Tucker Carlson Plans to Build a Third Party

Tucker Carlson says he's done with the GOP—but not done with politics. In an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, the former Fox News host and onetime confidant of President Trump says he plans to do everything he can "help build a third party," arguing that the current two-party system has produced "a one-party state posing as a democracy."

• "I'm not a politician." He stresses he has no intention of running for office himself. "I'm not a politician, that's for sure," he says. "I'm not a rival to Trump for power. I have no power. I'm someone who knows Trump, and I know him well, and I've known him for a long time. I can call him. He often calls me."
• "I feel sorry for him." Carlson says, however, that he hasn't spoken to the president since the start of military action against Iran, which he calls a "regime-change effort led by Israel." "I'm not interested in talking to him. I feel sorry for him," says Carlson, once a close Trump ally who urged him to pick JD Vance as running mate. "He's not a man in charge of his own life at this point."

• The final break. Carlson, who publicly quit the Republican Party last month, says the "breaking point and the huge change in my life" was the 12-day military action against Iran last year, which he calls a betrayal of Trump's anti-intervention promises, the New York Times reports. He says the memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the war is a "humiliating defeat for the United States, but it's still an improvement over what would happen if we kept going, so I'm grateful."
• The third party's goals. "There should be a good-faith effort to figure out what benefits the country," Carlson tells the Review. I mean, if you make $60,000 a year, you're degraded. Your life expectancy has gone down, and the promise of your children's lives is likely gone. No one seems to care. It's not even a factor. 'What about Hamas?' I officially don't care about Hamas. The US government should have, as its first priority, the welfare of its own people." He says he supports ending all immigration, claiming there's no economic justification for it: "I don't know how you can justify immigration when half of all white-collar jobs are going away because of AI."

• Fox News. Carlson, now a podcaster who regularly grills guests like GOP Sen. Ted Cruz about their stance on the war, says he didn't have a plan after Fox fired him in 2023 but he doesn't miss the network. "I think Trump is the last Fox News viewer. I'm so grateful every single day that I got fired," he says. "I probably wouldn't have left, knowing me. I'd just be increasingly unhappy."
• Hegseth. Asked if Pete Hegseth, another former Fox host, is fit to be defense secretary, Carlson says, "I feel sad about the whole thing. I think it's disgusting to brag about killing people. It's totally unchristian and immoral. We should treat death with reverence, period. You can certainly make the case that some people should be killed, but I don't think anyone should ever celebrate the death of another human being."