This summer is going to be one for the history books. Israel is almost single-handedly doing the dirty work of saving Western civilization from the consequences of its own inept cowardice. In under two years, the Iranian theocracy has lost its proxy terrorist armies, its military leadership, its top nuclear scientists, and control of its own skies. Out of its three main uranium-enriching locations, only Fordow has not yet been knocked out of commission. Its own citizens take to the streets to thank Israel.
Yet for all the actual news about this actual war, there seems to be an unusual abundance of fake news about a fake war. This fake war is, of course, the supposed rift, schism, or split in the MAGA movement that’s supposedly turning all Republican guns inward. This war is “tearing apart MAGA,” shrieks Gabe Kaminsky at the Free Press, who bemoans (or celebrates?) the supposed “civil war that has engulfed the MAGA movement.”
As many commentators have already pointed out, there is no civil war among Republicans. There isn’t even much of a disagreement. Around 85% of Republicans agree with Trump that Iran can never be allowed to produce a nuclear weapon, and 69% of those Republicans would support using the military to prevent this. These numbers were garnered the day before Israel launched its surprise attack on Iran, when it wasn’t known that Iran would crumble so quickly.
This is an 80/20 issue for Trump. If ever there was a time to help complete the neutering of one of the most dangerous terrorist entities and near-nuclear threats without having to put a single boot on the ground, this is it. And if we’re too timid to act during such a rare window of opportunity presenting such a lopsided possibility of tremendous reward versus extremely low risk, then we’re too timid to act at all, and we don’t deserve to enjoy the privileges befitting a superpower.
The most rudimentary lessons of history teach that Trump won’t be starting a “forever” war. He’ll be ending one, or at least on one of its many fronts. This “forever” war has been raging since the 7th century, when a schizophrenic child rapist declared himself a prophet and began massacring his way across entire regions of unbelievers. The United States has been a participant in this forever war since 1979, when we unconditionally surrendered our sovereignty and citizens to the ayatollahs. Notwithstanding the Crusades and a couple of months in the fall of 2001, we’ve been in constant retreat ever since.
Students of history also understand that the friskier adherents of Islam are bent not on regional hegemony, but on world domination. False comfort is taken in the idea that if we just stopped engaging in the world and pulled back to within our own borders, the world will leave us alone. But while you might not be interested in jihad, jihad is interested in you. We didn’t have a single “boot on the ground” in Afghanistan on the morning of September 11, 2001. And yet they still murdered us.
If you oppose this point of view, I respect your right to disagree. In and of itself, I don’t think your stance makes you anti-MAGA any more than mine does. I’ve heard your arguments, and while I find many of them fair and reasonable, at the end of the day, I’ve weighed what I consider to be all the costs and benefits, and I simply disagree. A disagreement is not a "civil war."
My opinion is just that and nothing more. And on an issue as consequential as war or even limited military strikes, there absolutely should be some disagreement and debate. I’m not a purist, and you don’t need to agree with me on 100% of the issues for us to be friends. The tent of the Republican Party is big enough for both of us.
But what I have absolutely no respect nor tolerance for is the disingenuous, revisionist, conspiracy peddling, and fear-mongering of Tucker Carlson and his incel army of internet goblins. Carlson isn’t an honest broker, merely asking genuine questions. He has an agenda, and he formulates his questions to gaslight the impression that any disagreement with him is proof of “warmongering” at the behest of — well, you know.
Tucker is an extremely intelligent person. I don’t buy for a second that he actually doubts the Holocaust took place. I don’t buy for a second that he thinks the conditions of daily life in Russia far exceed ours. And I don’t buy for a second that he legitimately worries about America getting sucked into another Middle East quagmire, one that might result in the end of America as we know it.
Crudely put, he’s too smart to be peddling this garbage. He doesn’t believe any of it.
But he wants you to.
Why? Because he is driven not by naïve youthful idealism, vapid groupthink, or even cowardice presenting as pacifism. It’s darker than that. And someone trying to connect the dots to his true motives might reasonably assume that his opposition to the world’s only Jewish state, his apologetics for Nazi Germany, his rabid abhorrence of Vladimir Zelensky (who happens to be Jewish), his random criticism of Jewish CEOs, his suggestion that Jeffrey Epstein was running a blackmail operation for Mossad, and his bizarre blaming of Israel for Europe’s existential crisis with mass Muslim immigration are indicative of an ancient and infamous hatred. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…
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And his appeal lies in the internal contradiction of conspiracy theories, i.e., they can never be disproven. Any evidence presented to the contrary is dismissed as further proof of just what lengths the supposed Zionist man behind the curtain will go to brainwash and enslave you.
Give the Left some credit: At least they’re up-front and honest about their antisemitism.
But if you’re on the right and you’re cool with all the Jew-bashing, you should also know that Tucker doesn’t like you, either. Or Trump. He never has. In a series of texts, he railed that Trump had nothing to show for the first four years of office and that he “hate[s] him passionately.” Tucker didn't write that this past week. That was in January 2021.
To Tucker’s credit, he hasn’t claimed these texts were a Mossad sabotage operation. Yet.
But as I said, Tucker is very smart. He has no intention of burning his access-to-the-president bridge in a fit of pique, the way Elon Musk did last month. After a warning shot from Trump himself (Trump called him “Kooky Tucker Carlson”), Tucker did what any master of optics would do. Rather than doubling down, he performed a tactical retreat. He gave an inconsequential concession (“I’m a little kooky, I’ll concede that.”) and in the same breath embraced an otherwise negative connotation as a badge of honor. You know, just like the patriots did in our War of Independence when the Brits derided them as “Yankees.”
He then called Trump to personally apologize for his public attacks on him.
So bold.
So principled.
So “I’m-so-sorry-please-don’t-disown-me-in-public.”
Much like his keffiyehed bedfellows on the campus Left, Tucker tucks tail and runs at the first sign of tangible pushback. He’s been reduced to posting his alleged “gotcha” moment because Sen. Ted Cruz didn’t know the exact population of Iran off the top of his head. His days of cosplaying as kingmaker are waning, if not entirely over.
For everyone on the right who opposes American intervention in Iran for sincere and patriotic reasons, Tucker is not your guy. For him, losing access to either President Trump or to the vast majority of Republicans who support him is a bigger loss than the millions of innocent American lives whom he claims Trump is herding towards Armageddon. Tucker Carlson cares about his paycheck and his influence, not you, and he would trade you and everyone you love for a steamy Putin the Firefighter calendar. Sixteen months, of course.
And as for the antisemites, don’t despair. You’ll always have Candace Owens.
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