No. of Recommendations: 14
OK, to admit a bias right up front, I hate Tucker Carlson with the blazing heat of 10,000 suns, and it’s a long standing bias, not just somjething I picked up on Tuesday.
That said, I can sometimes stomach the drool of the extreme Right for a period, and even more rarely find doing so useful to understand the dynamic extant in the country right now. So it was with the expectation of “not learning much” and “probably won’t finish the article” that I began this lengthy interview the Times undertook with Carlson, a few of the more interesting paragraphs I except below.
I will only say that I am amazed at what I found, and I encourage you to read the entire interview if time allows. It’s one of the most revelatory things I’ve read in months.
gift link https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/magazine/tucker... Did he explain to you why he wanted to take the country into war? I’m just trying to understand the dynamics of that conversation.
There were multiple conversations. I flew to Washington three times in the weeks before and met with him in the Oval Office alone with people filing in and out — the White House chief of staff, the secretary of state, etc. I had lunch with him on one of those occasions. And then I spoke to him by phone many times on this topic. And he would begin almost every conversation with, Do you want Iran to have a nuclear weapon? To which I said: Well, I’m sort of opposed to nuclear weapons. I don’t want nuclear weapons, I don’t want Israel to have a nuclear weapon, I don’t want anyone to have a nuclear weapon. It doesn’t seem like a good thing. But that’s not the question. The question is: What do you do about it? And that was the end of the rationale for doing this. He never seemed enthusiastic about it, ever.
I would say: Here are the potential effects of this, the geography of Iran being the most important fact of Iran. Iran is not a military power, it’s an economic power. That was obvious, because it controls the greatest span of coastline along the Persian Gulf, which is the source of a fifth of the world’s energy, all well known now, and well known to him then. I think he perfectly understood the consequences. More:
You said he’s a hostage just now. You told the BBC he’s a “slave” to foreign interests. Correct. I just want you to be explicit. Trump is being held hostage by whom?
By Benjamin Netanyahu and by his many advocates in the United States. And we know that not simply because Trump started the war on Feb. 28, but because he couldn’t get out of it. He declares we’re having a cease-fire. He says, We’re having a cease-fire and we’re having these talks and they’re going great, and we are going to open the strait. And Iran says, Yeah, one of our conditions is Israel’s got to pull back from southern Lebanon. You can’t use the Iran war as a pretext for stealing more land from a sovereign country that’s not your country. And it’s not just Iran who felt that way. I think the rest of the world is like, What are you doing? I thought we were fighting the great existential threat, Iran. And now you’re taking the opportunity to take Lebanon’s shore, the Litani River, and bombing downtown Beirut. What is this?
Anyway, this was all very well known. And within hours of Trump announcing this, Israel publicly, in a way that was designed to get the attention of everyone, including the Iranians, starts killing civilians in Lebanon. Now, what was the point of that? Not to secure the Israeli homeland. The point of it was to end any talk of a negotiated settlement, to keep this going until Iran was destroyed and chaotic, which is the Israeli goal. I’m not attacking Israel by saying that. Their goals are different from ours, they’re a different country. Another:
Wait, let me finish the question. Given how influential [Nick] Fuentes is right now —— Is he?
Is he not? I don’t know, he doesn’t seem to be. He didn’t get us into war with Iran. Like, who cares, actually? That’s kind of what I’m saying. All of this is like a sideshow. Americans are being killed in a foreign country at the behest of another foreign country, and it’s going to wreck the U.S. dollar and cause hyperinflation in our country. And we’re fretting about what some kid on the internet said. It’s like, who cares, actually. This is a way of taking us away from the core issues, which are economic. And that is the one thing that nobody ever wants to talk about. How is the money distributed? Where does the money come from? The only left-wing movement I ever had a lot of sympathy for was the one that arose after the global financial crisis, Occupy Wall Street. I didn’t know exactly what they were about, but I was like, yeah, we should be mad at the banks because, like, they did this and no one got punished. And within 20 minutes, we’re talking about Black people and white people.
No. of Recommendations: 5
OK, to admit a bias right up front, I hate Tucker Carlson with the blazing heat of 10,000 suns, and it’s a long standing bias, not just somjething I picked up on Tuesday.
If you find someone like Carlson, or Marjorie Taylor-Greene, agrees with you on something, embrace them, on that topic.
If you find someone like Carlson, or Marjorie Taylor-Greene, is capable of changing their mind if the evidence warrants it, embrace them.
Joe Kent is another right winger. But, on Iran, and Israeli influence on the US government, he stood up and said it was wrong.
Take "yes" for an answer.
Steve
No. of Recommendations: 3
my favorite part is where they all admit they are responsible for this situation and are doing something that will actually change it.
which is most likely shilling for the next gop candidate.
