How Is Tucker Carlson More Antiwar Than Leading Democrats?

The party is ceding the issue to Trump’s critics on the right, inviting disaster in the 2028 presidential election.

In an interview with The New York Times last week, Tucker Carlson, once a Trump stalwart, called President Trump’s war with Iran “the single most foolish thing any American president has ever done.” The conservative podcaster no doubt was being intentionally hyperbolic, as his followers expect; it’s hard to argue that this military misadventure already qualifies as a more foolish decision than those that led to the Vietnam and Iraq wars. But Carlson, emphasizing his moral opposition to the war, contended that the administration had been pressured into it by Israel and argued that it would hurt U.S. interests for generations to come—and on those points, he’s correct.

Carlson isn’t the only one on the right speaking this way. Before he was killed, Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk warned Trump against war in Iran and was critical of Israel’s war in Gaza. On the more normie side of MAGA world, podcaster Theo Von has been speaking out against the war with Iran, often with visible emotion and distress at the killing of children there. No matter what you think of these characters otherwise—and Carlson is a loathsome scoundrel, to be clear—the crescendo of voices like theirs on the right should serve as a warning to the Democratic Party not to ignore or sideline its own antiwar leaders.

After all, Carlson’s antiwar opinions are shared by many across the political spectrum. Multiple recent polls have found that the Iran war is just as unpopular as the nadirs of the Iraq and the Vietnam wars, with around 60 percent of Americans saying the decision to use military force was a mistake—including one in five Republicans. Relatedly, Israel’s war against Gaza has caused a historically significant shift: More Americans now view Israel unfavorably than favorably, including 57 percent of Republican voters under age 49.

“The real remaining strong pro-Israel constituency is over-50 Republicans,” Matt Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International........

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