Bulwark Takes - Tucker Carlson Thinks MAGA Is Ready to Dump Trump

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Tucker Carlson has a new message for the Republican Party—and it sounds an awful lot like the opening pitch of a presidential campaign. JVL, Andrew Egger and Will Sommer give their takes on Tucker's sweeping "10-point" vision for America, why he's increasingly distancing himself from Donald Trump, and whether he's laying the groundwork for a 2028 White House run. Plus, we break down Tucker's appeal to disaffected MAGA voters, the growing rift inside Trump's coalition over foreign policy and corruption, and why JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr., and the rest of the Republican field should be paying attention.Read more from Will's newsletter: Tucker 2028

Hello, everyone. Tucker Carlson is maybe running for president. I'm Ron Burgundy. This is JVL here with very good friends, Andrew Eger and Will Summer of the bulwark. And we're going to break down what is happening with Tucker Carlson because he just uncorked a gigantic monologue in which he outlined 10 ideas, 10 theses for what America should be in advance of, I don't know, a political project. Before we go, let's just listen to Tucker talk for a minute. Fairness is the root of almost all of our frustrations. Why is Jeffrey Epstein so infuriating? Why is that story capable of enraging an entire population? Well, of course, are the crimes or the suspected crimes, sex creep, possibly a kid toucher, totally involved with Mossad and who knows what other

foreign intel agency. So, yeah, the problem with the Jeffrey Epstein thing is fairness. I don't Now, boys, who wants to go first with this bignada? Maybe I can kind of set the table here. I know Andrew has a great point to make about this clip in particular. Yeah, so basically, I think this was kind of a much hyped speech. There was this came after his meeting with Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Green and Joe Kent, these kind of Trump world discontents. And there's a sense of like, what was his speech going to be?

And I think, as you said, I mean, I think it looks like kind of like a draft of a presidential announcement. it's really kind of like the planks, this idea of he has 10 things and it's America should be optimistic, but really that means it's kind of like a thing about the birth rate. And there's all these these kind of broad themes he has, like fairness and decency. He's positioning himself as kind of like the voice for people who think the country's fucked up and then it's all wrong. And so I think that's a very broad umbrella that I think could pull a lot of people in. Andrew? There's been a lot of efforts over the years to, um, to, take what Trump has done to our politics and build these new coalitions and try to put some,

you know, real ideological bones on it because Donald Trump is not an ideologue. Donald Trump's cult of personality has been the driving force in politics for all of this time. This is, I would say, a more coherent attempt to do that than most. Trump has made it kind of easy for people who have specific discontents with him related to foreign. policy and personal corruption to have this exit ramp. I mean, it's added a lot of rocket fuel to this. In this video, Tucker goes on kind of at length about he doesn't, he doesn't frequently bring up Donald Trump, but he does not do this thing Republicans do where they shy away from talking about him. He kind of castigates the current set of leaders that we have, and that includes the president,

as basically failures to deliver on the kind of politics that they have, that they have been promising all along and that has been such an animating force of why a lot of people who like Tucker also liked Donald Trump. Now, it's a little hard to parse because Tucker is an extremely slippery character himself. You know, a lot of this is more, you know, nice sounding things strung together with, now, of course, everybody agrees this or everybody, nobody would dispute that. And a lot of of rhetorical dressing for concepts that might not have a whole lot to do with each other. Like, for instance, he ties the Epstein class stuff, the idea that there is special treatment for some people under the justice system to like the fact that there are admissions departments

at colleges and hiring departments at companies that make decisions that sometimes are influenced by who you know and things like that. You know, like those are not necessarily actually part of the same political project that call for like anything close to the same sorts of solutions, but he ties them together through some like rhetorical tricks. The real problem with Jeffrey Epstein is that Jews get into Ivy League schools. Yeah, I mean, that kind of thing. And so it's hard to know really.

Isn't that basically the complaint? Yeah, yeah. So you could kind of make the argument that this is just sort of trying to sub out one cult of personality for another. But it's, I mean, there's an appeal to this sort of thing. Tucker is a very charismatic guy. He has a gigantic online following. So I can see why he might think to himself, well, you know, it works.

for Donald Trump, why might it not work for me? So I have a lot of questions. The first of which is, is it a fool's errand to try to build an ideological framework around Trumpism? Because one thesis I have, I'm not convinced of this, is that part of Trump's success is that there isn't really an ideological project there. It's just whatever, Trump has a cult around him. And whatever he says on one day is what the cult believes.

And if he says the opposite on the next day, the cult believes that too. And if he were to try to like rigidly hold to any one thing, that's how you risk losing people. And so I think it's just sort of inherently more unstable to try to build your movement around ideas in that way. You guys have thoughts on this? Is this yes, no, maybe? Yes, that has been basically fair analysis of most of the Trump moment. He has been a total chameleon on a lot of stuff that, that, that, seemed like it was, you know, the, the preexisting rules of the road for the two parties and things

like that. He dined out on that for a long time. He was a lot of things to a lot of people. I think one way in which Trump has left a real opening for a guy to make these specific, prosecute these specific ideological points against him, if it is in fact true that Tucker is going to basically try to launch a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. And again, it's not necessarily clear that that's what's happening. But Trump has left these two giant. openings on specifically foreign policy just because he has betrayed what what he himself was running on before and gotten us involved in yet another one of these, you know, intractable forever war type conflicts in the Middle East. That is one of the things that has so enraged people like Tucker

and so enraged people like Marjor Taylor Green. Obviously, Tucker very famously tried very hard in private to stave off this war in the in the days leading up to it went to the white house to try to talk the president out of it but not just that i mean the the personal corruption element of it as well is i think another another place where where tucker and these guys will be able to pin the president to the wall because it's just a it's just a place where trump has been so lazy he's gotten away with so much for so long with zero accountability zero caring from his base but all that it has really all that it would really take is for or a person to come along and make this sort of case from the right that, that, you know, what all that

that Trump is proving is that he really is kind of part of this same Epstein class that they hate in every other facet of their lives and that that is, you know, so obviously visible in his conduct over and over again with the ways that he has enriched himself and, and, you know, rendered himself beyond prosecution and immunized himself from normal government scrutiny, all these sorts of things. A lot of that is implicit in Tucker's talk of fairness. And that's the fairness is the very first a point in this 10-part plan that he goes on and on about. So I think it's a real opening. So, Will, fairness to me, is code for hating the outgroup, right? I mean, centering your campaign around fairness, as opposed to like prosperity or something. What that, if it's fairness, it means

that you think things are unfair, which means there's somebody out there getting the good stuff. And that is, I think, the beating heart of MAGA. And so I think so long as there is a boogeyman to go after, that's all Republican voters need. They don't need solutions. They don't need, like, you know, actual policies. They just need bad guys. My question for you is, how big is this little splinter to the end? And we're going to talk about whether or not it's a real splinter or a stocking horse

in a minute. But how big is this splinter, like, out there, do you think? You know, I think it's sizable, but I do think the point you make about, you know, how much, are there really that many voters who voted for Trump who are upset that he's now corrupt or that he went to war with Iran? Or did they love him because of his personality and because he infuriated liberals and punished their enemies, whoever they perceive that to be? You know, on the other hand, I do think Trump obviously probably won't be on the ballot in 2028. you know, and the, I mean, is it going to be Don Jr.? You're going to take that position. You should get odds.

Well, I mean, you know, I left it open, probably, you know, probably won't be. And so I think possibly that's where Tucker sees his opening. I mean, this could take a lot of forms. Maybe he runs. Maybe Joe Kent's going to run. You know, who knows. But I think there is, I mean, look, Trump has pretty low approval ratings right now. So even some Republicans are unhappy with them.

Again, though, it is hard to know, like, how many really Trump voters like care about, you know, just the rampant corruption and how much Tucker could capitalize on something like that or about Trump's support for data centers. All these kind of populous things that in this speech, he really sort of positions himself as the champion of. Do you think there's elite pushback to this? Because I, so we, we have a tweet here from Nick Fuentes. Tucker will inevitably go all in on supporting JD Vance for 2028 and will run cover for him when he is attacked over Penn and Teal, Iran and everything else. When he postures as a fed up

maga dissident, remember that he will support the PayPal mafia-backed GOP nominee. Like, you know, out there, though, the really far out, people like Nick Fuentes are skeptical. It's the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the Mark Tessons of the world.

Like, where's Megan Kelly going to be on this? Where, you know, I think we know where Candice would be, but like where would Ben Shapiro be on this? And is all of it really just about Israel? You know, I do think it's certainly a bulk of right-wing media, sort of these traditional, whether it's kind of conservatives who made accommodations with Trump or sort of the typical Trumpian media, you know, Wall Street Journal, Ben Shapiro, they would be really against Tucker run. Or, I mean, I think even just in the past few months,

he's really, ever since the war started, he, before that, he was kind of a, he had a foot in both camps. Like, he could appear at Turning Point USA, and yet he could pal around with Nick Fuentes and the Heritage Foundation loved him. And he kind of straddled these wars. world. But ever since the war in Iran, he's become much more Trump critical. He said he was the anti-Christ, all this stuff. And so, like, I think you would expect that if he did run, I think the vast majority of these kind of house organs of the right would be really opposed to him. On the other hand, someone like Megan Kelly, these random kind of fame balls, the Hodge twins, you know, all these people with like large social media followings, I think they'd probably support him.

I mean, it would depend if he looks like a loser. I mean, I think a lot of that, you know, is break down based on just who's going to win, who's good content. But, you know, I think they'd be on board. Can I make one point on that, too, which is that it's hard to overstate if you're not, like, following along with a lot of these people right now. The lines of what 2028 is going to look like are so scrambled. People don't really know quite how to weigh in on the right. And in part, that's because the presumptive frontrunner, J.D. Vance, is a guy who nobody actually

understands who he's really allied with politically. Nobody really knows whose faction he's carrying the banner first war because he has worn so many hats. You know, he has come up. Fairness. He doesn't know either. Right. Yeah. He's come up as a Peter Thiel protege in the PayPal Mafia and done the, done the whole Yale Law School and finance thing. And he's been, you know, a proponent of blue-collar America with the hillbilly elegy stuff. And he's been a guy who pals around with Catholic integralists. And I mean, he's just, he has taken stances at various points as though he is going to be each of these people's champion. And if he actually were each of these people's champion, he'd be better of a champion than probably even Tucker just because he would have the likely

endorsement of the president. He comes in as the front runner. You don't need to go looking for somebody else if he's going to be your guy. But none of them know. And because none of them know, it just creates this whole huge, strange scramble where nobody knows who's going to be, who's going to need somebody else, who's going to be on the out group. And I think it's smart for a guy. like Tucker at least to be dangling his own name, you know, for a number of different possible, you know, magadissident groups to potentially attach to if they end up needing somebody else later. A couple questions for you, boys. First off, I think Fuentes is probably right.

This does feel to me like, I mean, Tucker has been close with J.D. Vance for a long time. Where was he that he gave like a little footsy interview? where he was asked, you know, are you really mad with JD? Are you talking to him still? And Tucker was like, oh, you know, and sure looked like he was ready to alibi J.D. Vance. And so who knows? Maybe this really is sort of an op in that way where he is making, drawing these lines so that when he runs cover for J.D in, you know, a year and a half, it carries more weight

because he's not making excuses for J.D. but he's saying, hey, MAGA people, J.D. was always one of us, and it was just Trump who did this to him and blah, blah, da-da-da. Where are you guys on that? Does that sound plausible or implausible to you? I mean, it may be that he's just kind of looking for the RFK Jr. deal. You know, by kind of prepping this presidential run, you gain more leverage and then you get to be, I don't know if he wants to be Secretary of State or like to sort of direct some sort of U.S. divorce from Israel, something like that, rather than really like a serious run for the White House. I think J.D. as a viable political vehicle does rise or fall with how popular and effective Trump remains until the end of the term. And so, you know, Tucker paling around with J.D. Vance four or five months ago is very different from what we're seeing, you know, today. I mean, I have a hard time imagining that you would see any of this effort at all, any of this pretty strident criticism, even if, even if not by name, even if he just calls him the president of the United States. I mean, this is not stuff you see if Donald Trump is still at 43% approval instead of 33% approval, right? And I think a lot of that goes for JD too. I mean, J.D. Bans, in a world where, you know, two years from now looks a lot like right now, he's basically the Kamala Harris of that race. He's going to have to try and will probably struggle to get out for.

from Trump's shadow. And if, if Trump remains quite unpopular, even among his own base, as crazy as that is, as that is to say now, I mean, you think Tucker Carlson's going to have, like, personal loyalty to him where he's going to help him patch that hole and, like, help him make up that ground. That, that is a little bit hard for me to believe. All right. And that leads me to my second question. Indulge me. My theory is that J.D. Vance is only viable as a presidential candidate to the extent that he's able to keep Tucker and Don Jr. from running. Because if either of those guys runs, J.D. gets smoked in any Republican primary. Discuss. It's a bold idea, right? I mean, I think there's, it's interesting. I mean, I feel like Tucker wants it, though. You know, I, I know, I

know we were just saying that he'll make nice with J.D. But I mean, I think he's got a huge ego. And I think he's saying, you know, why shouldn't it be me? Why shouldn't I run? You know, I'm, you know, been famous for longer than J.D. Vance. And, you know, in a head-to-head context, who would you pick to win the Republican nomination? I think J.D. Vance would just have so many internal advantages, like, with the party. But I don't know. Gosh, I wish John Jr. would run, though. That would be something to see.

It's interesting because JBL, you and I did a video on this, and I can't remember how long ago it was, where you kind of laid out your case that a guy like Don Jr. would smoke J.D. I remember finding it compelling at the time, but I don't remember whether that was like how far back that was where Trump was at popularity wise because right now sitting here this minute like Trump has just lost so much juice like the the number of Americans who enthusiastically strongly back him as president has become so small there are still a lot of people who are pulling the lever for him you know when they talk to pollsters and things like that you're like you know yeah no I support the president but it's just nothing like it's been at any point

up until now in the whole Trump show for a whole decade and I just I don't know If two years from now, it's just more and more and more of this. And he just does look like a failed president who can't point to anything that he's done, except sort of make up nonsense about a golden age of America that nobody feels and yell about communists, then it's just hard for me to imagine that there's that much leftover momentum for a guy like Don Jr. To win a Republican bar primary? Even for that. Even for that.

And further, again, just from the Trump family's, position, whether or not they win the general election is less important than controlling the Republican Party. Because if you control the Republican Party, meaning that you have a 50-50 chance to be president every four years, then you can continue to extract rents all across the spectrum from foreign governments, from, you know, people inside the United States, right? This is how you keep the gravy train rolling. In the minute you pass the baton to somebody else, like, that all stops.

all those, you know, the Saudis giving you $2 billion for your hedge fund, that goes away once you are no longer the family that has a 50-50 shot to be president. And so this is why, I mean, I just look at the Trump family and I think, well, when is the last time they passed up money, right? Like if there's money on the table, they're going to pick it up. And so why wouldn't they pick up this money? Can I ask you a question, JVL? Sure. This seems very improbable because as far as I know, Tucker, and Don Jr. remain pretty close personally. But how would you handicap a contest between those two guys if we were to get one?

I think that's an interesting question. So that I think is the most interesting thing. And the answer is I don't think that they would both do it. I think one of them would run, if one of them runs the other doesn't. I mean, the stakes of them running against each other becomes so huge, right? Because then, I mean, the guy who loses that is finished. And so I you know and plus they seem close and I'm you know I'm sure they're relatively close together ideologically to the extent that John Jr. has any any any any ideals that he

really holds to. And so I just you know I I think that is the kind of thing that this again, this is what JD is trying to do. J.D. is trying to work interpersonal relationships to prevent either of them from from running. And if he does that, then he's the nominally. I think. Can we just talk as figure skating judges for a moment? My view is that, like, Tucker is really, really, really, really good at this. He is one of the best talkers I have ever met. He's an amazing hang.

I mean, this is, you know, again, I've known him since I was 22, although we don't break bread much anymore. And, like, my, my, my, respect for what he is able to do just as a talker is very, very significant. Tell me where, what are you guys, what is your opinion of this sort of just qua horse flesh? No, I think that's true. I think, you know, having just spent, you know, 90 minutes last night watching it, you know, I feel like it was a good product. You know, I was getting my haircut today and my barber who described herself as a progressive was really on board with, you know, she had kind of

sought it out on her own and watched it and really enjoyed it and, you know, thought he made some good points. You know, I'll leave that word. You know, but the people self-identification is so fucking untrustworthy. Sorry. Yes. I mean, it's, I'm super progressive. I love watching Tucker Carlson. And I think there's probably like, I'm going to say it's like, you know, 40% of the country, but I think there's a lot of people who are going to watch that. And I think he's, you know, that's why I think it was so interesting when the Times caught him lying about not calling Trump the antichrist because he's so slippery and he can phrase these things and you go, oh, that might make a good point. And he picks these issues like data centers, like flock cameras, all these things

that I think are, you know, really unite people across the political spectrum in terms of their anger. And he says, I'm the guy who's going to fix it. Yeah, I think that the illustration of the person who says, well, he makes some really good points is really key to Tucker's brand of persuasion, which is too much. make some really good points. And then to have every sixth thing he says be like the craziest thing you ever heard sort of slipped in there and sort of slip streaming off of the aura of reasonability that is that is left over from the first five things where he's like, and I think everybody can just agree,

you know, this and that and the other. And again, I, that is part of the reason why kind of like what I said at the beginning, I think he is a weird vehicle to actually create an ideological program that is supposed to to sort of prop up this listless MAGA project, which again is what he's suggesting. I mean, this is a manifesto that he has laid out. It's a 10 point sort of North Star. Here are, you know, in this house, we believe, type document. And I think that that bit of it is a little disingenuous. But as a political talent, as a speaker, as a guy who can and could and might try to coalesce a cult of personality around some of these things, even if they don't really

hang together as a project. I am not selling short on Tucker at all. Yeah. And he's also been famous for a really long time. I mean, this was always, I think, one of Trump's superpowers was that he had been part of America's cultural furniture for like 40 years. Tucker is not like that. But Tucker has been around in American consciousness for a long time. Like he was the young guy with a bow tie on CNN. Then he was the guy who got into the big fight with John Stewart. and then he was the guy on dancing with the stars and then he was the guy during the Trump you know what I'm saying like there's

there are a lot of dancing with the stars he was on the first season of dancing with the stars I believe he was the first person eliminated on the first season of dancing with the stars and was so charming that the show basically kept him around just as an interviewer for the rest of the season because he was again he was such a good hang and everybody loved Tucker

and so even though he was out he just like hung around the show for the rest of the season people know him, even if people who aren't connected to politics, like, oh, the Dancing with the Stars guy or the, this guy. That's a pretty big advantage, I think. No. Okay. Well.

Silent because I agree. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. It's all great. And I couldn't agree more about the idea that he's doing, like, the stuff that isn't expressly political, which is, feels very Candace-like to me, will. Is that, is he more Candace than Candace? Is he slightly less Candace than Candice? What is,

can you explain to people what like her secret sauce is? Yeah. So, so, so one of Candice's big ideas has been, you know, covering like, celebrity drama. So like she got really into the Blake lively Justin Baldoni lawsuit. And she was going out after it in like sort of a conservative valence of like, look at this awful woman. Um, but that was kind of the, how she reached a broader audience. And so people who wouldn't tune in to hear like Ben Shapiro rant about something politically. And I think in this way, Tucker, he gets, he's not talking about like tax cuts or whatever. He's talking about like dissents in your heart that something is wrong with America, that all the farms are becoming data centers and solar panels and what have you. And I think that

way he's kind of getting at this, this just sort of a feeling that something isn't right and that America has gone wrong. And so I think in that way, he, he's reaching people who would normally hear like Republican talking points. Yeah. It is confusing, though, because this is America's golden age. You know? I think he's started to think it's not. It's the anti-crice golden age. Let me just tell you, boys, in the same way that the hardest question

to understand in American politics today is who was president in 2020, two years from now, the question of who's been in power for most of the last decade is going to become absolutely mysterious. There's going to be all these horrible things happening in American.

America's so ugly and it's not beautiful. There's trash. everywhere and all these dirty immigrants. And so now true manga has never been tried. That's where we're headed. All right, Andrew Agger, Will Summer. Great to have you.

Guys, go sign up for the newsletters. Go to the bulwark.com. Hit like, hit subscribe, follow the channel. We'll be back with more good news because it's always good news. Good luck, America.