Conservative firebrand Tucker Carlson took aim at President Donald Trump in the Monday edition of his show, criticizing the president for his Easter Sunday tirade against Iran and his actions during the war.
Just after 8 a.m. on Easter Sunday, the president renewed his threats against Iran on Truth Social, writing, “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!”
“Open the F----n’ Strait, you crazy b-----ds, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH!” he continued before adding “Praise be to Allah” and signing off with his name.
He followed it with a clarification of his exact deadline of Tuesday, 8 p.m. Eastern.
“The morning of Easter is a uniquely joyful and peaceful moment,” Carlson said. “And yet that peace yesterday was shattered.” He then read the president’s incendiary post in full.
“A lot of people reading that imagined, of course, this can’t be real. Did the president of the United States really just write that?” Carlson continued.
“It is real. It is maybe the most real thing this president has ever done and also the most revealing on every level. It is vile on every level,” he added, before going on to condemn the president’s threat to use the U.S. military to destroy civilian infrastructure.
“Which is to say commit a war crime,” he noted, adding, “a moral crime against the people of the country whose welfare, by the way, was one of the reasons we supposedly went into this war in the first place.”
Trump has previously claimed regime change as one of his many motivations for initiating his war with Iran, citing the Iranian government’s crackdown on dissidents and urging the Iranian people to seize the moment by overthrowing the regime.
Strikes conducted in conjunction with Israel also succeeded in killing multiple senior political leaders in the country, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
International law experts have also condemned Trump’s threats to target civilian infrastructure, with dozens signing a letter on Thursday expressing “profound concern” about his plans to target sites such as power plants.
“International law protects from attack objects indispensable to the survival of civilians, and the attacks threatened by Trump, if implemented, could entail war crimes‚” the experts wrote.
Returning to the timing of the president’s post, Carlson highlighted Iran’s large Christian population, reminding viewers that it was “their Easter too.”
“What happens when [a country] loses power? Well, people die. Babies connected to incubators die. People in hospitals die. And those are the first-level effects,” Carlson continued.
“Then people begin to starve. And then you have refugee crises. People leave the cities looking for food. And then yes, they move into other countries in the region, in Europe, in the United States.”
“You cause chaos and death, mass suffering and death when you do that,” he told his viewers. “And we have done that. We have intentionally bombed civilian infrastructure in Iran. It’s totally unacceptable. Not under the phony laws of some international body, but under moral law, God’s law, killing non-combatants, people who did nothing wrong, who didn’t choose this war, who were just people created by God, that is immoral. That will never be moral. That can never be justified. That is always wrong.”
Carlson, a staunch anti-interventionist, has previously broken ranks with the president to advocate for an “America First” position that prioritizes domestic concerns over foreign engagements. His stance—shared by former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who reposted his latest episode on X—has brought him into conflict with some of the president’s most loyal supporters, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Cruz denounced Carlson as the “single most dangerous demagogue” when discussing Carlson’s antisemitism, charging Carlson with being the “most consequential” voice responsible for the recent rise in antisemitism on the right.
The president himself has also denounced Carlson, telling ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl in March that his former ally had “lost his way.”
“I knew that a long time ago, and he’s not MAGA,” Trump told Karl.
“MAGA is saving our country. MAGA is making our country great again. MAGA is America first, and Tucker is none of those things,” he added. “And Tucker is really not smart enough to understand that.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
