Tucker Carlson Makes His Biggest Break From Trump Yet Amid Huge Fight

Donald Trump appears to have finally lost one of his most influential supporters.

Ex–Fox News host Tucker Carlson disavowed the president Monday night during an interview with his brother, Republican operative and speechwriter Buckley Carlson, telling his audience that he was “sorry for misleading people” and that he regretted supporting the MAGA leader over the last decade.

“You wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him. I mean, we’re implicated in this, for sure,” Carlson said to his brother on The Tucker Carlson Show. “It’s not enough to say, ‘Well I changed my mind,’ or like, ‘Oh 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.

“So I do think it’s like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences. You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people, and it was not intentional. That’s all I’ll say.”

Carlson was once the largest figure in conservative media, ranking head and shoulders above his competitors during his primetime evening slot at Fox. But his sympathies for Trump after the 2020 election—and his penchant for demeaning women and minorities—cost him his throne. Carlson was fired by the network in 2023, shortly after Fox settled a historic $787.5 million lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for spreading baseless conspiracies that the company had rigged the election in favor of Joe Biden.

Trump has broken up with several major MAGA acolytes in recent weeks over their unfavorable responses to the Iran war, including Alex Jones, Candace Owens, and another famous former Fox News host, Megyn Kelly.

The president boosted a video on his Truth Social account over the weekend that urged viewers to stop questioning his decisions. His disavowed media supporters—Carlson included—were plastered all over the clip, framed as individuals that need to “shut the fuck up.” It was the second time that Trump had shared the video; he previously posted it to his account in January. Nonetheless, it has taken months of repeat public abuse for his supporters to question their loyalties.

President Donald Trump’s addiction to social media posting is hurting negotiations with Iran.

Talks last weekend seemed to be going well, with a deal close to being reached. But then, Trump went online and claimed that Iran had agreed to specific provisions, such as handing over all of its enriched uranium, making similar comments to reporters over the phone. Iranian negotiators then publicly denied those claims and announced they weren’t preparing for more talks, saying that the U.S. was unserious.

Unnamed Trump administration officials told CNN that Trump’s posts and statements to the media have had a negative effect on efforts to end the war with Iran, fueling mistrust from the Iranian negotiators.

“The Iranians didn’t appreciate POTUS negotiating through social media and making it appear as if they had signed off on issues they hadn’t yet agreed to, and ones that aren’t popular with their people back home,” one person who was familiar with the negotiations told the news outlet.

Trump’s remarks in the press didn’t help, either. To Bloomberg, he claimed that Iran had agreed to an “unlimited” suspension of its nuclear program, and he told CBS News that Iran had “agreed to everything” and would remove its enriched uranium with help from the U.S. In an interview with Axios, he said, “I think we will get a deal in the next day or two,” with another meeting “probably” coming on the weekend.

Whether any of these details were true or not, airing them out in public before an agreement was reached was not wise, and probably gave the Iranian government less of a reason to take the U.S. in good faith. But don’t expect the president to change anytime soon. On Tuesday, he threatened to resume bombing Iran, just as Vice President JD Vance was expected to leave for peace talks in Pakistan.

“I expect to be bombing. The military is raring to go,” Trump said on CNBC, setting a deadline for a peace deal to be reached in the next 24 hours.

Donald Trump’s scandal-plagued labor secretary resigned Monday, the White House announced.

“Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer will be leaving the Administration to take a position in the private sector. She has done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices, and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives,” White House spokesman Steven Cheung said on X.

Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling will take over as acting department head, according to Cheung.

Chavez-DeRemer’s tenure was brief but tumultuous. The secretary was accused of having an affair with a member of her security detail, asking staffers to buy her alcohol at all hours of the day, and misusing government funds—including to throw herself a birthday party.

Chavez-DeRemer also reportedly specifically asked younger female staffers to keep in touch with her husband and father. People familiar with an investigation by the department’s inspector general told The New York Times that Chavez-DeRemer told the young women to “pay attention” to the men.

Her husband was banned from Labor Department grounds after he allegedly assaulted two female staffers.

The writing may have been on the wall for Chavez-DeRemer. After unceremoniously firing ex–Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump was apparently on the warpath against his own Cabinet. An administration official anonymously told Politico at the start of the month that Trump was “very angry” with his advisers and was looking to move some of them around or even ax them entirely.

Chavez-DeRemer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were at risk of losing their jobs “imminently,” three anonymous sources told Politico at the time.

As of publication, Chavez-DeRemer has not commented on her resignation. She is now the third woman to hit Trump’s chopping block, after Bondi and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Chavez-DeRemer was also one of the few people of color in Trump’s Cabinet.

Both Bondi and Noem were replaced by men: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has taken over the Justice Department for the time being, and former Senator Markwayne Mullin was sworn in as the Homeland Security chief in March.

This story has been updated.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles summoned dozens of Republican political consultants from across the country for a meeting Monday at the Waldorf Astoria, a person familiar with the plan told Politico’s Playbook.

The gathering of Republican operatives comes as the White House is developing its strategy and aligning the broader party apparatus to face November’s midterm elections amid Donald Trump’s rather unpopular “excursion” to the Middle East.

Former deputy chief of staff James Blair, who departed the White House earlier this month in order to run the president’s political operation, was also involved in organizing the meeting at the Waldorf.

“Taken together, the sessions underscore growing urgency inside the White House about the midterms and concerns around energy prices and cost of living exacerbated by the Iran war,” Politico reported.

Trump’s overall approval rating has hit a new low of just 37 percent, according to an NBC News poll Monday. Two-thirds of Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of inflation and the Iran conflict, which has upended global trade and sent energy prices skyrocketing.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright admitted Sunday that gas prices may not come back down until next year, leaving Republicans in a tough spot when it comes to seeking reelection in November. It seems that strategists in the White House are aware that there’s only so much spin they can do.

“The rhetoric around this stuff matters way less than the reality,” one person close to the White House told Politico’s Dasha Burns Monday. “It either will be or it won’t be. If we don’t see the $3 gallon of gas, we’re gonna get killed.”

Republicans are fighting over expelling some of their own members of Congress.

Representative Cory Mills, under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of assaulting women, soliciting sex workers, lying about his military service, and profiting from federal contracts as a member of Congress, has drafted a resolution to expel his colleague, Representative Nancy Mace, from Congress after she tried to expel him and three other members of Congress last week.

A source told NOTUS, which first reported the news, that the resolution would highlight an incident at Charleston International Airport in South Carolina, last year, in which Mace yelled at TSA agents and security officers, calling them “fucking incompetent.”

The resolution could bring up any other number of Mace’s scandals. The South Carolina representative is also facing her own House Ethics Committee investigation over allegations that she collected $12,000 in congressional reimbursement funds that she wasn’t eligible for, and ordered her staff to buy her alcohol late at night, clean her house, and promote her on forums as one of the “hottest women in Congress.”

The congresswoman took to X after news of Mills’s resolution broke, posting that he “lied about his military service, has been accused of beating women, has a restraining order against him, and has allegedly been stuffing his own pockets with federal contracts while sitting in Congress. As a survivor, I will always stand up and right the wrongs of others. He is only coming after me because he knows he’s next.”

Mace last week also targeted Democrat Eric Swalwell and Republican Tony Gonzalez, who ended up resigning rather than face expulsion resolutions from Congress. Swalwell faced numerous allegations of sexual assault and misconduct, while Gonzalez sent sexually explicit messages to two aides and had an affair with one who later committed suicide.

The fourth representative in Mace’s crosshairs is Democratic Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who faces an expulsion vote this week over allegedly misusing Federal Emergency Management Agency funds.

For now, the infighting in the Republican caucus undermines their already razor-thin control of the House and makes it appear that petty squabbling is taking precedence over serious ethical issues.