Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson tore into Donald Trump on Monday night, calling an Easter Sunday social media post from the U.S. president “vile on every level” and accusing him of threatening to commit a war crime.
“How dare you speak that way on Easter morning to the country?” Carlson said in a monologue on his podcast. “Who do you think you are? You’re tweeting out the f-word on Easter morning.”
On Sunday, a major Christian holiday, Trump posted a profane message on Truth Social, threatening Iran’s civilian infrastructure.
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” the president wrote on his social media platform.
Carlson’s scathing monologue underscores a widening split inside Trump’s MAGA coalition, pitting foreign policy hawks against isolationists over the Middle East.
Trump returned to power on a promise to put “America first” and pledged an end to endless foreign wars, but his attack on Iran — now into its sixth week — has unsettled some of his previous supporters.
Trump’s post “begins with a promise to use the U.S. military — our military — to destroy civilian infrastructure in another country, which is to say, to commit a war crime, a moral crime, against the people of the country whose welfare, by the way, was one of the reasons we supposedly went into this war in the first place,” Carlson said.
The conservative pundit, a former Fox News host and occasional visitor to the White House who has ramped up his criticism of Trump in recent weeks, also slammed the president for his mention of “Allah.”
“So obviously you’re mocking the religion of Iran,” he said. “OK, if you seek a religious war, that’s a good idea. But by the way, no decent person mocks other people’s religions. You may have a problem with the theology — presumably you do if it’s not your religion — and you can explain what that is. But to mock other people’s faith is to mock the idea of faith itself.”
Carlson wasn’t alone among arch-conservatives in rebuking Trump over the Easter missive.
“Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness,” ex-congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former Trump acolyte, said Sunday.
“This is not making America great again, this is evil,” she added.
Milena Wälde contributed to this report.
