recently gave a much-praised speech on left-wing violence (you can find the text here). And he also gave a speech in Germany against 3rd-world migration that got a standing ovation [ADDENDUM: The video at that link, of the ovation, might be of an earlier speech; hard to say, but I’ve seen some statements to that effect].

The contrast between the two men is stark.

Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson recently said this about J. D. Vance [emphasis mine]:

I think if JD Vance were president, of course he would not be at war with Iran.

It’s impossible for me to imagine JD Vance standing up and saying we need to have two wars to defeat a phantom nuclear program.

It’s too insane. I think he has too much self-respect to say something like that.

I wish he had been elected president in 2024, but that didn’t happen. I love JD.

I don’t agree with him on everything, of course, but I think he’s an honest, very smart, decent person. That puts him above almost all politicians I’ve ever met.

That’s an endorsement.

The post More reflections on Vance – and also on Rubio appeared first on The New Neo.

Yesterday Vance appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and said some things that indicate agreement with Carlson. Here’s a report:

JD Vance has claimed he is the target of an Israeli-funded propaganda campaign over his Iran peace push, and that Jeffrey Epstein had ties to the ‘highest levels’ of Mossad.

The vice president made the explosive allegations during a nearly three-hour sit-down with podcaster Joe Rogan.

Vance pointed to a Time magazine report he said proved American influencers were being paid to attack the Iran deal. The report notes that money has flowed through a former Trump campaign operative and is bankrolled by elements of the Israeli government.

‘My response to that is, well, go to hell,’ Vance said of those taking the cash to smear him. The vice president, who complained he has been branded an anti-Semite, declared that Israel is losing the public opinion battle in America.

He also said that ‘figures’ inside the Israeli government are manipulating American public opinion to keep the war going ‘indefinitely.’

Vance then shifted to the administration’s handling of the Epstein scandal, revealing that the disgraced financier ‘clearly had connections to the highest levels of American intelligence’ and ‘Israeli intelligence.’

These are claims that have been aired by the Tucker wing for quite some time, and the evidence for them is extremely poor and mostly rumor and innuendo. The following is about Vance’s allegation about Israel sabotaging the peace negotiations, which he says he based on an article in Time:

… [T]here is apparently a “very discreet, extremely well-funded campaign” to derail negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, according to Vice President JD Vance on Joe Rogan’s show last night. Why is the Vice President perpetuating this dubious claim? The reason is simple: it benefits him too.

Much like other theories that find a home on Rogan’s podcast, this one is thinly sourced and vastly misinterpreted. The article Vance cites for this conspiracy does indeed point to an Israeli-funded influence operation—a FARA-registered, Israeli-government-funded campaign, run through political consultant Brad Parscale’s Clock Tower X, pushing pro-Israel content into the MAGA ecosystem, including through paid influencers who reportedly received suggested language via private group chats and compensation tied to engagement.

Where the article cuts against him is on the one point his whole story depends on: that this was a deliberate campaign built “to derail the negotiations” and keep the war going indefinitely. The Time magazine reporting establishes no such intent. Per the article, the contracted goal was preventing young conservatives from turning against Israel—a reputation campaign, not an anti-ceasefire operation. The sabotage motive is Vance’s attribution, not the reporting’s finding.

And the two people best positioned to know deny his version.

So, whatever you think of Vance’s using a Time story as support for his allegations, he’s not even citing it properly.

Vance was heavily involved in the negotiations with Iran. Now he’s indicating that he didn’t fail; Israel stabbed him in the back. I wonder if this sort of statement on Vance’s part represents a rift between Vance and Trump on this or whether Vance is doing this with Trump’s permission, to keep the Tuckeresque right in the GOP camp for the midterms.

Another statement of Vance’s is somewhat in the same vein:

Vance then shifted to the administration’s handling of the Epstein scandal, revealing that the disgraced financier ‘clearly had connections to the highest levels of American intelligence’ and ‘Israeli intelligence.’

When Rogan noted that most people believe Epstein was working for Mossad, the vice president did not dispute it. Vance noted that it was Mossad ‘or CIA or some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or another country or both.’

Vance, who described himself as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ on Epstein, said that anything tying the pedophile to spy agencies was likely destroyed after 2006 – when the financier was first arrested.

Get it? Epstein was a Mossad agent but he conveniently destroyed the evidence, so we can never know.

Actually, Epstein had “connections” to a lot of people who had nothing to do with his pedophilia; he was a famous guy with a lot of money and influence. I would have hoped this sort of insinuation would be beneath Vance, but apparently not:

On Epstein, the vice president agreed with Rogan that the financier was running an operation to pressure or compromise powerful people.

‘I will go to my deathbed believing there’s a story there,’ Vance said, though he admitted he cannot prove it.

‘And I promise you there’s not some document, at least that I’m hiding, that allows us to prove exactly what was going on and how.’

There, Vance sounds like Candace Owens, who likes to say she doesn’t know-know but she knows.

More here:

Asked by Rogan how he was being attacked, Vance pointed to social media posts and leaks to reporters.

“They’re attacking me obsessively, saying that we should not be negotiating with Iran. We should just keep the military campaign going indefinitely,” he said.

Vance said critics had accused him of being influenced by Qatar and other foreign governments and of taking “marching orders from Tucker Carlson.” …

“When I open up the pages of Time Magazine and I see that there’s a literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing, and, oh, by the way, many of the people who were receiving that money were actually attacking me in completely dishonest ways, you know, my response to that is, well, go to hell,” Vance said.

Boo hoo, those Israeli-funded meanies were attacking him and that’s why Iran didn’t just give in to his brilliant negotiations.

It’s also of relevance that Vance chose the Joe Rogan podcast to air these grievances against Israel and these excuses for himself. Rogan is not Israel-friendly, nor is his main audience. I doubt Vance would go on Tucker’s show – Vance is smart, and he knows better than that. But Rogan’s show is the next best thing without being especially controversial.

For quite some time I’ve hoped that Rubio is the GOP presidential candidate in 2028. I’m certainly open to other possibilities, but so far Vance is not one of them.

[NOTE: When Carlson decided to split from the Republican Party, I wondered who he’d be supporting for the presidency in 2028. For a while I considered that Tucker himself might want to run. But now it occurs to me that it’s possible that he’d be supporting Vance for the head of a third party. This would be disastrous, IMHO, and could easily cause a Democrat to win if enough people ended up supporting Vance.

I’m not saying this will happen. I still think Vance wants to be the GOP nominee. But if he doesn’t get the nomination, I can easily imagine a situation in which he goes third-party to ally with Tucker and Tucker’s followers.]

The post Vance reveals himself, and it’s not pretty appeared first on The New Neo.

Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson says he’s “out” of the Republican Party moving forward, arguing the GOP no longer reflects his views. …

“And if I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out.”

He fancies himself a thought leader. And you know what? He most definitely does have followers and a huge digital audience. The question is about the composition and range of that audience. There is some evidence that a large number of them live abroad, particularly in Pakistan, and that many are of the bot persuasion. But I happen to think that a significant number are real live voting-age Americans, although I’ve read extremely variable estimates of their numbers

Whatever Tucker’s influence, I’d wager many of his followers left the GOP long ago.

I’ve written a great many posts on Carlson in the last year or two, ever since he left Fox and began his very visible political “turn.” I’ve described it in some depth, especially in this, which is the first part of a three-part series I wrote, and contains links to parts two and three of the series.

This political change of Carlson’s resulted in – among other things – his current emphasis on Israel and Jews as the source of most of the world’s problems. It’s an old story, but everything old is new again.

From his recent farewell to the GOP:

Carlson said, adding that the GOP has “betrayed” voters by prioritizing Israel’s national security over America’s.

I think this short clip is a good analysis of some of Carlson’s rhetorical tricks:

Carlson also says he “is unsure how he’ll vote moving forward” but that he’s not a Democrat.

But Tucker already has been supporting Democrats by allying with them in being obsessed with the unique evil he – and they – think Israel is. He also supports Democrats by having worked to split the right for several years now, first on Ukraine but especially after 10/7 and escalating much more after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. He would not have dared had Kirk been alive.

I also believe that Tucker knows pretty much what he’ll do “moving forward.” The question is not how he’ll vote; he’s just one vote, after all. It’s whom he will endorse, whom he’ll choose to interview and about what, and whether he’ll run for office himself. He doesn’t have to do the latter to split the party by endorsing some third-party candidate, either, which he might do.

Or maybe it’s Vance he’ll focus on and support, depending on whether Vance is truly allied with some of Tucker’s worst impulses or whether Vance is just pretending to be Tucker-adjacent the better to keep the party together for 2028. I don’t know which it is and I can’t read Vance’s mind.

The post Tucker Carlson announces something that was already clear: he’s not a Republican appeared first on The New Neo.

Carlson gave an interview to the NY Times, and it was that interview in particular that was being satirized. It was probably one of the very first times he wasn’t in the driver’s seat, either spewing out a monologue or interviewing someone hand-picked by none other than Carlson himself. As the interviewer, he can softball or hardball as he wishes, depending on how simpatico he is with the subject matter. As interviewee, he seemed flummoxed by any follow-up questions challenging him on his wild assertions, and he fell back on stark denial combined with claims of ignorance.

Here are four excerpts from the interview:

And this is the spoof video:

NOTE: For some reason, I’m having trouble finding the full NY Times interview. Is it only behind the Times’ paywall? But there are many many excerpts on YouTube.

The post In case you missed this: on the Carlson interview appeared first on The New Neo.

But in all I’ve read on this, I haven’t seen anyone emphasize what’s so especially disingenuous about Carlson’s apology. As Churchill might say, he’s re-ratting. Remember this? It wasn’t so very long ago that the story came out, either; just three years (2023, prior to the 2024 election in which Tucker campaigned for Trump):

The latest filings in the case suggest Mr Carlson expressed his dislike of the outgoing US president two days before Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to derail lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden’s election win.

“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” he wrote in a text sent on 4 January 2021. “I truly can’t wait.”

“I hate him passionately,” he added.

Mr Carlson, the top-rated host on the conservative network, also appeared to denigrate the Trump presidency in these private messages, despite lauding his achievements on air.

“That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”

Fancy, fancy, FANCY that. And all that time, Tucker had been pretending to like Trump – and then later in 2024 he campaigned for him.

Have people forgotten this? I’m puzzled; why are so many taking his apology seriously? I can understand why the left would, because it suits their purposes. But the right? I remember the revelation of Tucker’s hatred for Trump while at Fox because it surprised me at the time, and I filed it away as “Tucker Carlson is not ever ever to be trusted.” We discovered then that all that time he’d been pretending to be for Trump he really wasn’t.

Then again, which was the actual pretense? Was he just pretending to like Trump while at Fox, or were the emails the pretense and he was just pretending to hate him when he wrote them? And then later, during the 2024 election, what was Tucker pretending? Was he just supporting Trump then in order to get supposed influence over Vance or Trump? Or had he changed his mind once more and liked Trump again?

And now what is Carlson pretending? One thing I don’t think he’s pretending now is his hatred of Jews and Israel. I think it’s very sincere. His brother Buckley is quite his equal in that, as well:

But here I am, writing about Carlson again. Why? First of all, I think that he’s a fascinating case. And secondly, although I also think he has less influence on the right than his traffic would indicate, and that he’s following trends as much as he’s creating them, I think it works in both directions and that he does indeed have some influence in spreading the hyper-Buchananesque word and that his message does find traction, especially with young men.

I’ve written several previous pieces on Tucker’s transformation (see this list). But I want to add one more event that might have fostered it: the death of his father in March of 2025. Dick Carlson was a strong and colorful figure with a life of achievement, but among other things he was a “Christian Zionist,” a group that Tucker said in November of 2025 that he “dislikes more than anybody” and which he called “a heresy” It may be that, with his father’s death, Tucker finally felt free to more fully reveal his sentiments about Christian Zionists and Israel and Jews.

The post Tucker Carlson’s apology for having supported Trump appeared first on The New Neo.

Along the way, his religious views have changed as well. He describes some of that in this short clip from a year ago:

So although he was a nominal Christian growing up, it really was a shallow thing. And he says that about three years ago he was mauled by a demon. In addition, it was about two or three years ago that he read the Bible for the first time:

Tucker on spiritual warfare: “Leaving aside elections, it’s clearly a pivot point in history. There are unseen forces acting on people. People, while they have freewill, are not really in charge of the arc of history at all. A lot of these issues are symbols of a larger battle.”

So according to Tucker, the larger overarching battle is spiritual. In the last couple of years he keeps mentioning his Christianity and yet also has taken more and more extreme positions on a host of issues including – of all things – sharia law. This latter position is a rather recent development. For example, see this short video excerpt from about eight years ago, back in his Fox News days:

Contrast to this short clip of Carlson recently, demonstrating what you might call his “evolution” in thinking:

In that clip Tucker still self-identifies as a Christian, but his praise for “tolerant” and “diverse” Arab Muslim societies is bizarre. Not only does it contrast with what he “knew” eight years ago, but it seems based on dinner party conversation with polite elites trying to curry favor with him.

And yes, he’s probably been getting money from Qatar. But he’s been mega-rich for his whole life, and I think the prospect of more money would be insufficient in and of itself to turn the tide for him like this. I think he’s become an Arab and Muslim admirer because of their enforcement of strict cultural norms that he says are lacking in Western countries. The issues of liberty – or harsh apostasy punishment, or his old concern for women’s rights, or his definition of “diversity” in Arab states (which is a laugh), all really have fallen off in service to his desire for what he sees as clean streets and moral strictness where a man’s a man and a woman’s a woman and all that.

Which brings us to the present. It appears that Tucker is edging closer to taking the next step – conversion to Islam. Here’s Tucker now:

The post Tucker Carlson, changer appeared first on The New Neo.

Led by [Tucker] Carlson, the network [of anti-Israel pundits supposedly on the right] systematically undermined the organizing principle of the anticensorship movement, which was aggressive, open inquiry skeptical of ideological dogma and institutional authority. In its place, members of the Carlson clique obey two imperatives: to shield other members from legitimate criticism and to uphold anti-Jewish ideology as the ultimate principle of free speech.

I have noticed this again and again and again. If you’ve been ignoring Carlson, Owens, and the rest of the crew – an understandable thing to do, actually – you may have missed it. But there are many of them, and part of their m.o. is to purposely conflate criticism of them with attempts to “cancel” them or silence them. A typical comment of theirs is, “we’re not allowed to criticize Israel” or “we’re not allowed to ask questions about Israel” when in fact they are completely allowed to do so and in fact do so incessantly. But they accuse their critics of stifling their speech, when all that’s happening is that they are being criticized for promulgating destructive lies, much of them classic anti-Semitic ones such as the blood libel. And in accusing their critics that way, people such as Carlson are slyly appealing to people on the right who are justifiably angry at the rise and previous dominance of cancel culture from the left in recent years.

More from the article:

The structural reshaping of the news ecosystem into “independent” voices and outlets, which once held so much promise to cut through entrenched interests and provide audiences with an unvarnished view of the world around them,, instead ended up as a propaganda industry promoting the work of fantasists and open antisemites.

That’s not the only propaganda it fosters, of course. But it’s a hatred with a long and dangerous history, and the internet is ideal for spreading it.

Actually, the prevalence of Jew-hatred was one of the very first things I ever noticed online when I first started using a computer in the mid 1990s – before there was even Google, using the older search engines. I immediately noticed that, whenever a search was related to Israel or Jews, it opened up and brought forth a huge stinking cesspool of blatant antisemitism. The first few pages of results were full of it. After a while, the people running the search engines fixed the algorithms so the Jew-hate was relegated to the second or third page of results, but over time much of it crept back up in rankings although often in a less blatant form. The loosening of censorship on X and other platforms, which I support, unfortunately opened the door to its return in copious amounts.

Online Jew-hatred is almost like online porn – perennially popular.

NOTE: I’m not sure where to put this, so I’ll put it here:

The post The use of “free speech” as a shield for virulent anti-Semitism appeared first on The New Neo.