Today, Explained - Tucker Carlson explains himself

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

President Trump has not made a coherent case for the Iran war. On today's show, one of his longtime supporters makes an aggressive case against it…and talks about conservatives' Nazi problem. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Andrea López-Cruzado and Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Tucker Carlson, host of The Tucker Carlson Show, at the White House. Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's today explained. President Trump has not made a coherent case for his war in Iran, and last night he said he's not ending it yet. We're going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We're going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong. His ally, Tucker Carlson, has been making a very coherent case against the war. Because it doesn't serve American interests in any conceivable way. And let me just say that if it does in, some way serve the interests of the United States. I'd love to hear it. I haven't heard. On Tuesday, we asked Carlson about his break with Trump and about how the Trump coalition is splintering as some young conservatives abandon the president and embrace something darker. It becomes like all of a sudden like, hey, you kids, why you listen to Elvis Presley and that rock

music is bad? Like, all of a sudden, Fuentes controls the conversation and becomes the cool kid. And the net effect is to make the Holocaust a joke. Support for today, Explain, comes from BetterHelp. Financial stress can take a real toll on you, causing anxiety, feelings of uncertainty, and a lack of control. Sounds like life in 2026, am I right? One thing you can control is taking steps to improve your mental state around finances. A therapist can help. BetterHelp matches you with a licensed therapist who fits your needs and preferences.

When life feels overwhelming therapy, you can help. You can sign up and get it at 10% off at betterhelp.com. slash explained. That's better AGLP.com slash explained. The standard is not enough. It's time for more. The new Accura ADX is crafted to ensure that every detail goes above

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of the Accura ADX. Get on the road and experience. more than you ever thought possible. The new Accura ADX, crafted for more. Explore the Accura ADX at Accura.com. You're listening to Today Explained. My name is Tucker Carlson. I'm not sure what I do.

I have a podcast. I don't know if that's a job or not. I think it counts. I think it counts. All right. So we're here today. We're going to be talking about Iran, Israel, and the future of the America First and MAGA movement. Let's start here. I've been listening to a lot of your show,

watching a lot of your show. You don't think that the U.S. should be at war with Iran. Why not? Well, I haven't heard a consistent case from anyone, and I would say it's not just the Trump administration. In fact, I don't, I mean, my strong sense, having watched it closely, is that there was not a groundswell of support from this war from within the Trump administration. The president made the decision to do it, but he wasn't surrounded by advisors who were urging him to do it, just the opposite. I don't think there was any enthusiasm for it.

So why are we in this for? He did it as we're in it, as the Secretary of State explained, because we were pushed into it by the Netanyahu government, by Benjamin Netanyahu. Now, by the way, to be totally clear,

that's not a way of exculpating the president. He's the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military. So he makes the decision. Trump made the decision. It was the wrong decision. But if you're asking, why did he make that decision?

It's because he was pushed into it. it by Benjamin Netanyahu, which raises the second obvious question, which is where did Netanyahu get the power as the prime minister of a country of $9 million to force the president of a country of $350 million to do his bidding? And I can't answer that question, but I can just tell you what happened because the Secretary of State said it and the Speaker of the House said it. And I watched it. And what happened was the Israelis went to the White House. Netanyahu, Yahoo went to Trump and said, we're going to do this. were going to move against Iran. And at that point, the U.S. had really only two choices.

One is to follow, and the other is to tell Israel no and force them not to do it. Because, as Marco Rubio explained on camera, if you allowed Israel to go alone, you are certain that American forces and citizens and interests in the Gulf would be destroyed. But either way, Benjamin Netanyahu made the decision. on the timing of this. Now, I'm going now, and we followed. So that's another way of saying he was in charge. And I'm just here to say, I think it's wrong,

and I think the majority of Americans think it's wrong. President Trump has been talking about Iran since the late 1980s himself. A Guardian interview recently resurfaced. This was from 1988. And he's asked, if you were a politician, what would your platform be? He says, I'd be harsh on Iran.

They've been beating us psychologically, making us look like a bunch of fools, one bullet shot at one of our men or ships, and I'd do a number on Karg Island. This sounds a lot like the way he is talking literally in the last 24 hours about doing a number on Karg Island. You're aware of that. Donald Trump is the president of the United States. Can't this war just be what he wants? Why does it have to be that he's being led by the nose here? Isn't that denying him agency? I'm not denying him agency. I stated his agency. which is a matter of fact, not opinion. He's the commander-in-chief.

He gives the orders. So that happened. Donald Trump made the decision. It is also true that Israel forced that decision. That's what happened. As for Trump's antipathy toward Iran, of course, widely documented. Iran can't have a nuke. They're not on our side.

We're against Iran. They're bad. They're evil. So it's not a question of, you know, did Donald Trump hate Iran or love Iran and now hates Iran? No, he's been consistent on that. The question is whether a regime-change war, against a country of almost 100 million people on the Persian Gulf was achievable, A, B, a good idea for the United States, and C, a good idea for the world.

And Trump has said consistently, no, it's a terrible idea. He's been really specific about it. Regime change war in Iran is a bad idea. So this is the change. It's not that, you know, he woke up when morning and was mad at Iran. It's, what do you do about it is the question. It is worth asking, as you've done rhetorically, what do people understand and what don't they understand? So President Trump's platform in 2024, America First, this is the thing that helped him get elected, contained a promise, which is no more wars.

Recent polling shows that something like 85 to 92 percent of MAGA Republicans support this war. That seems like a real contradiction. Is the idea of America first just not as compelling to MAGA Republicans as you assumed? I mean, it's really a commentary on the nature of public opinion polling and the people who analyze and repeat it, which is very, very low. Just we're getting to like dangerously low IQ levels here. Among the pollsters or the people responding to the... The people who take them seriously. Think about what that poll measures.

Me. No, not you, not you, but this is a propaganda tool, and people are not figured. So what's a maga voter? A mega voter is someone who is all in on Donald Trump and the decisions he makes. So that means that the question, if you ask people who approve of everything Donald Trump does, do you approve of something he just did? You're probably going to get a pretty high number. It'd be like polling white people on the question of how many are white. Probably be a pretty high number.

The actual poll you need to do is people who voted. for Donald Trump in 2024? What percentage of those support this? Do you see what I'm saying? So you could narrow down the sample to a point where you're assured the outcome. If you only poll people who agree with someone no matter what he does, they're going to agree with what he did. Not long after the U.S. took Nicholas Maduro into custody in Venezuela.

You did a monologue and you said that the U.S., an empire, needs serious men to run it, people who are wise and understand stakes, not flighty, silly, emotionally incontinent people. So in light of the way that this war was launched, given the lack of coherent messaging, as you've described it, the apparent lack of a plan to get out of Iran, do you think we have serious men making wise decisions in the White House? Well, we're not, I mean, you know, we're not seeing wise decisions, obviously. I mean, I think Venezuela, I think the war in Ukraine, I mean, I think, all of these build on one and on each other.

But I think that the Venezuela operation set us up for what happened in Iran. I mean, clearly it did because it sent the message that you can achieve regime change at almost no cost. And as we're learning five weeks in, that's not possible in Iran. And the consequences are potentially like catastrophic. I mean, I don't think anyone who's paying close attention has slept well for the last month. I would love to be able to say, okay, we made our point and we, you know, killed their religious leader. And somehow that's virtuous, I guess. And this is victory and we're leaving. I mean, as an American, I would like to see that because I want to get out of this with as little damage as possible. But I don't, I don't see how you can do that without leaving Iran stronger than it was in real terms stronger than it was. Oh, they have no Navy. They have no Air Force. Okay. But they control 20% of the world's energy.

How does that not make them stronger than they were in February? Well, it does. So, anyway, it's a mess. Who are the serious men? Well, you know, you find out in moments like this. I mean, who can think clearly, who can accept unhappy truths, digest them, and, you know, make wise decisions on the basis of them? Or who retreats into fantasy? Who are you seeing do that, the former?

In the White House? In the administration. Oh, you don't have internet access? Deal with reality. Oh, deal with reality? I'm curious. I don't know. I've been, I've been denounced, so I'm not.

I, you know, I went to see the president three times in the month before this, you know, in person and made the case, basically, not too different from the case I've just made to you. You know, and in the end, it had no effect. So I tried. but I haven't been in touch with the president since then. And so I don't know. But I do think that there are people, I know, that there are people in the White House who, you know, I may disagree with me on all kinds of issues,

but they want to do the best for the country. They're not crazy. And I'm sure that they are giving, I hope they are giving good advice. But the question at this point is, how do you get out of this? It's not easy. This just happened in 2003.

I was there, both in Washington and Iraq in the aftermath. And it shocks me that we are doing this thing again, particularly under a president who understood exactly what happened in 2003, campaigned all three elections against doing an Iraq war again because it was stupid. He was the only Republican to campaign against the Iraq war. It's why he won the nomination, in my opinion, in 2016. It's amazing to me that that president who knew and said he knew, again and again and again and again that this was wrong,

that he just did the same thing. Tucker Carlson, when we come back, we're going to ask him, do young conservatives have a Nazi problem? Hi, I'm Brené Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening,

wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the curiosity. Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday.

Sean Marmasdram, let me ask you a question. Which journalistic endeavors do you pay money to support? Oh my gosh. Which or like how many? Let me think. That one and that one and that one and that. A bunch of public radio stations. A big newspaper that I can think of.

Some substacks? My gosh. So many newsletters. I don't know if there's substacks, but like I was trying to count the other day because someone asked me. And I think it's like six news. Newsletters at least. Dang.

Like a lot. How about you? Are you in the newsletter camp, too? All of that, not so much newsletters, a lot of podcasts on Patreon. Heck yeah. Which reminds me. Oh, yeah. You were like, you were like yes anding me.

Okay. You, dear listener, can support this show today explained and in doing so support Vox, which makes this show possible by going to Vox.com slash members. There's benefits. You get to listen to the show without ads. You get little perks. Check it out. And thank you.

We're back. Tucker Carlson says he sees the Trump coalition splintering. He blames neocons, the people he says who'd rather go to war in Iran than fix American cities. You're nodding at something very important here, which is that even before the war in Iran, even before the events of the last 30 or so days, the Trump coalition was splintering in part because of Israel. And we know that there is fierce debate over what constitutes legitimate criticism of Israel and what is just outright anti-Semitism. How do you make the distinction between legitimate criticism and anti-Semitism? Well, I mean, on the same basis, I'm a little confused by the question. I don't know what legitimate criticism is.

I mean, anything that is true is legitimate by its nature. So if it's true, it's legitimate. True things are legitimate, untrue things are illegitimate. And so any true criticism of Israel or the United States or of me or you is legitimate. Now, whether it's polite or useful is another question. But the question of whether or not it's moral or immoral, virtuous or not, hangs only on the question of whether it's true. I want to ask you about someone anti-Semitic that you had on your show. So you interviewed Nick Fuentes a while back.

And you didn't really push him at point. points where it seems like you should push him. For example, he talked about organized jury. Nick Fuentes is, you know, very proud of his beliefs, Holocaust denialism, et cetera, et cetera. I do wonder, why open the door to Nick Fuentes on your show? Why invite him on and then not go after him hard? Well, I did. You obviously didn't watch the interview in its entirety. I did. Well, then your comprehension may be low. Okay. So I said, what I think, that I think anti-Semitism is wrong. And I think it's unwise to do that,

but I also think it's immoral to do that. It's anti-Christian to do that. I also had some other views that I gave in. But I didn't make Nick Fuentes. Nick Fuentes was bigger than I am among young people. I think Vox should ask itself wise. Well, it was important. That's why I did it.

But I also think, you know, people who think that I should have asked other questions are happy to, you know, welcome, of course, to I've got his cell, I can give it to you, you can go interview them and ask the questions that you think he should be asked and see how you do. But what I wanted was, and Pierce Morgan tried that and you should watch that interview too, which is pretty revealing. So peers went in there because all journalists, of course, are their real audiences, they're fellow journalists and they're trying to prove that they're good people and I don't care whether people think I'm a good person or not. So he goes in there

and he's like, I can't believe you denied the Holocaust. And Nick Fuentes looks at him and goes, too soon. Which basically crushes. So basically all of a sudden you have like legitimate thing, which is like, hey, this is my position. Hitler killed all these Jews. Don't make fun of that. That's like pretty awful thing to make fun of. That's how I personally feel.

Don't make fun of people's murder, right? Got it. It turned it from that to here's the boomer coming in and lecturing a kid who, like way more agile and hip and smarter and getting just owned by him. And the net effect is to make the Holocaust a joke. And everybody under 30 knows that.

So who wins? Nick Fuentes. Does this concern you? Some of the things that you see young conservatives articulating, does it worry you that this part of the Trump coalition is headed someplace dark?

Well, these people are more anti-Trump than you are, so they're not part of the Trump coalition. I wouldn't say they're conservative. I don't even know what that means anymore. I've always thought of myself as conservative. You know, I don't even know what that means. It is, you know, there's not one. I can think of very few things I agree with Ben Shapiro one. He's a conservative. He's a conservative. What is it? I don't even know what that means. Are you worried about young people? Are you worried about the way that these young people who are. who've been attacked for being white men,

and no one ever rose to their defense. I can't believe, you know, everyone's like, oh, anti-Semitism is bad. Yeah, it definitely is bad. What about all the anti-white stuff that Vox and the New York Times and the Washington Post was casual, like, oh, white men? What would it feel to be a white man?

How does it feel to be a Jew now that everyone's attacking Jews? Well, it's bad, right? No one wants that. Well, what do you think of the young white men who've been attacked for, like, the past 25 years? What concerns you? What concerns you about the way that,

young conservatives are talking now. That the country could take a group of people and on the basis of qualities they can't control that they were born with, attack them in public and nobody said anything about it. Where was everyone else when that was happening to white men? They were silent. They enjoyed it. They joined in. So shame on them because that's immoral.

And I feel sorry for young white men because their lives have been very much affected by this. They're the victims of it. Sorry, they are. and some of them have become really radical and they're like, hey, up yours, I'm going to become a Nazi, which I'm against. I'm against Nazis, okay? But what did you think was going to happen?

So stop attacking people for their race and maybe things will calm down a little bit. Like, that is the lesson. I thought that was the lesson in the civil rights movement, but we just ignored that lesson. I want to ask you what your concern is about Nick Fuentes and the like, right? So you expressed,

you are concerned that he goes on Pierce Morgan's show and makes a joke about the Holocaust and makes Pierce Morgan look stupid and makes the Holocaust look like a joke. And we know from various leaked group chats and other things that there is a strain of this in young conservative America, right? The sort of the based ritual, I think Richard Hannaniah calls it.

The jokes that you shouldn't make and you know you shouldn't make the joke, but you make it anyway. And the question is, where do you think that leads? Right. Like, what is the concern? See, here's my concern that it might lead to a place where the federal government, the largest institution in human history and other major institutions in this country, like our banks or tech

companies, or, I don't know, big prestigious universities might weight their admission standards in favor of some racial groups and against other racial groups. That would be kind of what the Nazis did. It would be what was happening in the Jim Crow South. And I, oh, they're already doing that. So, but you're not saying anything about it. And so the goal here is to stop punishing people on the basis of their race. The goal is, yeah, bad jokes about the Holocaust.

I don't tell Holocaust jokes. It's depressing that all those people got murdered. I'm not going to probably not going to joke about it. I'm not going to joke about Gaza or dead babies. I don't like joking about grim stuff like that. Okay, got it. But you're saying this could lead somewhere. We're already there.

This country is discriminating against people. systematically on the basis of the race. And the Trump administration has not ended it. So that right there is a, is a disgraceful stain on this country. And it should end immediately. Come on. You've been doing this. You've been doing this a long time.

You have the ability to look five years into the future. Just five years into the future. These young conservatives, former members of the Trump coalition who are making jokes about the Holocaust and rape and slavery in private group chats, where do you think this is heading? I hear you looking back. I do. And I hear you saying, this is how we got here. This is how we got here. No, no, no. I'm not, I don't mean to do that at all. I'm looking at where we are right now. And I'm saying that we have a system in place currently that discriminates officially you can look up the standards, if you like, against people on the basis of their race. I think most people would say, yeah, you can't punish. people because of their race, because they can't control their race, right? It's not a decision they made.

So, but no one says that. You'll never hear anybody say. In fact, anyone who says that is denouncers a white, you say it all the time. I'm kind of alone in that, actually. You just said it for 10 minutes. Right, but it's the key to what I'm saying. I'm just, so if you're offended that some people are mocking another group on the basis of their race, which you'll never, my texts have been leaked and showed, I'm not texting racial jokes ever. I don't. tell them. I don't think the word is offended. I think you're you're looking for offense. And what I'm asking is, is there concern in there too? I'm concerned by the current state of where we are now. Like the kids who are watching live streams of Nick Fuentes and texting Holocaust jokes,

yeah, bad. I told Nick Fuentes, it's bad. But the people currently running our country are punishing people on the basis of their race, which is much worse, because it's not joking, it's like structurally punitive measures against people for how they were born. I think what a lot of people are trying to, trying to do here,

this is my guess, is they're trying to project where this ugly stuff lands us in 2028, in 2032, like what the next five or 10 years look like. Let me ask you this, because again, I want to sort of keep this on young people if I could. We know that many America first voters, especially young ones, feel very betrayed by the war in Iran. Very betrayed by President Trump.

They're very angry about this. What should they do now? It's a good question. So my sense from having a lot of young people at my house and knowing a lot of it will work for me is, that economic concerns override all other concerns right now for young people. That is my strong sense just from, I mean, I've got some sitting in my studio right now. It's like, we can't buy houses, everything's too expensive, how can I live an adult life at these prices, the baby boomers are hoarding all the assets. I mean, I think those are much more imminent concerns than anything

related to foreign policy. I do think they're connected to each other in ways that maybe other people don't see or agree with, but I think they are. I think that our leaders are just so focused on the rest of the world, they like don't really care. They're like lecturing you about the Iranian nuclear threat, which wasn't real or wasn't imminent anyway. And they're ignoring the fact that like their kids can't buy a house. And so I think you're going to have like a pretty volatile mix socially in this country. And someone needs to deal with the economics first that, I mean, since you asked. you sound like a candidate sounds a little bit like a platform

are you running for president in 2028? I would not I would no absolutely not well I don't want to I mean you want to you want to be president of United States I mean I have a ton of ideas

but but they're just ideas I've never run anything I'm not a politician at all I'm a can't even remember what's called a podcaster now but I'm worried I'm definitely worried I feel like this war war always

accelerates trends in progress and creates massive social change. And I feel like the country is already kind of unstable, mostly because of economic changes that have taken place. And I'm worried. But I'm not, no, I'm not running for anything. I mean, would you run for something? I mean, it sounds awful. Tucker Carlson, thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. I appreciate it. Thank you. Today's team, Ariana Espudu, Jolie Myers, Patrick Boyd, Andrea Lopez Crusado, and Gabriel Donatov. The world king, it's today explained.