Sorry Doesn't Cut It

"I want to say I'm sorry for misleading people."

Those words came from Tucker Carlson—once the most prominent media personality in the MAGA movement—on his podcast this week. He called Trump's war in Iran "the single biggest mistake" by a U.S. president in his lifetime. It sounds like a reckoning. It might even be genuine. But here's the question worth sitting with: does it matter?

The Apology Tour

Carlson isn't alone. Alex Jones, who spent years amplifying Trump and falsely claimed the Sandy Hook massacre was staged with "crisis actor" parents, declared he now "hates" the president, calling him "a disgusting husk of a former person." Conservative intellectual Sohrab Ahmari, who argued in 2022 that Trump was "the only candidate" who recognized the establishment's warmongering, now writes that Trump's "mad-king governance is exhausting for Americans and the world"—and bitterly adds, "Bring back Hillary." Joe Rogan, whose 3-hour Trump interview reached tens of millions before the 2024 election, last month called Trump supporters "really weird, fucking uninteresting, unintelligent people."

The timing is hard to ignore. As Trump's Iran strikes draw public backlash and approval ratings slide, these figures are pivoting—loudly, emotionally, and in ways that are generating significant media attention for themselves.

What makes Carlson's case particularly striking is what journalist Jason Zengerle reveals in his new biography, Hated by All the Right People. Carlson privately despised Trump for years. After the 2020 election, he texted colleagues: "I hate him passionately." Fox News lawsuit documents later made public showed him writing, "There isn't really an upside to Trump." He reportedly told people he voted for Kanye West in 2020. And yet, after being fired from Fox, he reconciled with Trump, advised him to pick J.D. Vance as running mate, and spoke at his rallies.

This wasn't a man who was fooled. It was a man who chose.

The Pattern Goes Back Further

Zengerle traces this pattern to Iraq. In the early 2000s, Carlson had private reservations about the war but suppressed them to be a "good team player" for the right. Afterward, he said he'd gone "against my own instincts in supporting it. It's something I'll never do again. Never."

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He did it again. With the same president he privately called a disaster.

The proposition that figures like Carlson, Rogan, and Ahmari sell their audiences is specific: I see more clearly than the mainstream press. I have better judgment. I have access. Trust me over them. That was the entire value proposition. If their most consequential political position—backing Trump in 2024—was a mistake they now regret, the proposition collapses. You don't get to be the trusted alternative to institutional media and then say "I was wrong about the biggest thing" and retain the same standing.

The "Strange New Respect" Problem

Some liberals are welcoming these defections. Jon Favreau of Pod Save America offered something like praise for Carlson's turn. The logic is pragmatic: if the goal is pulling Trump voters away from him, you need messengers they trust.

It's an understandable impulse, but a flawed one. Carlson's criticism of Trump continues to be laced with antisemitism and other bigotries. More practically, as Carlson has moved against Trump, his own popularity has dropped faster than the president's—suggesting he may no longer be the conduit to MAGA audiences that liberals imagine.

There's also a more principled objection. Creating space for ordinary Trump voters to reconsider doesn't require rehabilitating the prominent figures who mobilized them. These are different categories. Many voters were genuinely misled—by Trump's antiwar rhetoric, by credulous mainstream coverage, and yes, by media personalities who vouched for him. Those voters deserve understanding. The personalities who knew better and vouched for him anyway deserve something else.

Carlson himself put it plainly: "It's not enough to say, 'Well, I changed my mind.'" He's right. The question he didn't answer is what would be enough.

What Accountability Actually Looks Like

Media accountability is genuinely hard to enforce. There's no licensing board for pundits, no professional body to sanction a commentator who misleads millions. The market is supposed to handle it—audiences stop watching, advertisers leave, platforms shrink. Whether that mechanism is working here remains to be seen. The White House reportedly hosted Rogan for a visit just last Saturday, suggesting the administration sees value in repairing that relationship regardless.

What's clear is that the apology itself is not accountability. It is, at best, a precondition for it. Accountability would look like sustained silence, or a genuine reckoning with the structural incentives—the tribal loyalty, the audience capture, the financial rewards—that led these figures to say publicly what they didn't believe privately. None of them have offered that.