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What Trump and Tucker Carlson Have in Common

Carlson has broken with Trump largely over the war in Iran. But on Ukraine and immigration, the two speak very much the same language.

Republican presidential nominee and former president Donald Trump shakes hands with Tucker Carlson at the conclusion of a conversation during Carlson’s Live Tour at the Desert Diamond Arena on October 31, 2024.

Earlier this month, Tucker Carlson performed a miracle: In a podcast conversation with the United Kingdom politician Jacob Rees-Mogg, a hard-right figure who was one of the architects of Brexit and who has been outspoken in his criticism of immigration, Carlson made Rees-Mogg appear both reasonable and moderate.

The two began sparring first over support for Ukraine, with Carlson coming up with a series of rationales for Russia’s war that could have come straight from a Kremlin talking-points memo, ridiculing Western governments for their ongoing support of Ukraine. From there, he moved to defending Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939, mocking the UK’s decision to go to war against the Third Reich, and declaring that it wouldn’t have been such a bad thing if the Germans had emerged victorious from the conflict. He argued that mass immigration today is a far bigger threat to the UK’s survival than were the Nazis and accused successive British governments of abandoning their obligations by not sending the military in to repel the “invasion” of immigrants arriving from across the English Channel.

One can, in this interview, see Rees-Mogg physically recoil in horror as Carlson picks up steam, and then gird himself to give the podcaster a history lesson and to issue what ended up being a quite stirring defense of the necessity to defeat Hitlerism.

Carlson has, these days, broken with his onetime BFF Trump, largely over the war in Iran. But on Ukraine and immigration, the two speak very much the same language. Both see immigrants as invaders and want to train military firepower on poor, non-white, non-Christian migrants who have the temerity to dream of a better life. In Trump’s case, he is presiding over ICE operations that, increasingly,........

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