Right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson announced in June that he was leaving the Republican Party because he was incensed at President Donald Trump for launching a war against Iran. Surprisingly, what began as a theatrical (and possibly temporary) exit from the GOP has led to a more adversarial and organized opposition. The former Fox News personality appears to be trying to help launch — or encourage the launch of — a right-wing third party. If it comes to fruition, that could be a terrible thorn in the side of Republicans.

In an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review published in July, Carlson said he was “going to help build a third party” as part of his “good-faith effort to figure out what benefits the country.” In his explanation he leaned into the same isolationism he cited when he said he was leaving the GOP.

“Your life expectancy has gone down, and the promise of your children’s lives is likely gone. No one seems to care,” he said to CJR. “It’s not even a factor. ‘What about Hamas?’ I officially don’t care about Hamas. The US government should have, as its first priority, the welfare of its own people.”

Carlson said later in the interview that on matters of finance and war, there is “a one-party state posing as a democracy, and it needs to be broken.” He also said he didn’t want to be a candidate for this party.

It’s one thing to float the possibility of creating a third party, but there are signs Carlson may be trying to make it happen. Carlson recently hosted some allies on his Maine compound: former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene; former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent; and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who made an issue of the Trump administration’s mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and, in May, lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger. Greene posted a photo of the gathering on X and wrote, “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 … The movement has begun.” 

Kent said in an interview on the “The Young Turks” show that those at Carlson’s compound were strategizing on how to organize around their antiwar cause.

“Running as a third-party candidate is challenging. Not impossible, but it is very challenging,” he said. “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.”

Zeeshan Aleem

Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.