Tucker Carlson and the "anti-war" Right

Only a Masochist Would Meme About Ukraine Part IV

Mar 01, 2026

The anti-war movement got an unlikely voice in February 2022: Tucker Carlson, a blue blood FOX news host who had been a cable news hack most of his career. He had a been a promoter of the Iraq war in 2003 and now did routine segments about the “crisis on the border” as FOX programming dictates. If someone tuned into FOX news in 2002 they would see Bill O’Reilly doing nearly the same crisis at the border story as Carlson in 2022. When open borders became a genuine problem under the Biden administration liberals didn’t take it seriously at first because FOX had been crying wolf for decades.

But something had changed in his worldview by 2022 and he had adopted libertarian ideas that America should be a non-interventionist country. He, like many conservatives, realized he had been wrong about Iraq and he did not want to see America become involved in another quagmire conflict. And he saw America’s massive funding of military bases and military actions abroad as wasteful spending, while the American quality of life continues to degrade due to America not investing properly in its infrastructure and inflation making home ownership by the middle class almost impossible to achieve. These are core beliefs of the Make America Great Again movement.

Which brings us to Ukraine. The propaganda leading up to the Ukraine war was relentless and the narrative of “we have to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s aggressions” was believed by the majority of Americans. This was pushed by MSNBC, CNN and most of the newscasters at FOX like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. Carlson was the dissenting voice on the networks, exposing how this was a fraud and the Ukraine conflict is really America’s proxy war against Russia. The massive amounts of taxpayer money going to fund the war was really a gift to the military industrial complex and the Ukrainian politicians who would later steal it. Eventually the “if we send money to Ukraine this helps armament factories are home,” became one of the arguments to support war with Russia.

His voice alone gave rise to the mainstreaming of the “anti-war” right (anti-war has to be in quotations because given Trump’s recent Iran bombing most people will laugh you out of the room if you call the right anti-war). This was the red-pilled MAGA crowd who – like babies born yesterday -- just figured out the media was lying to them, war is bad and the working class are getting screwed. Right-wing podcasters were starting to talk about the media and foreign policy with Noam Chomsky lingo even though they had never read Chomsky. But frequent guests Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore had, and they repeated ideas from Chomsky’s book Manufacturing Consent to Tucker Carlson, who repeated them to his audience and then suddenly the right had an anti-war movement overnight.

Republicans like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene are not great thinkers with original ideas. They were just Tucker Carlson fans who were able to turn his ideas into legislative action. Marco Rubio was a big supporter of the Ukraine war in the beginning, but he read the tea leaves on MAGA’s opinion on Ukraine and later changed his position – in rhetoric anyway.

And the most important mind he influenced was Donald Trump. Trump was interviewed by Carlson and told him what he wanted to hear, about how much he hated neocons like Liz Cheney and how he never wanted to repeat the warmongering Bush years. Trump promised to end the Ukraine war on day one because of Carlson. But Tucker neglected to ask Trump how he would handle it if Israel wanted him to get into a war. Like most commentors we avoided that subject entirely until over a year after October 7^th.

But before that we did have the satisfaction of Carlson calling out Zelenskyy for being the shifty-eyed track suit wearing dictator puppet that he is. And for being honest about Ukraine he got fired from FOX news. They didn’t fire him for times when he had gotten it wrong or been dishonest about other subjects – they fired him for telling the truth about Ukraine because the media must always support foreign wars no matter what.

This led to him having his own successful podcast show, and on one infamous occasion he interviewed Vladimir Putin himself. The western media cried out that he was Putin’s puppet and he should be punished for this treasonous action. It seemed like America had forgotten that major network broadcasters used to routinely interview leaders who were seen as enemies of the west. This was not treason, it was getting the other side’s perspective so you would have a more well-rounded view.

Let’s look back anti-war actions Republicans took, as compared to the capitulation to the war machine shown by liberals (see link below)

REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS AGAINST WAR WITH RUSSIA

In May 2022 Senator Rand Paul stalled a $40 billion aide package to Ukraine. Paul pointed out that prior to the March invasion the U.S. had already sent Ukraine six billion in military aide since 2014, and as this was the second aid package in two months it summed to $60 billion. This would make Ukraine the largest recipient of U.S. aid in the past two decades. The aid would be equal to the entire military budget of Russia, he said. It exceeded the amount collected on the gas tax to build roads and bridges, equals the entire state department budget and exceeds the budget for homeland security. And America does not have this cash, he added, it will have to borrow it from China, increasing the deficit.

But if the bill were to go through, he wanted it to include an inspector general who would scrutinize and track the spending. This was an addition war hawks Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell could not abide. But why couldn’t they? With the massive amount of $40 billion you would want to track where the arms and money ended up, right? That sounds like common sense.

But no -- an inspector general clause was non-negotiable. If the money was tracked, how would the Ukrainians be able to steal the cash or sell the weapons on the black market? Ukraine is known as the most corrupt nation in Europe, and this is the biggest opportunity for thievery in the nation’s history. The Senators knew they must quietly look away because Ukrainian’s skimming off the top is just an operational cost of this particular neocon endeavor.

Proof that an inspector general was needed came in August 2022 when CBS were about to run a special titled “Arming Ukraine” about how arms sent to Ukraine were falling off the truck, so to speak, along the way. In the documentary the founder of Blue-Yellow NPO Jonas Ohman estimated “only 30%” of the arms shipped reached the front lines. Reaction to this bombshell was swift and severe. By this point Ukraine now had the power to censor American journalists, and they demanded the story be suppressed. Ministry of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba called on CBS to do an internal investigation. The special was pulled and CBS posted a retraction saying distribution had been improved.

It would have been extremely interesting to have follow-ups on this story so we could have answers to questions like what is the accurate and updated percentage of what is being stolen? Who is doing the stealing? Where do the weapons end up after they are sold on the black market? How big of a taste of the action goes to Zelenskyy himself? But no -- journalists who would accurately report this would be not allowed in Ukraine, and Ukraine no longer allows a free press.

The need for financial tracking and proof of corruption was finally exposed by the New York Times in 2025 when they reported that a former business partner of Zelenskyy had siphoned off $100 million dollars from a nuclear power plant and laundered the money to other countries. Meanwhile Zelenskyy asserted control over state run companies and sabotaged oversight so the government could spend without scrutiny. Officials were accused of embezzling funds meant for weapons purchases and buying food at inflated prices so they could pocket the difference. The most shocking thing in this article was the revelation that Ukraine has an agency empowered to fight corruption at all. The New York Times have had reporters embedded in Ukraine for the war’s entirety and yet sat on this corruption story until they were given the go-ahead to report the truth by Trump’s state department.

In March 2022 Zelenskyy declared martial law, nationalizing all TV news and banning any opposition political parties. Leaders of opposition parties were accused of treason and forced to leave the country. In December 2022 Zelenskyy passed a bill that expanded the power of Ukraine’s broadcasting council, giving it the power to regulate all media in Ukraine. The council can withdraw licenses, issues orders, inspect media facilities and sanction them for dissident speech. All media outlets must register with the government and any news organization not registered can be shut down. It can also restrict content from search engines. Criticizing the Zelenskyy government in the media can lead to jail time. Ukraine was not a safe place to be a journalist even before Zelenskyy gained power, as there were 300 cases of violence against journalists during the Euromaidan demonstrations in 2014. Now the silencing of journalists has been codified into law.

GONZALO LIRA

A memorable example of Ukrainian suppression of free speech is the case of Gonzaro Lira. Lira was a Chilean American YouTuber who had been living in Ukraine since 2014. If you look him up you will find smear pieces on him on Wikipedia and Daily Beast characterizing him as a misogynist right-wing influencer who became a delusional Russian shill. In truth he was reporting first-hand accounts of what was happening in Ukraine during the invasion on his YouTube channel. He was repeating information like death toll rates, NATO aggression, the US sabotaging peace talks, etc, as well as his opinions. There is nothing that was said on his channel -- other than some speculations -- that couldn’t be verified elsewhere. And even if he was wrong in any of his videos, people are free to be wrong if they live in a country that has free speech – which Ukraine doesn’t. In one of his videos Lira blames The Daily Beast for trying to kill him. After The Daily Beast ran a hit piece on him, they called the Ukrainian government to make them aware of his existence so something could be done about him. In April 2022 he was detained for a week by the Ukrainian SBU (Security Service of Ukraine). On May 1^st 2023 he was arrested for the crime of “justification of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” He was released on bail and placed under house arrest. He went back on YouTube with stories of how he had been tortured. Fearing for his life he ran to the Hungarian border to seek asylum. During his flight he posted videos saying this may be the last time the world ever heard from him. And it was. He later died in a Ukrainian prison, reportedly from pneumonia. The prison ignored his illness and left him to die. Upon his death, The Daily Beast ran an article celebrating his demise.

One would think that the U.S. government would attempt to release an American citizen from its ally nation. But the Biden administration did nothing. This story was only reported on by right-wing media, with Tucker Carlson calling him a political prisoner. At the same time, American journalist Evan Gershkovich was arrested in Russia on charges of espionage. The Gershkovich story was given widespread attention by mainstream media, while the Lira case was ignored.

FORCED CONSCRIPTIONS

The number one victim of this war is the working-class Ukrainian male. These men cannot get bogus exemptions and steal money while in positions of power like the Ukrainian elite. Due to high causality rates and the fact they are outnumbered six to one by the Russians, many Ukrainian men would rather not die for a U.S. backed war of attrition against Russia. This has led to high numbers fleeing to other countries or hiding indoors to avoid forced conscriptions. The territorial recruitment officers (TCK) have employed brutal tactics to conscript men, assaulting them in public and torturing them behind closed doors. They are known as people snatchers, grabbing young Ukrainian men and forcing them into black vans, only to be seen again on the front lines, and later in a coffin. This has led to a public backlash in Ukraine, demoralizing the citizenry and causing them to see the TCK as their enemies.

MATT GAETZ IS AN ANTI-WAR CRUSADER?

As was described in part II of this Ukraine series, the progressive “Squad” (also known as the capitulation caucus) quickly backed down to pressure on Ukraine peace talks and never took any meaningful steps to reach a diplomatic solution. The real peace movement in congress came from the populist right led by Rep. Matt Gaetz. Gaetz and this minority of Republicans were informed from a libertarian perspective and from watching Tucker Carlson. Now there was a split in the Republican party between traditional neoconservatives like Lindsey Graham and MAGA populists like Matt Gaetz.

In February 2023 Gaetz and ten co-sponsors, including Majorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, submitted the “Ukraine Fatigue Resolution” which called to “end its military and financial aid to Ukraine and urges all combatants to reach a peace agreement.” Some of these Republicans had been against funding since the war began. Thomas Massie, Paul Gosar and Matt Rosendale voted against Ukraine funding in March 2022. The fatigue resolution was attacked by war supporters on both sides of the aisle and ultimately failed. But at least it was a real legal resolution focused on peace. Gaetz and MTG put forth additional bill amendments in July 2023 that were voted down.

In October 2023 Gaetz boldly moved to block the election of house speaker Kevin McCarthy. Because the Republicans held a slim majority in congress, he could block the election of McCarthy with a small number of hold outs, meaning he could use his leverage to make demands. Gaetz was able to hold the speakership vote up for a week. Democrats mocked this move, saying it showed the Republicans were chaotic, divided and undisciplined -- and the move was blocking important legislation from being passed. Establishment Republicans complained bitterly on Fox News: something democratic is happening and it’s not fair!

War is waged by the degenerate “Epstein Class.”

Leftists who had been a part of the Force the Vote movement in 2021 felt vindicated that their movement would have worked if “the squad” had not chickened out at the last moment. The plan of Force the Vote was to use the progressive caucus to hold up the election of Nancy Pelosi’s speakership so they could leverage a vote on universal healthcare. The Squad eventually backed off on this plan and it never came to pass. AOC and Co. continue to be useless when it comes to getting votes on the floor for progressive policies to this day.

One of Gaetz’s top demands was related to funding for Ukraine. Gaetz accused McCarthy of making a “secret deal” with Biden to pass Ukraine funding in a separate bill. Gaetz eventually had his demands met and was able to delay Ukraine funding. He was the only U.S. politician able to do something of substance on this issue. In April 2024 he proposed an amendment to a Ukraine funding bill that would ask Ukraine to repay funds given to them so the money could be used to help build a border wall.

In the end the bipartisan war machine was able to get its many spending bills passed. But at least Gaetz had led a valiant effort to end funding and therefore push for peace. However, this is not a celebration of Gaetz as a person who, since his battles over Ukraine, has shown that he is not consistently anti-war. All reporters assigned to the Pentagon recently left in protest after they were told they must obey new restrictive reporting rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. They were replaced by a trove of right-wing influencers who would work as stenographers for whatever propaganda the Pentagon tells them and Gaetz is part of that crew. Gaetz says he supports Hegsworth’s attempts to muzzle the press and recently supported the War Department’s military and regime change actions against Venezuela.

RAGE AGAINST THE WAR MACHINE EVENT

In February 2023 an event that was mixed in attendance between people on the left and right – but more on the right – was the Rage Against the War Machine event. The event was sponsored by the libertarian party and speakers included Scott Ritter, Ron Paul, Garland Nixon, Caleb Maupin, Daniel McAdams, Nick Brana, Jimmy Dore, Max Blumenthal, Wyatt Reed, Roger Waters, Scott Horton, Tara Reade, Tulsi Gabbard and Jackson Hinkle.

A thought about Jackson Hinkle: Everybody on this list has been smeared as being a pro-Russian shill. But in Jackson Hinkle’s case it’s true – he is a Russian shill. Because Hinkle goes beyond advocating for peace over war, he thinks Russia is justified to commit acts of war and supports actions that have killed tens of thousands of people. People like Hinkle give ammunition to war mongers who want to interpret the term pro-peace as pro-Putin. Hinkle has traveled to Russia to meet leaders and allows himself to be used by Russia’s television propagandists. Hinkle and Tim Pool, who was revealed to be taking money from an organization pushing Russian interests, both discredit the movement for peace in Ukraine. Because they, unlike the virtuous peace activists Code Pink, are motivated by greed.

One of the most memorable things about the Rage Against the War Machine event was Rachel Maddow’s coverage. Who after years of spreading false conspiracy theories about Russiagate, continued to brainwash her audience with a narrative that would be similar to the one FOX news would have made against people who opposed the Iraq war in 2003. In her McCarthyite assessment, “There was a truly random rally on the mall in Washington DC . . . a rally in support of Russia I guess given all the Russian flags. At least a rally against the U.S. supporting Ukraine and trying to stand up against the Russian invasion of their country. It was a tiny event. It was small. It was a weird assemblage of Americans, there were Proud Boys there, some of the white supremacist groups you would recognize from the unite the right rally in Charlottesville a few years ago. Also represented prominently the remains of the bizarre Lyndon LaRouche cult. There were a lot of people with Russian flags and people with flags of the former Soviet Union?? Also at least one person who guest hosts for Tucker Carlson was there as a featured speaker (Tulsi Gabbard). There were anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, a lot of them, there were crypto currency promoters, it was a really weird group . . . “ Maddow hit on all the buzz words that would freak her audience out and make them hate this event. Not one interview with the attendees was in the report -- only speculation on what bizarre racist right-wingers they must be. Even though MSNBC had featured earlier a more balanced reporting on the event that included interviews, that was removed from the MSNBC website after Maddow decided to put her little twist on the story. Videos mocking Maddow did a satire version of how she would have critiqued people protesting the war in Iraq.

A year later there was a second Rage event. This time it was moved to a private location and had much more the feel of a corporate event than a grass roots movement. But it had government contacts and was able to make itself part of Donald Trump’s official agenda. Trump stated he would end the war on day one and “end the dying” – a much saner answer than was given by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

TUCKER USES TRUMP TO GET PEACE AND FAILS BIG TIME

Trump’s failed effort for peace in Ukraine is best explained in this short video:

TUCKER GROWS A PAIR ON ISRAEL

After October 7^th America got to see how anti-war the anti-war Right really were. We suddenly were reminded of the Israel exception, and both factions of the Republican party, the traditional neoconservatives and the MAGA populists both joined together to be lock-stop with Israel. The same people who complained Biden was censoring social media of the subjects of COVID and Ukraine were now totally fine with censorship on behalf of Israel. Ben Shapiro led the way for spreading Zionist propaganda. There was suddenly a whiplash of views on the two wars. When it came to Ukraine liberals supported censorship and endless war. When it came to Israel/Gaza conservatives supported censorship suppressing protestors and the brutal murdering of civilians.

Carlson knew Trump was in the pocket of Israel and was taking big campaign donations from AIPAC and Zionist billionaire Miriam Adelson. And yet because Trump told him what he wanted to hear on Ukraine he endorsed Trump’s candidacy. For almost a year after October 7^th he was silent on Gaza until the notion came up that Israel wanted to go to war with Iran. This was something he could not abide and his rhetoric toward Israel started to take the tone of his criticism of America’s policy toward Ukraine.

He now is applying his anti-war agenda in a way that resembles consistent principles and the same MAGA populists who had been against the war in Ukraine are now following him in this direction. There is a divide in the right between the Ben Shapiro / TPUSA Israel First agenda and the Tucker Carlson / Candance Owens America First agenda. Carlson has been named the “antisemite of the year” by the group StopAntisemitism, beating out his top competitor, children’s show host Ms. Rachel.

He humiliated Senator Ted Cruz in an interview, exposing him as an AIPAC bought shill who does not have the knowledge or competency to make decisions that will lead America to war with Iran.

And even more brilliantly he took apart the logic – from a Christian perspective – of Israel’s claim of a right to exist during his interview with Mike Huckabee. The specific land in the bible promised to Abraham and the chosen people from the Nile River of Egypt to the Euphrates River, which is actually most of the middle east, a land mass much larger than the current Israel. Does this mean that the Jews lay claim to the entire middle east, and has Israel attacked seven Middle Eastern countries in the past year as part of a greater Israeli project? Also, if this land is given by God to the children of Abraham then why not do DNA testing to prove they are indeed his descendants? DNA testing is illegal in Isreal because the majority of its citizens are Ashkenazi Jews whose ancestors originate from Eastern European countries. They are not genetically connected to the real estate of Israel, while many Palestinians are the true children of Abraham.

The idea of protecting Christians is a through line in his work and is one of his weaker reasons for being against the Ukraine war. He is morally outraged at how Ukraine have closed some Christian churches, and he feels American Christians have a bond with Russian Christians. This is a point that people like Jon Stewart have rightly mocked him for. Even though ultimately Stewart is wrong to promote the Ukraine war and Carlson is right to oppose it.

His attack on the foundational principles of Israel are now in the brains of right-wingers who feel betrayed that Trump has broken his promise of no new wars, that coupled with his protection of pedophiles in the Epstein case and the way he has broken the backs of the working class on behalf of the oligarchs will result in MAGA staying home on election day.

The most frustrating thing about Carlson is that he will not directly criticize Trump and still pledges his allegiance to him. He acts as if Trump has no agency, his raping of the economy and warmongering foreign policy are all because he is getting bad advice. But Trump himself is still a great guy, right? Is this because Tucker is personally connected to the most powerful people in America, many of them neocons? Or does he still think Trump is Teflon and going against him is career suicide?

I’m not sure, but at least the “anti-war right,” exists, as laughable as that is.

‘Nuff Said!

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