Tucker Carlson's Trump Apology Is Too Little, Too Late, Critics Argue as Iran War Splits MAGA

On this week's episode of The Tucker Carlson Show, Tucker Carlson sat across from his brother Buckley and said he would be tormented for a long time by the part he played in getting Donald Trump elected. He added that he was sorry for misleading people. It was a striking thing to hear from a man who spent years as one of the president's most visible champions on the right.

Carlson did not limit the blame to himself. He told Buckley that everyone who backed Trump shared in it, and he used the example of Buckley writing speeches for the president while he himself campaigned. They were, he said, implicated. He also said it was not enough to say he had changed his mind. As for intent, he said only that it was not intentional.

The apology follows weeks of open criticism of Trump over the war with Iran, which Carlson regards as the tipping point in a series of broken campaign promises and as a possible end of the American empire. When Trump threatened to wipe Iran off the face of the earth, Carlson called the remark vile and urged people around the president to do whatever they legally could to stop it, calling it insane. Trump answered with a long tirade that labeled Carlson and other prominent right-wing influencers "NUT JOBS." Carlson has also grown more critical of America's relationship with Israel and its influence on Trump's foreign policy. He has a history of antisemitic rhetoric.

This Rolling Stone commentary is not persuaded that the apology is sincere. It points to the record of what Carlson thought of Trump while he promoted him. Text messages to Fox News colleagues, made public only after Dominion Voting Systems sued the network for defamation, showed Carlson calling Trump "demonic" around the time of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. "I hate him passionately," he wrote, adding that he could not handle much more of it. The piece says he also acknowledged that the voter-fraud claims were baseless and hoped Trump would fade from his coverage.

Within a year of Jan. 6, the piece notes, Carlson was airing specials calling the rioters "patriots," and he later described the mob as little more than confused tourists. He campaigned for Trump in the 2024 cycle and kept up the anti-immigrant messaging central to the MAGA agenda. The commentary also says he helped legitimize officials who now enable the war policy he condemns, most notably J.D. Vance, for whom he lobbied as a Senate candidate and a prospective vice president.

The writer frames this against an earlier chapter. Carlson was a vocal defender of the Iraq War, which he has called one of the biggest regrets of his career. Jon Stewart once told him on CNN's Crossfire that his style of commentary was "hurting America" and that changing course would let him sleep at night. The piece argues that Carlson swore never to repeat that mistake, then set aside his concerns again for the movement of the moment, perhaps believing he could check the excesses of a man he once called the single most repulsive person on the planet. The difference now, it says, is that he cannot claim ignorance, youth, or inexperience.

The commentary also stresses timing. The Iran war is unpopular, Trump's approval is at a historic low, and conservative allies are breaking with him issue by issue or entirely. A public rebuke now carries no severe political cost. The writer sees a scramble over the future of the Republican coalition as MAGA faces life after Trump, with the infighting and credibility repair that followed the Iraq War, when promoters of the WMD claims admitted they were wrong.

The verdict is that Carlson's career, which has moved through the major networks, reality TV, and independent production, has taught him to survive. The piece reads his apology as a calculated step toward his next political life raft. What to watch is whether his break shapes where the MAGA coalition goes as Trump's standing falls.