Right-wing host's mea culpa over Trump support hides something darker: NYT column

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg described how there is something more troubling behind right-wing podcaster and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson's recent apology for misleading people in his support of President Donald Trump.

In a column published on Friday, Goldberg described how the conversation between Tucker and his brother, Buckley, a former Trump speechwriter, exposed much more of their message — a false narrative.

"I'm all for embracing converts to the anti-Trump cause," Goldberg wrote. "But if you listen to the dialogue between Tucker and his brother, it's clear that rather than honestly reckoning with their role in America's derangement, they're developing a new conspiracy theory to explain it away."

Conservatives have mainly stood by Trump over the last 10 years, Goldberg argued, but only recently has MAGA shown a growing understanding that Trump could be unfit to lead as commander-in-chief.

The brothers have argued that the president's recent decisions show he has been influenced by foreign actors.

"Trump, they strongly imply, has been compromised — maybe even blackmailed and physically threatened — by Zionist or globalist forces seeking the deliberate destruction of the United States," Goldberg wrote. "On Tucker's podcast, Buckley described a systematic undermining of America through the George Floyd protests, mass migration and now the war with Iran."

"I don't want to minimize the malign role Israel has played in persuading Trump to launch his catastrophic war on Iran," Goldberg explained. "As former Secretary of State John Kerry has said, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel tried to persuade previous American presidents to strike the Islamic Republic, but only Trump was vain and gullible enough to agree. America's hand-in-glove relationship with Israel has become a liability, and we should end it."

"But it wasn't Israel or Zionist donors or some shadowy internationalist cabal that made Trump a buffoonish maniac who glories in threats of violence," Goldberg wrote. "If the second Trump administration is worse than the first, it's largely because the establishment figures once demonized by Carlson as deep-state subversives are all gone. Trump is who he always was. He's just more politically unfettered than before."

Now, Tucker and Buckley Carlson are pushing more disinformation, and "some former Trump acolytes are defaulting to an older conspiracy theory: The ones in control are the Jews." That aspect is most concerning, according to Goldberg.

"This need that some MAGA apostates feel to rationalize their previous poor judgment can be harmless, if irritating. It's dangerous only when they insist on creating a scapegoat," Goldberg added.

Trump has fired back at Carlson, calling him a "Low IQ person" on Truth Social, as the feud between the two continues to escalate.