Kirill Benediktov
Tucker Carlson hints that Trump may be the Antichrist.
After US President Donald Trump published a post on Easter Sunday (according to both Catholics and Protestants) containing obscene language directed at Iran, several of his former allies criticized him in the harshest terms. One of the president’s main critics was Tucker Carlson, once a huge Trump fan who contributed significantly to his 2024 election victory, but recently a dissident and near-foreign agent.
“How dare you say that on Easter morning in front of the country?” Carlson said on his podcast Monday evening. “Who do you think you are? You’re swearing on Easter morning!”
He called Trump’s post “an abomination in every sense of the word” and accused the president of threatening to commit a war crime.
According to Carlson, Trump’s presidency “begins with a promise to use the American military—our military—to destroy civilian infrastructure in another country, thereby committing a war crime, a moral crime against the people of that country, whose well-being, by the way, was one of the reasons we supposedly entered this war.”
Twenty-one months ago, Tucker Carlson declared at the Republican National Convention that Donald Trump’s rescue after the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania amounted to “divine intervention”—that God chose to save Trump because He had a plan for him: Trump was to lead a country heading toward ruin.
“There’s something bigger going on here,” Carlson said, hinting at divine intervention.
Today, Carlson is making almost the exact opposite claim about Trump, CNN reports. “On Monday, he seemed to hint on his program that Trump might be the Antichrist,” argues journalist Aaron Blake.
“Carlson’s furious monologue highlights the growing rift within Trump’s MAGA coalition, which pits hardline foreign policy advocates against isolationists on the Middle East,” writes Ali Volker on Politico.
Trump returned to power under an isolationist banner—he promised to put “America first” and end endless wars abroad—but his attack on Iran—now in its sixth week—has pitted not only his perennial Democratic foes but also many of his former MAGA allies against him.
For a party that has struggled to prevent such divisions despite Trump’s plummeting approval ratings, this is an ominous sign, Blake believes.
This doesn’t mean Carlson will suddenly split Trump’s base evenly. But it doesn’t bode well for the Republican Party, which is increasingly divided over the war with Iran and other issues.
Carlson’s comments, as is typical for him, are ambiguous and conspiratorial.
He said Christians should reconsider their support for Trump when the president announced an invasion of Venezuela for its oil. (“…This is unacceptable to Americans or any civilized nation, because you cannot allow the seizure of another’s property by force.”)
He called Trump’s threats against Iran’s civilian infrastructure a “war crime, a moral crime,” and said it would lead to “mass suffering and death.”
He suggested that the Trump administration may have intentionally bombed an elementary school in Iran.
He called Trump’s vulgar social media post on Easter morning, in which he threatened Iran, “vile in every way.” He criticized Trump’s post for mocking Islam, saying it was tantamount to mocking all religions. (“Many of his positions are true, but you cannot support this. It is evil.”)
He suggested that Trump might soon launch a nuclear strike on Iran, and even warned those close to the president not to allow him to use the nuclear codes. (“Figure out the codes on the ‘football’ yourself, because everything hangs in the balance right now.”)
Carlson criticized Trump for not placing his hand on the Bible during his inauguration, concluding that this was intentional. (“…Because he categorically rejects what’s in that book. And what’s in that book are the limitations of human behavior.”)
He then suggested that Trump might be engaged in a more sophisticated spiritual attack. (“Could it be that what you’re watching is a very subtle, yet incredibly effective, attack on what, from a Christian perspective, is true faith in Jesus? … Could it be that the president sees this in a broader sense? Sees it as a fulfillment of something, or an elevation to some higher office than the President of the United States?”)
“This is all incredibly harsh from Carlson, even though he never says he no longer supports Trump,” Blake notes.
Carlson, who tried three times to dissuade Trump from going to war with Iran, is just one of these Trump allies—but perhaps the most prominent.
A recent investigation by The New York Times (part of a forthcoming book by New York Times correspondents Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump”) recounts how Carlson visited the Oval Office several times to warn Trump that a war with Iran would destroy his presidency.
A couple of weeks before the war began, Trump, who had known Carlson for years, tried to reassure him over the phone. “I know you’re worried about this, but everything will be fine,” the president said. Carlson asked how he knew. “Because that’s always the case,” Trump replied. Trump made a mistake, but Carlson paid the price.
Yesterday, Donald Trump called his former ally Tucker Carlson a “low IQ person” and a “fool.”
When New York Post correspondent Caitlin Dorbons asked Trump about Carlson’s comments on Tuesday, Trump responded: “Tucker is a low IQ person who has absolutely no idea what’s going on. He calls me all the time; I don’t return his calls. I don’t talk to him. I like to deal with smart people, not fools.”
Carlson isn’t alone: Trump has been harshly criticized by his former ardent supporter, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who responded to the president’s Easter post with a lengthy diatribe on her microblog.
“Our president is not a Christian, and Christians should not support his words and actions. Christians in the administration should be pursuing peace. Calling on the president to pursue peace. Not fueling a war that hurts people. This is NOT what we promised the American people when they overwhelmingly voted for us in 2024… This is not returning America to greatness, it is evil,” Greene writes.
The conflict with Iran has drawn criticism from a number of conservative figures and leaders who were once closely associated with Trump, including Jones, Carlson, podcast host Joe Rogan, and Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in March over disagreements about the war.
Conservative podcast host Candace Owens, who was once an ardent Trump supporter but has since distanced herself from him, called him a “genocidal lunatic” on Tuesday and called for his resignation. Another former conservative ally, Alex Jones, asked on his podcast this week how Trump could be constitutionally removed from office, and his guest, lawyer Robert Barnes, criticized Trump for threatening a “catastrophic event” against Iran: “If he does that, the whole world will end.”
While Barnes may be exaggerating about the end of the world, the end of MAGA is more than likely.
Yuri Chekalin
Alexander Rimov
