Tucker Carlson, the conservative podcaster, has issued an extraordinary mea culpa, saying he is “tormented” by his support for Donald Trump and apologising for “misleading” his followers. In a conversation with his brother, Buckley Carlson, a former Trump speechwriter, on The Tucker Carlson Show, he called for a moment of self-reflection among Trump supporters.
“You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time – I will be,” Tucker Carlson said. “And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional, that’s all I’ll say.” The remarks mark a sharp reversal for Carlson, who campaigned for Trump in 2024 and spoke at a rally just five days before the election.
Carlson’s change of heart stems from the US-led war in Iran, which began in late February. He described Trump’s language on Iran as “vile on every level” and said he feels personally responsible for Trump’s return to power. “You and I and everyone else who supported him … we’re implicated in this for sure,” he told his brother.
The podcaster’s comments come after Trump publicly attacked him on social media, calling him “a Low IQ person” and threatening to publish a list of “good, bad, and somewhere in the middle” supporters. Carlson had previously questioned whether Trump was “the antichrist” after the president posted an AI image of himself as Jesus Christ and attacked Pope Leo XIV.
Carlson’s history with Trump is fraught. In 1999, he called Trump “the single most repulsive person on the planet”, but later became a key supporter. During the 2023 Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, it emerged that Carlson had privately texted a colleague that he “hate[s] him passionately” and considered the first Trump presidency a “disaster”. He was fired from Fox News shortly after the $787m settlement.
