Trump’s coalition is self-destructing over the Iran war question

You don’t have to be a fan of Tucker Carlson to enjoy the spectacle of a Republican civil war, I write in The Guardian.

You have to admit that there’s something delicious about watching Ted Cruz get served his just deserts by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. In a nearly two-hour long interview on Carlson’s own channel and in Cruz’s Washington office, Carlson repeatedly grilled, roasted, and fried the Texas senator, exposing a deepening rift within the Maga movement and showing us the hollowness of our so-called leaders along the way.

You don’t have to be a fan of Carlson to enjoy the spectacle of a Republican civil war. Carlson, who once hosted a show on CNN, established his reputation on Fox News and then became “a racist demagogue and promoter of far-right disinformation and dangerous conspiracy theories”, as a 2023 profile in Mother Jones described him. While at Fox, he was for a time the highest rated personality on cable TV and was deeply influential in setting the conservative agenda. On air at Fox – and in this essay for Politico – he praised Trump. Off-air, he was texting his colleagues a different opinion: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson wrote in a text sent on 4 January 2021. “I truly can’t wait,” he wrote, adding: “I hate him passionately.”

So there’s something fishy about Carlson. We all know it. Even Fox knew it. He was abruptly fired from the network in 2023 and later launched his own streaming service, the Tucker Carlson Network, in December 2023. His 2024 interview of Vladimir Putin has raised questions about judgment. “I am definitely more sympathetic to Putin than Zelenskyy,” he told NewsNation. Questionable, to say the least.

Carlson is also a much under-appreciated actor. He will explode in giddy laughter in one second only to turn accusatory the next. He lures you in with a goofy gaze, but he is extremely quick on his feet. He somehow always looks like he just got back from summer vacation. People call him a pundit. I think of him more as a performance artist.

While the interview with Cruz illustrates some of Carlson’s abilities, it was also a masterclass in highlighting Cruz’s main talent. Over the years, Cruz has honed the marvelous skill of brilliantly showcasing his own limitations (such as the time Cruz ran off to Cancún in the middle of a devastating power outage that occurred during a deep freeze in Texas).

The Carlson-Cruz interview centered on a few topics: the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) on American politics, if Aipac should register as a foreign agent (Carlson: Yes. Cruz: No), and who blew up the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, among others.

The question of the United States going to war with Iran, however, was at the center of the interview, as it is also at the center of our national politics right now.

“How many people live in Iran, by the way?” Carlson asks Cruz. “I don’t know the population,” Cruz responds. “You don’t know the population of the country you seek to topple?” Carlson asks, incredulously. Cruz shoots back. “How many people live in Iran?” Carlson quickly responds, “92 million. How could you not know that?” “I don’t sit around memorizing population tables,” Cruz says defensively.

“Well, it’s kind of relevant because you’re calling for the overthrow of the government,” Carlson says. “I am not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran!” “You’re a senator who’s calling for the overthrow of their government. You don’t know anything about the country!” “No. You don’t know anything about the country!”

And so it went. The whole fiasco was at times childish, other moments vindictive, but all over simply wonderful, as the Maga world implodes on its own fissures, ignorance, and contradictions…

Read the rest here.