Once a Trump cheerleader, the former Fox News host turned podcaster has broken with the administration over the Iran war
2-MIN READ2-MINMeredith ChenPublished: 9:00pm, 3 Jul 2026High-profile conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s split with President Donald Trump and the Republican Party will jeopardise the party’s prospects in the US midterm elections and intensify the quarrel over its identity and direction, according to an official Chinese think tank.The former Fox News host has repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction with the current administration, in particular its decision to go to war with Iran.In an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review published on Wednesday, the podcast host said that he planned to help launch a new political party but did not plan to run as a candidate.
00:59Trump thanks China’s Xi, Russia’s Putin for being ‘neutral’ in Iran warCarlson’s break with the Republican Party marks one of the most symbolic rifts within the American right in Trump’s second term, according to the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), a think tank under China’s top intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security.It was an “inevitable outcome” of mounting tensions within the conservative movement during Trump’s second term, and a microcosm of the party’s widening internal divide, a CICIR article published on Thursday said.
“When its once-staunchest media standard-bearer turns and walks away, the Republican Party may be facing more than the fate of a single election – it may need to reckon with the very beliefs and direction of the coalition itself,” wrote Qu Shuiqing and Li Chupei of CICIR’s Institute of American Studies.
Trump’s handling of the Iran war and the economy continue to divide the conservative movement.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned from her Georgia congressional seat earlier this year, echoed Carlson’s break soon after, saying he was “not the only one” who was done supporting a party that “betrays its voters and country”.
