MAGA Media Battle Erupts: Tucker Carlson & Mark Levin on Iran War

A dis­pute between Tuck­er Carl­son and Mark Levin over the Iran war has exposed deep divi­sions with­in con­ser­v­a­tive media over Trump’s for­eign pol­i­cy direc­tion. On June 6, 2025, Respon­si­ble State­craft report­ed that Carl­son launched a scathing attack on Levin after the talk show host vis­it­ed the White House to lob­by for mil­i­tary action against Iran, with Carl­son denounc­ing neo­con­ser­v­a­tive claims about Iran’s nuclear pro­gram as fab­ri­cat­ed jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for regime change war. The arti­cle begins:

Five months into Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s sec­ond term, spring is look­ing like win­ter for the neo­con­ser­v­a­tives. This might be best gauged right now look­ing at the back and forth war between con­ser­v­a­tive media giants, Tuck­er Carl­son and Mark Levin. When Trump’s spe­cial envoy to the Mid­dle East Steve Witkoff said in an inter­view in May that, “the neo­con ele­ment believes that war is the only way to solve things,” Levin took offense.

Read more: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/tucker-carlson/

Key Points

• Carl­son accused Levin of hav­ing “no plans to fight in this or any oth­er war” while demand­ing Amer­i­can troops attack Iran based on fab­ri­cat­ed nuclear weapons claims.
• The dis­pute began when Levin called Trump envoy Steve Witkoff an anti-Semi­te for crit­i­ciz­ing neo­con­ser­v­a­tives, despite Witkoff him­self being Jew­ish, accord­ing to Carlson.
• Carl­son’s X post attack­ing Lev­in’s war advo­ca­cy received over 5.4 mil­lion views and sup­port from Con­gress­man Ro Khan­na and for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Gaetz.
• Quin­cy Insti­tute’s Tri­ta Par­si praised Carl­son for address­ing the “deal-killing demand” of zero ura­ni­um enrich­ment that neo­con­ser­v­a­tives use to pre­vent diplo­mat­ic solutions.

Tucker Carlson, MAGA, and the Iran War: How GNCA Tensions Shape U.S. Policy

Tuck­er Carl­son has become a piv­otal fig­ure in the ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional dynam­ics link­ing the MAGA move­ment, the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA), and the cur­rent U.S. debate over war with Iran. His recent inter­view with Ukrain­ian-Russ­ian oli­garch Vadim Novin­sky exem­pli­fies how West­ern con­ser­v­a­tive influ­encers are lever­aged to laun­der Krem­lin nar­ra­tives through reli­gious and nation­al­ist rhetoric, a tac­tic that aligns with the GNCA’s broad­er rejec­tion of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy and sup­port for author­i­tar­i­an mod­els. At events such as CPAC Hun­gary 2023, Carlson’s praise of lead­ers like Vik­tor Orbán and his ampli­fi­ca­tion of anti-glob­al­ist mes­sag­ing have rein­forced transat­lantic ties between U.S. and Euro­pean far-right move­ments, which Rus­sia seeks to steer as part of its infor­ma­tion war­fare strategy.

With­in the MAGA coali­tion, Carlson’s out­spo­ken oppo­si­tion to U.S. mil­i­tary involve­ment in the Iran-Israel con­flict has exposed deep frac­tures, as he and allies like Steve Ban­non pub­licly chal­lenge Trump’s for­eign pol­i­cy, warn­ing that esca­la­tion could “end Trump’s pres­i­den­cy” and under­mine the “Amer­i­ca First” agen­da. This rift is fur­ther high­light­ed by Carlson’s crit­i­cism of Trump’s sup­port for Israeli mil­i­tary actions, which he frames as a betray­al of the movement’s iso­la­tion­ist roots and a capit­u­la­tion to “war­mon­gers” with­in the con­ser­v­a­tive estab­lish­ment. Exter­nal report­ing con­firms that Russ­ian state media has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ampli­fied Carlson’s cri­tiques of U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy, view­ing him as a valu­able con­duit for under­min­ing West­ern uni­ty and legit­imiz­ing Moscow’s worldview.

Mean­while, the GNCA’s oper­a­tional ambi­tions, as seen in Russia’s attempts to gain lead­er­ship, remain entan­gled with these ide­o­log­i­cal bat­tles, as Amer­i­can and Euro­pean nation­al­ists debate the future direc­tion of the move­ment amid esca­lat­ing glob­al crises.

Exter­nal References:

1. Tuck­er Carl­son and Steve Ban­non Lead MAGA Resis­tance to Iran War

2. MAGA infight­ing over Iran con­flict plunges Trump’s move­ment into disarray

3. Trump swipes at Tuck­er Carl­son over Israel-Iran criticism

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.