On 19 November 2025, Tucker Carlson said this Bryan Dawson's '1819' show:
"I happen to remember the moment that everything changed for me was it was in the winter of 2003 and... someone I really liked was killed in Iraq and, the first day actually at Baghdad airport, I was a reporter covering it and so I felt an obligation to go see it. So I went and I spent some time there and what I saw bore no resemblance to what I expected at all. It was chaos... We created that chaos.
And so I knew right away that this was bad and it would not end well... That's it. It was not a particularly deep insight, but it was very strong... I just expected, you know, the US government runs this. Like my family works for the government. Like we're part of the government. We live in Washington, we're part of this whole thing... I advocated for this war. I had one of the highest rated shows on TV at the time in 2003. And I so I felt implicated by the whole thing... I carried water for Bush as he sold this war under false pretenses. So I definitely felt like responsible a little bit...
So, I'm flying back, I'll never forget this... and a friend of mine from the New York Times calls and says something like, 'what did you think of Iraq?' And I tell him and he writes this story in which I say, 'This is a disaster and I can't believe I supported this.'
So, I'm sitting on the plane flying from somewhere in Europe back to Washington and I get a text from a guy called John Podhoretz, (John Mordecai Podhoretz is the son of top Neocons, Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Editor of the political magazine 'Commentary' [Jewish orientation] since 2009, a post previously held by his father for over 30 years. Before that, Podhoretz ran the editorial page of the 'New York Post,' and was the deputy editor of 'The Weekly Standard', both of which are owned by Rupert Murdoch) who's now the editor of 'Commentary,' and he was my old editor.
I'd worked under him... and I never thought much of him at all. However, I did think we were involved in roughly the same project, which was, like, finding out what's true and then saying it out loud. And he sent me this text, or maybe email, that was like, 'I hate you. I can't believe you've gone over the other side. You're a bad person!' Attacking me personally... He hadn't been to Iraq, right? It had just started. He had not been there. I had and I was just saying what I thought, which is like, 'holy smokes, this is bad.' And he attacked me.
And I remember thinking, you know, I don't care what John Podhoretz thinks. Of course, I never have cared what John Podhoretz thinks, but I remember thinking, all this guy cares about is, like, some agenda that he won't say out loud. And anyone who gets in the way of that agenda, even if they're telling the truth, must be destroyed.
I remember thinking, boy, we are not in the same business at all... I'm not saying that I'm, like, a better person than him. All I'm saying is he had a different objective. And I started to look back on the things the stories that I had written at the behest of my editors at the Weekly Standard and other publications. And I began to realize that I had been used... They, basically, used that to take out some of their enemies and to push an agenda that they never bothered to describe to me. And that agenda was, of course, to serve the interest of Israel...
I don't work for the Israeli government. I don't want to work for the Israeli government. And if you're like using me to help the Israeli government, you should at least tell me. But they weren't. They were lying... They used me. And they always disliked me. I could always feel that... I remember thinking these guys are really kind of sinister. And I've been mad about it ever since. And I'm still mad when I think about it...
Mad, of course, not even primarily at them, but at myself for participating in this and not knowing what it was and not taking the time to figure out what it was. And and then, of course, I'm mad above all... for taking positions that are the opposite of the ones I have today...
In Washington... no one is willing to admit fault for anything. And because no one is ever punished for doing evil or lying, we keep getting farther and farther off course. So the Iraq war, clear disaster. People of good faith, including me, supported it. We were wrong. Because they won't admit that, by and large, we're off to some other war! Yeah. Under the same false pretenses, serving the same master, which is not America at all. It's the Israeli government...
I am opposed to making the same mistake again. Doing the Iraq war again. That's my bottom line concern. That's what this whole current argument is about. I said, 'no, I don't think we should have a regime change war with Iran.' Not because I love Iran. I'm a Christian, not a Shiite. But because I don't think the last time was good for America...
So they don't want to have a conversation. They refused to have a conversation about the actual aim, which is using the US military to overthrow someone else's government on behalf of another country. They don't want to have that conversation because nobody supports that. So, instead, they immediately call you a bigot because no decent person supports anti-semitism. So when they call you an anti-semite, people are like, 'well, I may agree with him on X, Y, and Z, but I'm opposed to anti-semitism.' So, it's a way of avoiding the argument and then winning a separate unrelated argument...
I've seen it so many times, including with Pat Buchanan. I participated in it with Pat Buchanan to my great shame. I apologised to his face many times. He became my friend.
I'm not doing this for any other reason other than I think it's true."
Thank you, Tucker, for all the truths you tell and the mistakes, apologetically, before the whole world, you dare to correct.
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