Tucker Carlson

Will Tucker Carlson Run for President? Don't Bet on It.

Third-party bids are much more fun to talk about than do. Plus, there's reason to suspect it's all a bid to boost J.D. Vance.

Matt Welch | 8.12.2026 11:17 AM

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(Marjorie Taylor Greene)

Third party/independent trial balloon season started three months early last Wednesday when the popular conspiratorial podcaster Tucker Carlson released his 10 principles for saving America, right after having been urged by a group of MAGA exiles—including Rep. Thomas Massie (R—Ky.) and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.)—to run for president.

"Both parties have colluded against the population to make their lives better and our lives worse," Carlson said, sounding very much like the guy who told the Columbia Journalism Review last month that "there's going to be a third party, and I'm going to do everything I can to bring that about."

But will he? News articles abound with anonymous Carlson confidants throwing cold water on the idea. Politico's Playbook newsletter on Monday quoted a "source close to Carlson" as saying, "He won't run against JD Vance. He will very likely run if [Donald] Trump endorses [Marco] Rubio."

As the Ohio-based political observer and critic of postliberalism Jason Hart never tires of pointing out, Tucker Carlson and Vice President J.D. Vance have an intense and productive political relationship, anchoring one major side of the Trump-succession fights that have roiled the conservative coalition since the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Carlson was one of a dozen attendees at a foundational 2019 meeting in Rockbridge, Ohio, convened by Vance and his longtime mentor Peter Thiel, that soon blossomed into "one of the most influential forces in GOP politics," according to a November 2025 Washington Post article about the collection of Silicon Valley........

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