Right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson announced in June that he was leaving the Republican Party because he was incensed at President Donald Trump for launching a war against Iran. Surprisingly, what began as a theatrical (and possibly temporary) exit from the GOP has led to a more adversarial and organized opposition. The former Fox News personality appears to be trying to help launch — or encourage the launch of — a right-wing third party. If it comes to fruition, that could be a terrible thorn in the side of Republicans.
In an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review published in July, Carlson said he was “going to help build a third party” as part of his “good-faith effort to figure out what benefits the country.” In his explanation he leaned into the same isolationism he cited when he said he was leaving the GOP.
“Your life expectancy has gone down, and the promise of your children’s lives is likely gone. No one seems to care,” he said to CJR. “It’s not even a factor. ‘What about Hamas?’ I officially don’t care about Hamas. The US government should have, as its first priority, the welfare of its own people.”
Carlson said later in the interview that on matters of finance and war, there is “a one-party state posing as a democracy, and it needs to be broken.” He also said he didn’t want to be a candidate for this party.
The Carlson rebellion reflects the strange state of the organized right.
It’s one thing to float the possibility of creating a third party, but there are signs Carlson may be trying to make it happen. Carlson recently hosted some allies on his Maine compound: former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene; former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent; and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who made an issue of the Trump administration’s mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and, in May, lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger. Greene posted a photo of the gathering on X and wrote, “We said no more foreign wars and we meant it and supported Donald Trump because he made that promise. But he’s betrayed us all … The movement has begun.”
Kent said in an interview on the “The Young Turks” show that those at Carlson’s compound were strategizing on how to organize around their antiwar cause.
“Running as a third-party candidate is challenging. Not impossible, but it is very challenging,” he said. “But that’s kind of the consensus that we came to, that the current system just simply doesn’t work and we have to find something new to save our country.”
On Wednesday, on a livestream called “It’s Time to Save America,” Carlson unveiled a 10-point manifesto promoting qualities he thinks America should have. Carlson spoke tentatively of a third party, saying he was unsure of whether the formation of one would be an adequate solution, but that it would be “better than [the system] we have.”
Nonetheless, in the manifesto, Carlson highlighted the exact points of vulnerability Trump’s GOP has among true-believer, right-wing nationalists who have been disappointed by the president’s departures from their dogma. In addition to condemning Trump’s war on Iran, Carlson called for a “recommitment to fairness” and argued that “what rankles people so much” about “the Epstein story is not that he was bad; it’s that he got a pass because of who he was.”
Carlson didn’t explicitly say Trump botched the release of the Epstein files, but he didn’t have to. The release of those documents is the foremost example of Trump’s first betrayal of his supporters. Carlson also pointedly emphasized the importance of a movement that values being “honest” and “decent,” an implicit broadside against a Republican Party that has descended into cartoonish corruption and cruelty under Trump.
It’s too early to say how far Carlson and his allies will take this. But even if they don’t form a third party, they are carving out a politico-intellectual lane for one to emerge. The pitch that’s forming is: “Pure MAGA: untainted by Trump’s narcissism, warmaking and corruption.”
The Carlson rebellion reflects the strange state of the organized right. Trump’s grip on his party is so strong that he has all but eliminated any dissent within it — and on the rare occasions dissent does arise, he quashes it by backing primaries against his critics. It’s no coincidence that the people behind this effort are either not in elected office, have left elected office or are leaving elected office. As far as conservative feedback goes, Trump faces no accountability within his party — so now it’s coming in the form of a threat of a new one.
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