WASHINGTON — As speculation swirls that former Fox News host Tucker Carlson will launch a third-party presidential run in 2028, people who know the formerly bow-tied commentator say no chance.
“I think journalists are all suffering from traumatic brain injuries as they forget the wave of ‘Tucker 2024’ stories,” said one person close to Carlson. “He wasn’t running then and he’s not running now.”
Speculation that Carlson, 57, would mount a campaign was covered Monday by Politico, after similar chatter appeared in other news outlets — as the populist podcaster publicly aligns with other disaffected antiwar conservatives.
Carlson is “interesting and says irreverent things, and some people would like him to run. But he’s never like, ‘I’m running,’” the person close to him said.
President Trump, who also was once viewed as an unlikely political contender, “was saying he was running for president and people weren’t taking him seriously. They’re almost not taking seriously [Carlson’s] denials that he’s not running for president. It’s the opposite.”
Carlson supported Trump’s comeback campaign in 2024, but broke with him this year after the president started the ongoing war with Iran in late February.
Carlson, who regards the Iran conflict as a betrayal of Trump’s pledge to avoid destabilizing Mideast wars, expanded his attack on the president Monday, calling him “flamboyantly corrupt” during a podcast interview with former first son Hunter Biden.
The former cable host said he backed Trump in 2024 largely because of the political prosecutions he faced, particularly for allegedly mishandling classified documents, recalling the “transparently absurd” raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in 2022 — and revealed he tried in vain to prevent the Iran war.
“To me, what that [Mar-a-Lago raid] said was Trump is actually being persecuted by the Uniparty, therefore he is its sincere opponent,” Carlson said. “My goal, literally from that moment up until February 28, was I don’t want to go with Iran.”
“I overstated my own influence like dramatically in a very embarrassing way, and my own importance,” he added. “I was mad at Trump, but I was also really mad at myself.”
Renewed focus on Carlson’s possible political future followed former Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posting on X a photo with the commentator and other former Trump supporters on Aug. 1.
“We said no more foreign wars and we meant it and supported Donald Trump because he made that promise,” Greene captioned the image, also featuring outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Trump’s former counterintelligence chief Joe Kent.
“[Trump] betrayed us all. Our commitment is America First for all Americans, right, left, and center. The movement has begun,” Greene wrote.
But a Republican operative said that movement isn’t likely to feature Carlson charting a path to the White House.
There’s a “99.999% chance that he doesn’t run,” this person said, “but he is on the war path to damage the GOP over Iran and a third party run from him would make it impossible for any Republican to win in 2028.”
“I think he’s like not running because he doesn’t wanna do it,” this operative said.
However, “it’s not impossible.”
“I think it just depends what happens in the administration over the next few years,” he added. “He’d be happy with a kamikaze mission, I think.”
