Corrupting Conservatism: The Rise of Tucker Carlson

It’s not controversial to say that conservatism has undergone a massive shift in recent years. In 2016, most Republican candidates refused to condemn the Iraq War. Now, Republicans use “neocon” as a slur. The spearhead of this change was, of course Donald Trump. But one particularly influential conservative news commentator is often credited with latching onto and popularizing MAGA very early on: Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson.

Tucker, many think, has gone off the deep end since 2023 and his firing by Fox News. But he maintains a devoted following of ultra-MAGAites on his Tucker Carlson Show. I’ll call them “Tuckerites” from here on. Increasingly, though, his ideas are no longer Republican. Nor are they conservative. Nor are they even MAGA. His ideology has morphed, and under his leadership a splinter faction in the MAGA movement is forming. It remains small for now, yet threatens to hijack Republicanism in a catastrophic way as it attracts young, disillusioned conservative voters.

But fear not. Zach is here to defend the integrity of conservatism, one Roundup article at a time. Here, we’ll break down how Tuckerism differs from actual conservatism, how it views Western Civilization, and where Carlson actually lies on the political spectrum.

A Tucker Twist on Traditionalism

One of the foundational questions we need to ask is how Tuckerism differs from mainstream conservatism. And there are several ways the two diverge.

1. Isolationism– Mainline conservatism has differing views on foreign policy. The neocons take a pretty interventionist bent, whereas MAGA embraces a much more cautious view. But neither are isolationist. They will intervene when they deem it important enough. Tuckerism takes the stance that intervention is inherently evil. Leave the Ukrainians out in the rain. Abandon Israel. Hand over Taiwan. After all, it isn’t our problem. Conservatism, to varying degrees, recognizes the importance of fighting for democracy. Tuckerism does not. “They aren’t Americans, so they don’t matter.” The most obvious recent example of this was the Israeli-Iranian 12 Day War, during which Tucker loudly proclaimed that striking Iran would mean World War 3, and that we would all die in a retaliatory Russian nuclear strike were we to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities. As you might note, Trump greenlit the strike. And yet you haven’t died in a Russian nuclear fireball. But that didn’t stop his fanbase from considering him a credible commentator.

   

2. Protectionism– Republicans are believers in classical economics. That’s not me saying that. That’s the founding fathers (and mothers) of 20th century conservatism saying that. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater and Bill Buckley and Maggie Thatcher all believed fully in free trade and market economics. Tucker… not so much. One of the red flags we all should have seen in Carlson back when he was still apparently sane was his view on Elizabeth Warren’s economic plan. He said in 2019, “Yesterday, Warren released what she called her plan for economic patriotism. Amazingly, that’s pretty much what it is. Economic patriotism.” He went on, “Republicans in Congress can’t promise to protect American industries. They wouldn’t dare to do that. … They might make the Koch brothers mad. It might alienate the libertarian ideologues who to this day fund most Republican campaigns.” Those “libertarian ideologues” are, in all truth, what Bill Buckley built much of his version of conservatism on. Those pesky libertarians believe free trade is good because it is good. That doesn’t mean deindustrialization had to happen to the extent it did. But free trade didn’t kill the factories of Detroit. Unions did. So advocating protectionism isn’t the solution. It isn’t conservatism. It’s convenient populism.

   

3. Historical Perspective– This one gets at something much deeper. One of the most  interesting microcosms of the difference in worldview is how mainstream and Tuckerite conservatives view Winston Churchill. By all accounts, Winston Churchill is one of the fathers of modern conservatism. Just as much as the aforementioned Reagan or Goldwater or Buckley or Thatcher. He was a man who did some bad things, and he was a man who did some excellent things. At the end of the day, Churchill was a “great man of history”. There’s no doubt, in the mainstream, that Churchill was a savior of Western Civilization in his decision to fight on, alone, against Hitler. But Carlson and some of his guests depict him as an evil alcoholic racist who prolonged WWII for no reason. Why? Because their view on the West’s history is different. And more broadly, their view of the West as a whole is fundamentally different. Let’s talk more about that.

   

Warping Western Civilization

Tucker and his ilk’s views on the West are unlike anything conservatives have believed historically. Now, let me clarify something off the bat: conservatives are not supposed to be bootlickers. We aren’t supposed to accept everything western nations have done blindly. America enslaved millions of people for many years. Belgium killed off half of the Congo by some estimates. But we do recognize that, on net, the West has largely acted morally, and has been a bigger force for good in the world than any other civilization.

Tucker disagrees. I’ve already given you an example of his perspective on Western history, so I won’t go into detail on another. But know that in all aspects of modern history, be it the Nazis or Imperial Japan or the British Empire or the Cold War, Tucker has decided that the West was either wrong or ultimately failed in its goal. What conservative have you met that believes that fighting Hitler was a fault of Winston Churchill?

This common throughline– the idea that the West was wrong throughout most of its history –isn’t very patriotic at all. It isn’t very conservative. And, as said before, it gets at something more important: Tucker says he’s MAGA. He says he wants to “make America great again”. But to believe in making America great again, you have to believe America was great in the first place. And looking at his perspective on history, it’s hard to see a period where Tucker Carlson believed America wasn’t engulfed in a gross conspiracy of powerful politicians and powerful businessmen. It’s hard to find when America was great in his eyes.

A Stealth-based Strategy

But we ought to address how Carlson goes about this sort of thing. He oftentimes doesn’t just come out and just say what he believes. We have to do some forensics to figure it out. The best way to find what he actually thinks is to find the people he surrounds himself with.

Of course, guilt by osmosis is an inherently fraught concept. It’s stupid, really. But we aren’t finding who he agrees with by finding who he’s platformed. We’re finding who he agrees with by finding who he doesn’t push back on. I, for instance, am a prolific listener of the Triggernometry podcast. I can tell where the hosts stand because, in their interviews, they push back on the far-left a lot, on the center-left a little bit, on the center-right almost none, and on the far-right a lot. We can then figure out, based on their interviews, that they take a mainstream-right or center-right stance.

So who does Tucker give the softball interviews to? It isn’t the center-right. And it absolutely isn’t the center-left. It’s the far-right and, interestingly, the far-left to some extent. Let’s find some evidence to back up that claim, though.

I’ll take one example from each category.

Now, Ted Cruz isn’t by any stretch a “center-right” figure, but he is mainstream and will suffice. Senator Cruz, famously, was grilled by Carlson during the June 2025 Israel-Iran War for not knowing the exact demographic information of Iran whilst advocating for American intervention against the Islamic Republic. Here’s the thing: do you even know how many people live in the United States off the top of your head? What is our demographic makeup? Yet you have opinions on how this country ought to be run, don’t you? That’s not because you are ignorant. It’s because almost nobody knows that information off the top of their head. It was faux-intellectuality, pre-planned ambush, and some of the most obvious gotcha journalism I’ve ever seen. Hardly a softball interview, or even a respectful conversation.

Tucker has made my job easy for this next one. Nearest I can tell, he hasn’t had any mainstream Democrats on his podcast since leaving Fox. Of course, a lot of this may be Democratic reluctance to engage with Carlson. But if Tucker can’t find a single center-lefter to come on his show, I doubt that is unintentional. At least one normie liberal would have agreed after over a year and a half of constant podcasting, surely. But nope. So we can assume that isn’t where Tucker stands.

As for our far-right candidate, we’ll pick Derryl Cooper. Derryl is a bit of a nutcase. An amateur historian. He, as mentioned before, has called Winston Churchill “the real villain” of WWII and has maintained that Hitler wanted peace. He’s claimed that many of the deaths in the Holocaust were the result of innocent logistical failure within German territory and is, pretty obviously, is a Nazi sympathizer. Which makes Tucker’s complete lack of pushback during his interview all the more disturbing. Cooper spouted all this nonsense and more on Tucker’s podcast, and Carlson nodded and smiled all the while. Quite a softball interview for quite a terrible human being. As this article was being written, Carlson also had Nick Fuentes on his podcast. If you didn’t already know, Nick Fuentes is an open Nazi sympathizer who said, as Tucker gave zero pushback whatsoever, that the biggest obstacle to conservative unity was “organized Jewry”. So Carlson keeps giving me more evidence as I write this.

As for our far-left candidate, I put forward Bret Weinstein. He was solidly in the progressive camp, though he has distanced himself from the “mainstream far left” in recent years. He was interviewed on the Tucker Carlson Show a couple of times. He received a bit of pushback on most of the episodes, but what’s remarkable was the civility and agreement they both had on a number of different episodes. Even when they sharply disagreed on things like evolution, they were calm and collected with each other. A softball interview, no. But plenty of agreement. He was infinitely more civil than with many right-wingers.

So the verdict is in: Tucker is an attack dog against normie republicans, won’t even have center-lefters on his show, lets far-righters spew nonsense, and tolerates the far-left. Which places our friend Tucker on the “insane non-conservative right-winger with leftist sympathies” part of the spectrum. This likely isn’t a surprise to many of you. It’s common knowledge that Tucker has lost the plot lately.

But I think ought to I spell out the central thesis of the article again: Tucker Carlson isn’t a conservative. He’s a contrarian, a member of the far-right, deeply illiberal, and not a believer in the Republican project. So let’s not regard him with any credibility. For the sake of this country’s politics and people. Because while many think this country needs a “third way”, that way isn’t isolationism, protectionism, revisionist history, and Nazi sympathy.

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