Don’t Give MAGA Defectors Credit They Haven’t Earned

For the record, Tucker Carlson will sleep fine tonight. I know that in a recent podcast video released just a few days ago he sounded positively guilt-ridden—saying he’s “sorry for misleading people” into supporting Trump, “implicated” in Trump’s wars across the Middle East, and will be “tormented…for a long time” over having campaigned for Trump in 2024. And 2020. And also 2016, presumably. As we know from a trove of his texts disclosed in Dominion Voting Systems’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Carlson privately badmouthed Trump as early as 2021. So did his recent apology cover helping elect a man he described, in those text messages, as “a demonic force,” and “a destroyer“ whom he “hate[d]…passionately,” and couldn’t wait to “ignore” once Biden took office, as we learned from text messages revealed by Dominion Voting Systems’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News? Should we just assume that he’s feeling contrition for hitting send on a text wherein he called Trump the “undisputed world champion…at destroying things,” and then going on TV that night and telling his audience of racist marks and rubes to vote for him? And doing the same thing the next night? And the next. For not one, not two, but three elections?

He seems to have slept like a baby then. A rich baby who knew exactly what he was doing, and still does.

Carlson was always going to sleep fine. But he’s unremarkable that way. A whole grift of MAGA mouthpieces is now disavowing their longtime support for the president. That includes Alex Jones, Candace Owens and former representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, each of whom has recently called for Trump to be removed from office. As well as podcast bros Andrew Shulz, Tim Dillon, Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and Dave Smith, who used their enormous influence to champion Trump when it counted most. but now keep repeating versions of “this is not what I voted for.” In a single rant earlier this month, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly accused the president of being “gullible,” “bamboozled” and “too weak to say no” to Israel’s war plans in Iran, while Ann Coulter assailed him for “committing war crimes” in the Middle East. They’re joined by Trump supporters who have told pollsters and reporters that they’re angry about the president depicting himself as white Jesus, or fighting with the pope, or, most of all, driving the price of gas up even higher.

I know the bar for Trump supporters sits at a subterranean low, which is why every gesture toward decency from them gets treated like a profile in courage, including by supposed lefty pundits and Congressional Democrats including Ro Khanna and Ilhan Omar. But this is no time to confuse ex-MAGA with decent people, even if they cosplay as such, claiming Trump’s the one who changed. “I’m embarrassed I told people to vote for him,” Owens said last year, declaring “this is not the candidate that I voted for.” Trump is “not the same man that we supported,” Marjorie Taylor Greene insisted a few weeks ago on Alex Jones’s podcast. And Jones himself now says that Trump is “not the man he was last year,” noting he tends to babble and sound like the brain’s not doing too hot.” Well spotted, Alex— you just perfectly described Trump’s behavior every single day for the last two decades! Trump remains as openly, shamelessly a vulgar predator, liar, thief, racist, and as petty, small, and insecure as the day you first supported him—not despite, but because of those numerous shortcomings.

Just as no one has to give Trump credit for staying as awful as he’s ever been, you also don’t have to give credit to MAGA defectors for claiming to see the light. They may no longer back Trump, but stand firm behind the moral bankruptcy of Trumpism. Yes, Tucker Carlson apologized for supporting Trump—during a podcast conversation with his brother, Buckley, that seemed to double as a competition to see who could be more transparently loathsome. The two took turns claiming Obama “really hates white people” (Tucker), referring to Kamala Harris as “Cackling Camel Toe” (Buckley), claiming Biden allowed the “tearing down [of] all statues to whites (Tucker),” calling the George Floyd protests a “manufactured crisis…designed to get rid of white cops” (Buckley), whining about the unfair treatment suffered by Big Tobacco (both), insinuating that Trump had sexual affairs with Black women and therefore couldn’t possibly be racist—as if enslavers didn’t do the same for centuries (both). At one point, Carlson—who did for self-pitying white grievance-mongering what Bravo did for housewives—relayed the story of a Jewish woman acquaintance whose father sued a country club that had discriminated against her family, an action Carlson labels “repulsive.”

“You should have the right to hang out with whoever you want to hang out, on whatever basis you want to make that decision,” he said. “I was like, the hatred behind that—it’s like the desire to destroy something that you didn’t build.”

This is the same guy who, in 2021, called Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot “a monster” and compared her to the Nazis for having her press office prioritize journalists of color for sit-downs. Advocate for diversity in newsrooms and it is tyranny, but ask the WASPs down at the country clubs to admit a Jew family, and you’ll have Carlson screaming about white genocide. He is a disingenuous, hypocritical, race-hate- stoking liar and that’s why he supported Trump.

Carlson—and a whole grievance of other MAGA defectors—voted for Trump because they, too, are awful. And like the man they put in office, they remain committed to Trump’s worst ideas and policies, only with less Zionism and cheaper eggs. Backing off of Trumpism is a sign that they’re recalibrating, checking the wind for the next big grift opportunity, not reexamining the immorality that led them to this point. (And in the case of Tucker, I fear, gunning for a presidential run—with Greene already endorsing him.) I get that these are dark times and heroes are scant but grifters gonna grift.

Plus, reports of Trump’s political death have been greatly exaggerated. Hardcore Trump voters—those who self-identify not just as supporters, but as MAGA—are, by a measure of roughly 100 percent, still with him. For all the breathless claims about the bottom falling out of his white working-class support, a late-March CNN poll has him down to just 50 percent disapproval, with 49 percent approval. Megyn Kelly, just days after essentially calling Trump a feckless moron, announced that “Trump could drop a nuke and I’d still vote Republican.” Joe Rogan calls himself “politically homeless,” then pals around with Trump at UFC events and even appears for photo ops with the president in the Oval Office. In 2020, Carlson triumphed in a slander lawsuit because his lawyers claimed his TV persona was an “exaggeration,” offering “non-literal commentary” and that viewers should maintain “an appropriate amount of skepticism.” In a 2017 trial, Alex Jones’s defense was that he’s a “performance artist” who is “playing a character.” These people make their living talking out of whichever side of their mouths serves them in a given moment.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, in a thinly veiled rebuke of Trump’s warmongering, responded to the US-Iran ceasefire by noting his country’s refusal “to applaud those who set the world on fire just because they turn up with a bucket,” adding, “But this momentary relief cannot make us forget the chaos, the destruction, and the lives lost.” Those words apply just as handily to the Trump defectors.