Bulwark Takes - Tucker Carlson Looked Her in the Eyes and Lied

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

Will Saletan breaks down Tucker Carlson’s series of interviews with the New York Times and shows why his “apology tour” doesn’t hold up. From flat-out denials caught on tape to wild swings between moral outrage and shrugging off atrocities, the pattern is the story: in one moment he sounds reasonable, in the next he’s saying the exact opposite. Read Lulu Garcia-Navarro's article on Tucker Carlson in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/magazine/tucker-carlson-interview-trump-iran.htmlFor a limited time, listeners can get an exclusive $25 off Aura Frame's best-selling Carver Mat frame at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARKTAKES with code BULWARKTAKES.Tickets for our Bulwark Live shows in San Diego and Los Angeles in May: https://thebulwark.com/events

Hey, it's Will Salatan from The Bullwork. So this weekend, the New York Times posted a two-hour interview. It's actually a two-part interview with Tucker Carlson. It's part of his apology tour. So he's apologizing for having supported Donald Trump because Trump promised not to get us into wars and then he got us into a war, right? And there are moments in this interview when Carlson seems totally sincere. he seems like he's making a lot of sense.

And what I want to show you is why you can't trust those moments and you can't trust him. So let's start with a part of the interview where Carlson talks about whether Trump is the Antichrist. Okay, so this is weird, but I want to show you this part because Carlson denies that he said something and then the Times plays video of him saying it. Watch. And then on a recent show, you went further saying, here's a leader who's mocking the gods of his ancestors, mocking the God of gods and exulting himself above them. Could this be the Antichrist? I actually did not say, could this be the Antichrist?

Here's a leader who's mocking the gods of his ancestors, mocking the God of gods and exulting himself above them. Could this be the Antichrist? Well, who knows? I don't know where that comes from, but I know that those words never left my lips because I'm not sure I fully understand what the Antichrist is. Those words never left my lips, he says. But you saw them, right? You saw him say it.

And he didn't say it 10 years ago. You can see on the timestamp, he said it on April 15th. That is less than three weeks ago. But he says he couldn't have said it because it's not what he believes. He doesn't know enough to say it, he claims. And this,

This is the fundamental problem with Carlson. At any moment, he appears to sincerely believe something. But if you keep watching him, you start to see that those moments are unreliable. Because at other moments, he says, and he probably believes exactly the opposite. So let's go through some examples from the interview. Here's one about bigotry. I have temperamental and religious objections to anti-Semitism or any hate or discrimination based on bloodline that is against Christian theology. It's against my personal ethics.

See, that sounds, that sounds really sincere. And at that moment, it probably is sincere. But then you keep watching and you see stuff like this. Watch Carlson. Chuckle. He's going to chuckle when the interviewer, Lulu Garcia Navarro brings up Nick Fuentes

who is an overt bigot and who Carlson hosted on his show. You also have Nick Fuentes, the far right white nationalist influencer who's called Hitler effing cool. I can tell you don't want to talk about Fuentes.

I don't have what to say. I just think like, okay, he said naughty things about this, that or the other thing, okay. I mean, whatever. Okay, I'm naughty for talking to Fuentes, but Nick Fuentes said something naughty that I disagreed with. He made fun of things that I don't think...

You heard the word, naughty. He keeps saying Fuentes is naughty. See, Carlson thinks the bigotry. He thinks that bigotry is funny. But if he just saw the part where he talked about his deep religious objections to discrimination, you might get suckered into thinking that's who he really is. And then in the second part of the interview, Garcia Navarro brings up a few other things, Carlson said. You've denigrated immigrants saying that they make our country poorer and dirtier and more divided. And you've long warned that immigrants are going to replace what you call legacy Americans. Well, they have. The overwhelming majority of new jobs in the last five years

have gone to immigrants, not Americans. So it's not really a debate, actually. Yeah, but you called Iraqi semi-literate primitive monkeys. I mean, you've used language that many find... What year did I say that to you know? I think it was in 2018. Oh, I did not say that in 2018. Oh, no, 2008. I'm so sorry. Yeah, 2008.

So 2008. Right, yeah. See, again, he's kind of blocked out of his head, this disgusting thing, he said. She has to remind him when it was. And again, he has deep, deep principles, except for the part about Iraqis being primitive monkeys. Okay. Let's take another example. where he sounds like he's being reflective and thoughtful.

He's talking here about the Iran War and why Trump got into it when he shouldn't have. Well, first of all, it's a display of male power. Send him the bombs in. We'll kill the bad people. Oh, that sounds really, really insightful. But then if you keep watching later, Carlson talks about young men and their anger at CEOs and a rigged economy. That reflects this revolutionary frustration.

And I do think it's revolutionary. I think one of the reasons that Trump is apparently going to make weed legal is just so we can lower testosterone levels even more. Just make people more passive. Have some more benzos. Like, it's fine. It's totally fine. Oh. Oh, so all that stuff about male power and how it led us into a war and that's bad,

that was just a, that was just a fleeting moment of reflection. And now we're back, now we're back to what Carlson really believes, which is that the president wants to drug us to take down our precious, precious testosterone. This ad is brought to you by ORAFrames. Orrames is a great upgrade from your typical Mother's Day flowers. Trust me, I know this. I got an ORA frame for my mother-in-law last Mother Day. She loved it. That's because, flowers, they're nice, but they only last a few days. The perfect gift is one that lasts a lifetime, and that gift is ORAFrams. Orrames are a great way to share all your favorite memories from birthdays to vacations to kids' sporting events and everything in between. There's free unlimited storage

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I think what we're seeing is evil. Like, are you allowed to kill people who've committed no crime? No. Super simple. You're not allowed to do that. Under no moral standard, is that allowable? All of a sudden, it's allowable. It's allowable in Gaza and our leaders are like, yeah, it's just totally fine. It's not fine. And then later, he condemns American officials for for waving away these civilian killings. And that's why when you have a U.S. senator, a member of Congress, a U.S. ambassador, waving away civilian deaths as if they don't matter, that's the language of genocide, which results, and this is the lesson of the Holocaust, in genocide itself. Okay. But then, then when the killer is Russia instead of Israel, suddenly, suddenly killing civilians is totally fine.

Here's what Carlson said in 2019, when Russia was waging a proxy war in Ukraine. I don't think that we should be at war with Russia, and I think we should probably take the side of Russia if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine. That is my view. And then here's what he said three years later in 2022, after Russia had launched an all-out invasion

and had slaughtered, slaughtered Ukrainian civilians. I'm sorry, you know, like, you don't have to be, I'm not a Putin defender, despite what you may have heard. I don't really care one way or the other because he's not my president. He doesn't preside over my country. And what he does in Ukraine, while I think historically significant, certainly significant to Ukrainians, is not more significant to me than what gas costs. In fact, it's not even in the same universe. See, when Putin, when Putin is the killer, it's okay to wave away the civilian deaths.

And not just Putin. Here's Carlson, just a year and a half ago, talking about another butcher. This time it is the former dictator of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. What I didn't understand and still don't understand is why we're all required to hate Assad. I'm not just speaking for myself. I don't have strong feelings about Assad one way or the other. Apparently he's protected the Christian, so I'm grateful for that as a Christian. But I don't, why am I required to hate Assad?

Some ophthalmologists from London is a bloodthirsty dictated. I never, I didn't really. See, when Assad does the killing, when Assad does it instead of say, I don't know, Benjamin Netanyahu, Carlson doesn't have those strong feelings. In fact, Assad, he says, is a good guy because he protected the Christians. Speaking of which, Carlson says he now has deep reverence for Islam. And in the Times interview, he denounces Trump for insulting Muslims. To brag about that and then to mock Islam? I don't think you should mock people's faith.

I don't cover it to Judaism or Christianity or Islam. Oh, yeah. Carlson has profound, profound moral convictions about respecting Islam. He loves Muslims. I mean, you can see it right here in this video from 2017. If you really cared about America, you wouldn't want it to become Europe, dangerous, divided, unstable. You wouldn't import a massive Muslim minority into your country simply because it made you feel open-minded and virtuous and then hope for the best. Okay, I think, I think we're getting the picture.

The thoughtful guy you think you're seeing at moments in this interview is, it's just, a blip. It's not really who this guy is. And I want to show you one more thing. Every so often, every so often, Carlson says something that shows you he's, I don't know, a little bit off, right? Here he is talking about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And then on September 10th, Charlie was murdered by a lone gunman. You heard the sarcasm there, right? Lone gunman. Carlson thinks it's a conspiracy. And then he goes on to talk about a cover-up. But my concern more broadly is about the investigation into Charlie's murder,

which was short-circuited by the FBI. And I'd like to know why. And he doesn't just believe in conspiracies. He also thinks there are supernatural forces that are acting on us politically, and especially through Donald Trump. I've experienced this myself. You spend a day with Trump and sort of like, you're in this kind of dreamland.

It's like smoking hash or something. It's interesting. Very interesting. And there may be a supernatural component to it. I'm not a theologian. But it's real. And anyone who's been around him can tell you it's real. See, that, that's real.

Trump's supernatural power. That, that's real. But you know what's not real? Vaccines. If you think the Vax is safe and effective, I don't know what to tell you. Like, have you not been paying attention? Apparently not.

Oh, we're paying attention. We're paying attention to what this guy says, not just in the moments when he sounds like he's got his head together or when he sounds like he has moral convictions. And hey, maybe he does. Maybe in those moments he really believes that killing civilians is wrong or hate is wrong or discrimination is wrong. Maybe in that moment he thinks it's not just all a big joke.

But if you keep watching, and you pay attention, you start to realize it's not the vaccines that are phony. It's him. See you next time.