Is Tucker Carlson considering a 2028 presidential run?

Politico reports that the former Fox News primetime star hosted a weekend gathering at his Maine home attended by outgoing libertarian U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, former National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent, and others, ostensibly to strategize on how to organize opposition to President Donald Trump’s war in Iran.

“We said no more foreign wars and we meant it and supported Donald Trump because he made that promise. But he’s betrayed us all,” Greene declared. “Our commitment is America First for all Americans, right, left, and center. The movement has begun.”

Massie lost the Republican primary for his current seat earlier this year after mounting hostilities between himself and Trump; former Trump loyalist Greene opted to resign amid speculation the president would not back her for governor of Georgia (which she denies). 

Kent, who resigned from the Trump administration in March to protest intervention in Iran, shed the most light on what transpired in the meeting, openly framing the goal as the development of a new political party that would run its own candidates.

“There’s a lot more nuts-and-bolts work that needs to be done there,” he said. “Running as a third-party candidate is challenging. Not impossible, but it is very challenging. But that’s kind of the consensus that we came to, that the current system just simply doesn’t work, and we have to find something new to save our country.”

Kent admitted this party would largely ignore domestic policy questions (such as abortion, economics, gender policies, education, healthcare, and gun rights) in favor of fixating on what unites the disaffected personalities: “foreign wars” and “Israel dictating our foreign policy.”

He added that the gathering was also united on Carlson himself as their presidential nominee, though the host has repeatedly denied any interest in running. “Hopefully he wakes up one day and Tucker says he’s going to run,” Kent said.

After decades as a mainstream conservative media figure, Carlson rose to superstardom in 2017 when he became the permanent host in the Fox News primetime slot once held by Bill O’Reilly, finding great success by channeling what was perceived as neglected common sense in an authentic and entertaining way.

In April 2023, however, Fox fired Carlson without explanation, prompting a flurry of speculation. Unconfirmed theories ranging from a costly defamation suit by voting machine company Dominion which Fox had settled just days before (despite Carlson himself having doubted claims that Dominion was involved in “stealing” the 2020 election) and controversial claims about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to behind-the-scenes bad blood between himself and other Fox personnel. 

Carlson quickly shifted to his current internet-based show, distributed across X, YouTube, and podcasting platforms, finding success in shifting his focus to long-form interviews with inflammatory figures such as Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, and Vladimir Putin, as well as a heavy emphasis on foreign affairs and Israel in particular.

Carlson also ingratiated himself in Trump’s inner circle, establishing a rapport with presidential son Don Jr., speaking frequently with Trump himself by phone and at the White House, and reportedly even playing a key role in persuading Trump to select JD Vance as his running mate. Carlson endorsed Trump for the GOP’s 2024 nomination in December 2023, reversing his 2020 declarations in private text messages that he “passionately” hated Trump. But while Trump’s original 2016 campaign railed against the perceived failures and excesses of the Bush administration’s War on Terror, he was never a dogmatic isolationist, leading to his and Carlson’s eventual break when Trump’s more hawkish instincts manifested in the Iran War.

However, Carlson remains strongly supportive of Vance, declaring recently that “if Vance were president, we would not be at war with Iran.” Vance is publicly supportive of his boss’s Iran policy, but widely believed to be less interventionist in his own policy preferences – which, when paired with Vance’s frontrunner status for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, casts further doubt on Carlson running (though Vance’s lead role in the unsuccessful peace agreement between America and Iran could affect his chances at the nomination, depending on how the situation is ultimately resolved).

Sixty-one percent of Americans disapprove of the Trump administration’s handling of Iran, fueled by a repeating pattern of Trump ordering missile strikes, calling off further action while teasing impending “deals,” then resuming action when the deals fail to materialize. Many suspect the president’s team wants to extricate itself from the situation but lacks a clear strategic understanding of how.

But whether that discontent will translate to a bigger political appetite for Carlson and company’s foreign policy prescriptions remains in question. Support for isolationism has ebbed and flowed alongside the perceived success or failure of interventions such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, but has never enjoyed true mainstream status. Earlier this year, Gallup found that 80 percent of voters consider “preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction” a “very important” goal, alongside broad majority support for “defending our allies’ security,” “promoting and defending human rights in other countries,” and “protecting weaker nations against foreign aggression.”