The episode came after he hosted pro-MAGA, anti-Trump acolytes at his Maine cabin in early August, including former Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), and one-time Trump administration aide Joe Kent, who stepped down as Trump’s counterterrorism chief in March over the Iran war.

The trio implored Carlson to run for president, according to Kent during an Aug. 5 episode of The Young Turks.

“I’d say all of us at one point in time told Tucker he needs to run, and Tucker’s been pretty public that he’s not going to run,” Kent told host Cenk Uygur. “So we all made our pitch to Tucker as to why he should run, and hopefully he wakes up one day and says he’s going to run. I fully support that.”

Carlson did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment, but American Conservative executive director Curt Mills endorsed a potential Carlson presidential campaign. And a Carlson presidential bid would be more likely if the 2028 Republican field includes Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who built a foreign policy hawk reputation during 14 years as a GOP senator from Florida, while subsuming his own views to the president’s during Trump’s second, nonconsecutive term.

A Carlson presidential run likely wouldn’t happen if Trump backs Vice President JD Vance, reportedly a skeptic of the Iran war, for the 2028 Republican nod, Mills added.

“I do not believe he will run against JD Vance,” Mills said in an interview. “I think Carlson would likely only run himself if Trump did something as rash and establishment-minded as endorsing Rubio over Vance.”

That seems unlikely about a year and a half ahead of the early 2028 Republican primaries and caucuses. The Washington Post recently reported that Trump told donors in the White House last month that, “At the end of the day, we need to elect JD.”

Though Trump, on Aug. 6, demurred from backing his vice president, Rubio — a vanquished 2016 Republican presidential primary foe — or anybody else at this early stage.

“No, no,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Thursday. “I think he’s great, but we’re way too early to even be thinking about that.”

Challenges of running a third party campaign

While Carlson supporters discuss how to get him into the 2028 presidential race, the reality of running outside the two-party system is daunting, Mills said.

Carlson, a Fox News host until 2023, would be unlikely to “win the general election as a member of a third party,” considering he would not have immediate ballot access or political party infrastructure.

“Carlson is really smart, so he also knows that. So it would be a different kind of move if he did,” Mills said. “It would be a callback to Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot’s runs, in that case.”

Regardless of the logistics, Mills argued that “there is clearly a constituency for Tucker Carlson in the United States,” with “exact details to come.”

A Republican strategist granted anonymity to speak candidly disagreed, contending the idea of an anti-Trump MAGA lane in a prospective 2028 election was wishful thinking.

“There’s no such thing as ‘anti-Trump MAGA,’” the strategist told the Washington Examiner. “Trump is MAGA, and anyone who believes an anti-Trump MAGA candidate is viable spends way too much time online.”

Of Carlson’s 2028 prospects specifically, the source said, “The MAGA base still stands firmly in President Trump’s corner. No chance in hell.”

That has not stopped Carlson from amplifying his 10-point platform, summarizing his points as what “America should be, and probably has been in the past, but certainly should be.”

Carlson’s points include what he calls fairness, sovereignty, productivity, beauty, health, honesty, optimism, wisdom, decency, and unity. Carlson used his 90-minute podcast to directly and indirectly criticize Trump and his administration, particularly regarding the war in Iran, U.S. foreign policy toward Israel and Gaza, and the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

“Lying is bad, and unless you continue to say that, in fact, it’s an unacceptable, disqualifying sin in a leader,” he said, citing Trump’s insistence that Iran’s most significant nuclear enrichment facilities were “completely and totally obliterated” last year. “We do not have that posture with our leaders. We allow them to lie and to penalize us for lying, and that’s really the basis of a lot of the unfairness and corruption that we endure, and that has sapped the faith of most people in their government and even in their nation.”

Carlson started criticizing Trump more publicly during the administration’s first strikes against Iran as part of Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025. Carlson broke more forcefully with Trump over Operation Epic Fury, the start of the Iran war in late February.

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“You, and I, and everyone else who supported him — you wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him — we were implicated in this for sure,” Carlson told his brother Buckley on his podcast. “We’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional.”

Trump, who complained when Fox News pushed out Carlson, has responded by calling him “kooky” and quipping that he should get himself another cable television network show.

Naomi Lim (@naomitlim) is a White House reporter at the Washington Examiner.