CNN
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As conservative radio host Clay Travis opened his mouth Tuesday night on Fox News, he was hyper-aware of the viewer-in-chief.
President Trump is “probably watching” this show, Travis said to Fox host Sean Hannity as both men urged the president to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program.
“We have to do it,” Travis said, adding, “We can’t go halfway here.”
The president’s television habits once again have serious foreign policy implications as the Trump administration weighs further US involvement in Iran.
The Israel-Iran conflict has exacerbated a deep rift in MAGA media over how the US conducts itself abroad, especially when it comes to Israel. Republican hawks are clashing with MAGA isolationists, and many of the arguments are happening on social media sites like X, as well as podcasts like Steve Bannon’s “War Room.”
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But Trump’s favorite network, Fox News, isn’t making as much room for debate. Guest after guest on Fox has played to Trump’s ego — simultaneously praising the president and pushing for US intervention through his television screen. (At one point, Fox host Kayleigh McEnany, a former Trump aide, waxed poetic about him being a Churchillian “man of action.”)
On Hannity’s show Tuesday night, weekend host Mark Levin literally screamed on-air as he depicted a battle of “good versus evil” and doubted the patriotism of the isolationist camp.
Levin’s view is dominant on Fox’s air. While some guests on Fox have warned against escalation, they’ve been few and far between, and not nearly as loud or omnipresent as Levin.
Tucker Carlson’s absence is palpable. After he was fired from Fox in 2023, Carlson built himself a digital media platform with a big megaphone on X, as he proved again Tuesday night by teasing a contentious interview with Sen. Ted Cruz.
But Carlson and his isolationist views are no longer as visible to Trump, who has an old-school, cable-centric mentality about the media.
Levin and Carlson embody the right’s competing forces on foreign policy. Levin wants regime change in Iran; Carlson wants the US to stay out of it. Both men say they are representing the “America First” MAGA movement.
Their weeks-long feud turned especially ugly last week, after Israel launched airstrikes in Iran, which in turn pulled out of scheduled nuclear talks with the US and retaliated with a series of missile strikes.
Carlson called on Trump to “drop Israel” and “let them fight their own wars.” He branded Levin, Hannity, and Fox patriarch Rupert Murdoch as “warmongers” pushing the president to join the conflict.
Levin responded by calling Carlson an antisemite and a “maggot.” He dredged up Carlson’s past criticism of Trump and questioned the former Fox star’s allegiance to the MAGA movement.
While Levin’s name-calling has been petty, the back-and-forth has serious impacts. Two weeks ago, when Trump and Levin dined together at the White House, Carlson caught wind of the meeting and immediately tweeted a denunciation of Levin “hyperventilating” about Iran’s nuclear program.
Levin’s lunch with Trump is a testament to the bombastic radio and TV host’s wide influence on the right.
Contrary to Carlson’s recent claim that “nobody watched” Levin’s weekend TV show, Levin is actually one of the most popular figures on Fox’s weekend lineup and is a regular presence on Hannity’s weekday show as well.
Hannity threw shade at Carlson on Tuesday night, though not by name, when he said Iran is “the biggest existential threat to the entire western world,” and “people that can’t seem to understand that kind of puzzle me.”
Wednesday morning’s “Fox & Friends,” another one of the president’s cherished shows, also promoted an interventionist point of view. To “people who say it’s not our fight,” host Brian Kilmeade said, “you could say that, but you’re not paying attention. Since the 1980s, they have been killing Americans.”
Then, Kilmeade threw to a video clip of Levin’s pro-war arguments from the night before.
“I’m not one that wants to get involved in things. I’m not. But we have no choice! They are our enemy!” co-host Lawrence Jones said.
This foreign policy feud has torn apart other pockets of the MAGA media world.
Far-right podcaster Candace Owens exited The Daily Wire last year after she called Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide” and openly embraced antisemitic conspiracies. The conservative media empire’s co-founder Ben Shapiro, who is adamantly pro-Israel, called Owens’ comments “disgraceful,” kicking off a battle that has since rippled throughout the extremely online right.
Some Fox shows have acknowledged the divides. “On the right we have a big difference of opinion here, but unlike the left, we are not afraid to show it,” Greg Gutfeld said Tuesday afternoon on “The Five.” However, that segment was the only direct mention of Carlson on Fox in recent days, according to a closed captioning search of the network’s coverage.
Fox is clearly more comfortable in a different mode: Ridiculing the left. “MIDEAST CONFLICT DIVIDES DEMS” read one banner on “The Ingraham Angle” Tuesday night.
Carlson has seemed bemused by Fox’s handling of the unfolding conflict, telling Bannon that his former employer is “doing what they always do — turning up the propaganda hose to full blast and trying to knock elderly Fox viewers off their feet and make them submit to a new war.”
Carlson could have been alluding to the 79-year-old president, whose Fox fixation is so well-established that CEOs and foreign leaders jockey for airtime with the hopes that Trump will see their segment.
On Monday, when a reporter asked Trump about Carlson’s comment that the president was “complicit” in Israel’s strikes on Iran, the president said he didn’t know what Carlson was saying online.
“Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen,” Trump said — a barb reflecting Carlson’s post-cable existence largely out of the president’s view.
Trump followed up later in the day, writing on Truth Social, “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that ‘IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!’”
“I’m a little kooky. I’ll concede that,” Carlson told The Free Press in response.
