Latest news with #TuckerCarlson
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Who's who in the secret group advising Trump on Iran - who has been left out of the planning?
President Donald Trump let it be known on Thursday that he will make a decision on whether to involve the U.S. in Israel's war with Iran within the next two weeks, as tensions over the question continue to divide conservatives. The president, who signed off on attack plans on Tuesday but resisted giving the go-ahead, is reportedly taking soundings from a small coterie of trusted advisers while also throwing the conversation open to fellow world leaders, as well as allies such as the hawkish Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Outside of his inner circle, MAGA personalities Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, and Candace Owens have been speaking out against the prospect of the U.S. wading into another prolonged Middle Eastern war. At the same time, other Trump cheerleaders on Capitol Hill and the media have made the case for intervention. Here's a look at the people Trump is listening to, according to NBC News. Vice President Vance has previously struck a non-interventionist posture on foreign wars, notably opposing American support for Ukraine. He appears to favor a diplomatic solution to the dispute with Iran, applauding Trump for showing 'remarkable restraint' and making the safety of American troops and assets his top priority. The president's White House Chief of Staff and former campaign manager is known as the 'Ice Maiden' and regarded as an important restraining presence, in place to shield Trump from his own worst instincts. A senior adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, Miller is known as an anti-immigration hardliner and one of the faces of Trump's mass deportation push. A regular talking head on conservative media loathed by liberals, Miller has reportedly been nicknamed 'Weird Stephen' behind the scenes by the president, which does not suggest he commands the level of respect to which he aspires. Once a bitter enemy of Trump and rival for the Republican nomination, the Secretary of State now has such a full plate he has been dubbed the 'Secretary of Everything.' Rubio was out quickly last week to deny American involvement in Israel's initial onslaught but has since largely left the public messaging to the president. Trump's Middle East envoy, like him, a former luxury real estate developer, has led talks with both Israel and Iran since taking office earlier this year and, like Rubio, has cut a busy figure, also serving as the president's de facto liaison with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The lieutenant general serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff boasts the tough-guy nickname 'Razin' Caine' and previously served as a counterterrorism specialist to George W. Bush's Homeland Security Council. He reportedly first befriended Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2019 and impressed him by suggesting that Isis could be stamped out within a week. 'One week? I was told two years!' Trump marvelled. The head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) is a career army officer who also has a cool nickname, 'The Gorilla.' He has reportedly been granted an unprecedented amount of leeway by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He has seen an increasing allocation of resources to his areas of responsibility, which include the Middle East. The CIA Director is an influential voice, having also served in the first Trump administration. He was previously a Texas congressman and a mayor of a small town. Two names conspicuous by their absence from that list are Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell has pushed back against the suggestion that Hegseth has been sidelined. 'This claim is completely false,' he told NBC. 'The secretary is speaking with the president multiple times a day, and has been with the president in the Situation Room this week. 'Secretary Hegseth is providing the leadership the Department of Defense and our Armed Forces need, and he will continue to work diligently in support of President Trump's peace through strength agenda.' Trump is meanwhile reported to have fallen out with Gabbard for going 'off-message' after she posted a video on X attacking the 'political elite and warmongers' for 'carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers' and placing the world 'on the brink of nuclear annihilation.' Asked by CNN's Kaitlan Collins aboard Air Force One about Gabbard's statement to Congress in March that, although Iran's enriched uranium levels are at an all-time high, the expert opinion is that Tehran is not currently seeking to develop a nuclear bomb. 'I don't care what she said,' the president snapped. 'I think they were very close to having a weapon.' One Trump supporter to deny any involvement in Trump's discussions about the conflict is MAGA die-hard Laura Loomer, who attacked former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson on X on Thursday night for reporting that she was playing an advisory role, dismissing the claim as 'fake news.'
The Independent
3 hours ago
- Politics
- The Independent
The most dangerous battle facing Trump isn't in Iran
It had the feel of two ageing dons sparring in the senior common room, both smugly full of self-admiration with their own cleverness. This was the encounter between two of MAGAs leading intellectual apostles: Senator Ted Cruz from Texas (Princeton University and Harvard Law) and one-time Fox News host, unrivalled leader in white grievance politics and influential beyond justification, Tucker Carlson. There was an 'en garde' – and from there they parried and counter-parried in an interview broadcast this week. There was the occasional lunge as the two 50-somethings engaged in their dialectic on the wisdom or otherwise of Donald Trump allowing the US to become dragged into the Iran / Israel conflict. It has been one of the articles of faith, one of the foundational beliefs of the MAGA movement that America should not be the world's policeman – although the isolationist, pull-up-the-drawbridge, let the rest of the world get on with it school of thought is nothing new. There's always been that strand to American thought, even if Donald Trump is shouting it more loudly. There is also a more practical, realpolitik side to it in Trump's mind. Put simply, what good did it ever do a president? LBJ felled by Vietnam; Bush 43 and his neocon Iraq misadventure; Biden and the calamitous Afghan withdrawal. In Trump's mind nothing positive ever comes of it, so why go there in the first place. For all the lofty words between messers Cruz and Carlson the row boils down to this. According to Carlson, if America First means anything it requires you staying out of other people's wars. Meanwhile, Ted 'yeah, but' Cruz's view was Iran is a menace, we like Israel, they are our ally and we have to be on their side – and the clincher: the mullahs in Tehran had earlier made clear they wanted to assassinate Trump, so America does have a dog in the fight. It is a fault line that is running through MAGA. And where the president, who just celebrated his 79th birthday with a military parade in Washington, is seemingly treading tentatively. Leave aside the paradox of Trump wanting a military parade for an armed forces he never wants to use (except maybe for vanity parades through the centre of DC, or to deploy for civil protests in California), the acolytes are picking up their ideological swords and clashing with each other over whether to send a B-2 bomber from the US airbase at Diego Garcia armed with a MOP, a 30,000 pound 'Massive Ordnance Penetrator' strapped to the undercarriage to bomb Iran's nuclear site buried deep in the mountains. Trump has said he will decide in the next two weeks if the US will get directly involved in supporting Israel's attacks. The most interesting intervention has come from the vice president, JD Vance, who is seen as an arch proponent of isolationism. Of course, he has to do the president's bidding – but his was a carefully argued case on X (if anything be carefully litigated on X). His argument was that if Iran was only interested in civil nuclear power, why did it need to enhance uranium to the levels they were doing. And therefore if Iran got hold of a nuclear weapon, just think what a menace they would be to American interests in the Middle East. Understandably, around the world the question of whether the US will get involved in attacking Iran is garnering all the headlines headlines – it could be the most consequential decision of Trump's second term. But within the US there is another foundational argument about the core principles of MAGA roiling the populist right. And it's over illegal immigration. Go to more out less any restaurant in the US and you will find there are two classes of servers. There are the waiters and waitresses who will take your food order – and in Washington they are invariably college kids, and in New York out of work actors. And then there is the lower strata of plate clearers and water glass fillers. And they are more often than not Hispanic. It is the same in garden work or road construction. Likewise hotels. And in the fruit basket of California – the central belt – almost all the fruit is picked by Latinos. A huge percentage of these workers are 'illegals', totally in the crosshairs of Trump's promise to purge the US of this shadow workforce. The problem is – just like over whether to bomb Iran – ideological purity is banging its head against practical politics. Trump this week told his immigration chief to ease off the gas when it comes to deporting hotel workers and those in the fields and those clearing the plates. Why? Because a lot of these industries would collapse without the plentiful supply of cheap immigrant labour. And Trump's wealthy friends with hotel chains and big agriculture interests have told him so. Cue MAGA divisions over whether the president is going soft and betraying his promises. All of which brings us to the president himself. The Iran decision is weighing heavily. He has given himself a two-week window to make his call. But to those who question his MAGA bona fides he more or less said this: I invented it, I decide what it means – and anyway my base loves me more than it ever did. All of which could lead one to the uncomfortable conclusion, that the real battle for Trump is at home, not Iran.
Sky News AU
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Sky News AU
‘Knuckleheads' Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz roasted for being ‘clueless' on Iran
Attorney Elica Le Bon claims the debate between conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and US Republican Senator Ted Cruz on Iran was 'comedic relief'. 'You have two knuckleheads debating each other about a country that none of them knows anything about,' Ms Le Bon told Sky News Senior Reporter Caroline Marcus. 'The most clueless people are claiming to represent what Iranian people want, and neither of them are even interested in listening to what Iranian people want. 'They just have absolutely no knowledge or interest in what's really going on in Iran.'
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump says supporters are 'more in love' with him than ever, as involvement in Iran roils MAGA world
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday downplayed any notion that his supporters are cooling on him amid uncertainty over whether he will order a U.S. strike on Iran, addressing a rift between some of his most vocal MAGA backers and national security conservatives. 'My supporters are more in love with me today, and I'm more in love with them, more than they even were at election time where we had a total landslide,' Trump told reporters as a new flagpole was erected at the White House, with machinery whirring in the background. 'I may have some people that are a little bit unhappy now, but I have some people that are very happy, and I have people outside of the base that can't believe that this is happening, they're so happy,' he said. Trump huddled Tuesday in the Situation Room with his national security team, and on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the Pentagon was providing Trump with possible options on Iran but would not say whether the military was planning to assist with Israeli strikes. 'I may do it, I may not do it,' Trump said Wednesday, in the exchange with reporters. 'I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do.' Trump's comments came as some longtime defenders of his America First mantra are calling him out for weighing a greater U.S. role in the conflict between Israel and Iran after a week of deadly strikes and counterstrikes. Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, commentator Tucker Carlson and conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk are among those reminding their own devoted audiences of Trump's 2024 promises to resist overseas military involvement. Here's a look at the others who have chimed in: Steve Bannon Shortly before Trump spoke, Steve Bannon, one of his 2016 campaign's top advisers, told an audience in Washington that bitter feelings over Iraq were a driving force for Trump's first presidential candidacy and the MAGA movement, saying that 'one of the core tenets is no forever wars' for Trump's base. But Bannon — a longtime Trump ally who served a four-month sentence for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021 — went on to suggest that Trump will maintain loyalty from his base no matter what. On Wednesday, Bannon acknowledged that while he and others will argue against military intervention until the end, 'the MAGA movement will back Trump.' Ultimately, Bannon said that Trump will have to make the case to the American people if he wants to get involved in Iran — and he hasn't done that yet. 'We don't like it. Maybe we hate it," Bannon said, predicting what the MAGA response would be. "But, you know, we'll get on board.' Alex Jones The far-right conspiracy theorist and Infowars host on Wednesday posted on social media a side-by-side of Trump's official presidential headshot, and an AI-generated composite of Trump and former President George W. Bush, whom Trump and many of his allies have long disparaged for involving the United States in the so-called 'forever wars' in Iraq and Afghanistan. Writing 'What you voted for' above Trump's image and 'What you got' above the composite, Jones added: 'I hope this is not the case…' Tucker Carlson The commentator's rhetoric toward Trump has been increasingly critical, with the longtime supporter — who headlined large rallies with the Republican during the 2024 campaign — this week suggesting that the president's posture was breaking his pledge to keep the United States out of new foreign entanglements. Trump clapped back at Carlson on social media, calling him 'kooky.' During an event at the White House later Wednesday, Trump said that Carlson had 'called and apologized' for calling him out, saying Carlson 'is a nice guy.' On Wednesday, his conversation with GOP Texas Sen. Ted Cruz laid bare the divides among many Republicans. The two sparred for two hours over a variety of issues, primarily potential U.S. involvement in Iran, and Carlson accusing Cruz of placing too much emphasis on protecting Israel in his foreign policy worldview. 'You don't know anything about Iran,' Carlson said to Cruz, after the senator said he didn't know Iran's population, or its ethnic composition. 'You're a senator who's calling for the overthrow of a government, and you don't know anything about the country.' ___ Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina, and can be reached at
The Wire
5 hours ago
- Politics
- The Wire
As Trump Mulls Iran Intervention, MAGA Is Angry
Weeks after his with Elon Musk, US president Donald Trump is now facing unprecedented backlash from other erstwhile admirers – influential figures in the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. Trump has invited the wrath of his most reliable support bastion over a likely US military intervention in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran. On Tuesday, Trump made an early exit from the G7 meeting in Canada, leading to many including the French president Emmanuel Macron to speculate that he is working on a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. However, Trump had other plans. He and said that he's working on something even bigger. The same day Trump announced on his Truth Social account that 'we have total control over Tehran's skies.' In a series of follow-up posts, Trump demanded a ' total surrender ' from Tehran whose ten million residents he had told to leave the city a day earlier. He also said that the plan to assassinate Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei was not off the table. On Wednesday, however, he seemed to backtrack slightly, making his stand ambiguous. 'I may do it. I may not…Nobody knows what I am going to do,' he said at a White House event. And yesterday (June 19), he said that he will decide in two weeks. But Trump's initial plan of directly getting involved in Iran militarily and then the eventual suspense over the course of his actions haven't gone down well with many in his own support base – popular traditionalist influencers and media figures who had rallied behind his MAGA politics. Conservative influencer and author Charlie Kirk wrote on X, 'No issue currently divides the right as much as foreign policy.' Kirks suspects that a US intervention in Iraq would cause a massive rift among MAGA. It could 'disrupt our momentum and our insanely successful Presidency,' he wrote. Consider what Trump's former campaign strategist Steve Bannon told Tucker Carlson on the Bannon War Room podcast to contextualise why MAGA – a term that has also come to mean his support base – is upset with Trump. Bannon said the three prominent promises from Trump in the run-up to his election were to 'stop the forever wars, seal the border and deport the illegal aliens invading our country, and redo commercial deals around trade and bring back high value manufacturing jobs.' He added that all three promises are being broken. Carlson has been even more unrelenting. His defiant opposition to an American military intervention in Iran is receiving tens of millions of views and is slowly turning into a headache for Trump who called Carlson '' in a post on Truth Social and later said, 'I don't know what Tucker Carlson is saying. Let him go get a television network and say it so that people can watch.' , 'The real divide isn't between people who support Israel and people who support Iran or the Palestinians. The real divide is between those who casually encourage violence, and those who seek to prevent it – between warmongers and peacemakers. Who are the warmongers? They would include anyone who's calling Donald Trump today to demand air strikes and other direct US military involvement in a war with Iran.' Carlson's most significant intervention till now is his viral takedown of Senator Ted Cruz. In an interview on the Tucker Carlson Network, he asked Ted Cruz, a staunch supporter of US intervention, to point out the ethnic mix of Tehran. The senator had no answers. He asked Cruz the total population of Iran. Cruz couldn't answer this as well. At one point, Tucker mocked a rather clueless Cruz for saying the US is bound by the Bible to protect Israel to which Carlson sarcastically asked if the Biblical reference to Israel is the same as the modern Israeli state run by Netanyahu. 'Yes,' Cruz replied. Carlson also asked Cruz if he agreed that Iran was going to assassinate Trump to which Cruz replied, 'Yes, but they don't have good hitmen.' Carlson received flak from Trump and other influential MAGA supporters like influencer Laura Loomer who said, 'The Muslim Brotherhood, HAMAS, and foreign lobbyists are now all defending @TuckerCarlson and Iran…You can tell a lot about a man by the people who come to his defense and the company he keeps.' She accused Carlson of being funded by Qatar, a charge Carlson's team called a lie. She threatened to snitch on influencers criticising Trump and personally deliver such screenshots to the president. But Carlson has received support from many MAGA influencers. Alex Jones, the host of the infamous show InfoWars wrote, "Trump attacking @TuckerCarlson for not supporting a new WORLD WAR is not something any sane person should support! This is the stuff NIGHTMARES are MADE of…' Podcaster Theo Von who has hosted Trump on his show and 'anti-woke' YouTuber Candace Owens have spoken against intervention too. Von said that Israel 'cannot be trusted." Owens said, 'the same people say Iran can't have a nuke because they are religious fundamentalists are the same people who hold the heretical belief that we must support Israel's non-stop campaign of murder, blackmail, land theft bombing & starvation of the innocent because 'God will bless those who bless the 1948 created nation of Israel'.' In a separate post on X alleging US involvement in Iran, she wrote, 'Aaron Bushnell self-immolated back in 2024 to alert the American people to the fact that our military was involved in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. He committed suicide to reveal that truth.' Although there are republican senators like Majorie Green Taylor, Josh Hawley, and Rand Paul who've disapproved of Trump's intervention in Iran, the backlash from influencers is more significant for two reasons. First, Trump came to power arguing that the big media – TV and newspapers – is compromised and serves the agenda of 'forever wars.' Musk has repeatedly said he bought X to break the cycle of media control. In the run-up to his election, Trump appeared on several podcasts and online spaces with the same people who are now criticising him. While the likes of Loomer have defended Trump, more and more loyalists are jumping ship over Iran. Interestingly, Musk has neither expressed support nor opposed Trump's comments this time. But his old tweets against wars and US intervention in West Asia have resurfaced. This week US vice-president J.D. Vance announced to his four million followers on X that he's moving to Bluesky, X's rival platform in the US, which Vance said 'has become the place to go for common-sense political discussion and analysis.' Earlier, in a long post on X, Vance defended Trump and said that he's shown great restraint. He said, 'Having seen this up close and personal, I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people's goals. Whatever he does, that is his focus.' Replying to Vance, the former UFC champ and MAGA supporter Sean Strickland , 'We want you to run for president. If you go through with this and tow () the line, you will lose all support.' Amid escalating opposition and the fear of yet another 'forever war' spilling across West Asia, Trump has backed down from his initial suggestion of a likely US military intervention in Iran. However, can the possibility of a US intervention still be ruled out? It's hard to predict what happens next but we'll get the answers soon. The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
