During an April 20, 2026, episode of “The Tucker Carlson Show,” the combative podcaster issued a striking mea culpa for his role in returning Donald Trump to the White House, telling viewers he was sorry for misleading them and warning that the guilt would stay with him indefinitely.
“I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional,” Carlson declared while sitting down with his younger brother Buckley, whom the family calls “Uncle Buck” and who previously worked as a Trump speechwriter.
The 56-year-old former Fox News host said the moment required wrestling with his conscience. “I do think it’s like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences,” he stated. “You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time.”
Both brothers acknowledged they had ignored red flags about the president’s character. “Was this always the plan? You don’t want to be a conspiracy nut, but clearly, there were signs of low character,” Carlson said. “We knew that. But there are tons of people of low character who outperform it.”
The apology comes amid a growing rift between Trump and prominent MAGA figures over Operation Epic Fury, the 38-day U.S.-Israeli air campaign against Iran that ran from Feb. 28 to April 7, 2026. The military operation killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and demolished more than 85% of Iran’s defense industrial base before ending with a ceasefire.
Carlson has described the campaign as “absolutely disgusting and evil” and condemned it as a betrayal of supporters who backed Trump to avoid foreign entanglements. He blasted Trump’s Easter social media threat against Iran as “vile on every level” and accused the administration of waging war solely to benefit Israel.
Buckley Carlson went even harder during Monday’s podcast, labeling Trump an “out of control, megalomaniacal, destructive president” and floating the idea that Congress should “consider” the 25th Amendment.
Tucker Carlson refused to dodge his own accountability, pointing directly at himself and his brother as bearing responsibility for where the country stands. “You and I and everyone else who supported him, you wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him, I mean, we’re implicated in this for sure,” Carlson told Buckley. “It’s not enough to say, ‘Well, I changed my mind,’ or like, ‘This is bad. I’m out.’ It’s like, in very small ways, but in real ways, you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now.”
President Trump responded with characteristic fury in a 485-word Truth Social post from April 9, where he attacked Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones as “stupid people” with “low IQs.” Trump called Carlson “a broken man” who “couldn’t even finish college” and was “never the same” after Fox News terminated his show, suggesting the podcaster should “see a good psychiatrist.”
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle responded to questions about Carlson’s podcast apology by simply sharing a link to that same Truth Social post.
But this is not the first time Carlson has privately expressed doubts about Trump. Text messages exposed during the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case revealed that Carlson wrote “I hate him (Trump) passionately” just two days before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack and called him “a demonic force, a destroyer,” on the day of the assault itself.
Fox News paid $787.5 million to settle that lawsuit. Carlson’s program was dropped from the network days afterward. Despite those private messages, he launched a podcast, endorsed Trump in 2024 and actively campaigned for his election.
The hosts of The View offered no sympathy for Carlson’s apparent change of heart. Sara Haines accused him of being willing to “literally do, say anything for money, for clicks, for power. That man just needs to disappear.” Joy Behar dismissed his apology as “what they call liar’s remorse.”
A late March poll from UMass Lowell found Carlson’s favorability rating among Republicans had plummeted to 31%. The podcast episode featuring his apology has accumulated more than 500,000 views.
Carlson is part of a broader wave of Trump critics emerging from the MAGA movement. Alex Jones, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Joe Rogan, and Candace Owens have all publicly criticized the president to varying degrees over the Iran war and other matters. But Carlson stands alone in taking such sweeping personal responsibility for enabling Trump’s return to office.