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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.
A case in point. Cruz repeatedly lashes out at the Iranian regime for basing its politics on religion, while he wishes to use his own theology to justify his politics. Carlson is having none of it. It began with Cruz telling Carlson that he was “taught from the bible that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things.”
“Those who bless the government of Israel?” Carlson asks. Cruz responds that “it doesn’t say the government of Israel. It says the nation of Israel. That’s in the Bible. As a Christian, I believe that.” Carlson presses Cruz. “Where is that?” “I can find it for you. I don’t have the scripture off the tip of my, pull out the phone and use Google.”
“It’s in Genesis,” Carlson quickly says. “So you’re quoting a Bible phrase that you don’t have context for and you don’t know where it is, and that’s like your theology? I’m confused.”
The Maga movement is doomed to self-destruct at some point, full as it of too many contradictory tendencies. We already saw it crack when Elon and Donald took a relationship pause recently. But there are other fractures. Trump ran on a platform that was supposed to end all wars immediately. That clearly hasn’t happened. In fact, he may soon bring the United States into another endless war in the Middle East.
The prospect is widely disliked, even by his base. Only 19% of those who voted for Trump in 2024 think “the US military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran”. Maga diehard Marjorie Taylor Greene now calls Fox News “propaganda”, saying the American people have been “brainwashed into believing that America has to engage in these foreign wars in order for us to survive, and it’s absolutely not true.” Steve Bannon, a key influence on Trump, told reporters this week that “We don’t want any more forever wars.” He added: “We can’t do this again. We’ll tear the country apart. We can’t have another Iraq.”
For his part, Trump offered his typically bold leadership by telling reporters “Nobody knows what I’m going to do.” Presumably that nobody also includes him. The White House later said that Trump will “make a decision on whether to attack Iran within two weeks”. Bannon further believes that, if Trump does drag the US into war, most of his base will ultimately follow. The Democratic party, unsurprisingly, can’t decide what it wants, though only 10% of those who voted for Harris in 2024 favor going to war.
In other words, the US entering Israel’s war with Iran is massively disliked across the political spectrum. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Our fractured and hollow politics may actually enable it. If it happens, the Maga movement may not survive, but do they really have to take the rest of us down with them along the way?
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Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist
