Tucker Shuns Trump, Apologizes for 'Misleading' Voters

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1:27the main sort of financial cable news outlet to talk about the economy, maybe try to boost confidence. But here's what happened. Trump instead committed a major gap. This is one of those nonpartisan gaps. It doesn't matter whether you lean left or right or whether you ever voted for Trump. This is one of those universal gaffes where you take something that everyone says is a problem, rising gas prices and inflation, something he ran against, and he dismissed it as so many peanuts. I said, fellas, I got a little bad news for you. I'm going to put a little wrinkle in your numbers. Why, sir? We're going down to a place called Iran.

2:02I said, yeah, it's going to hurt the market, and it's going to drive up the price of oil and whatever it is. But that's peanuts. That's peanuts. Imagine that you live in a place where you have to drive to pick up your kids or go to work or do anything else, and your budget is now out of whack or you're underwater this month because of the president's choice to attack Iran, something he never explained that many people oppose. That's not peanuts to the people living through it. Trump's energy secretary and Fed chair also testifying today. They don't have a lot of good things to say about this economy.

2:38We were proud to have gasoline prices below$2 a gallon earlier this year. And we look forward to getting them back there. What are they right now? Just over$4. And what is diesel? Diesel's over$5. It's closer to six in my state. It's over eight in California. It went on like that. As Jay-Z memorably said, men lie, women lie, numbers don't. And even on Capitol Hill, Republicans run the committees, they run a lot of who gets to come and how those conversations go, the numbers were cropping back up. The numbers don't lie. The numbers show soaring inflation. President Trump said that gas prices are, quote, not very high and, quote, we're having some fake inflation because of the fuel.

3:35Do you think the gas prices going up 20 percent is fake inflation? Senator, the gas prices like beef prices, eggs, milk and the rest, they move. And when they move in the wrong direction, American people are hurting by it. There's no question about it. That's right. American people feel it. It doesn't it's not fake to them. It's money that they don't have in their pocket. It's very real. It's not peanuts. And as you see, some Trump officials, especially under oath, are stuck talking about this reality. I told you the public has spoken and they continue to speak against Trump, against second term Trump.

4:11Sometimes our words become very narrow. We say Donald Trump and you get a picture in your head. Maybe you're thinking of him from 2016. Maybe you're thinking of him during COVID. Maybe you're thinking of him now. Well, if you never liked him, fine. Then that's what you think of. But a heck of a lot of Americans have given him a chance. He was running about 49 % as recently as November 24. That's also a fact. And a lot of those folks are done with him. Because when you say second-term Trump, Iran-war Trump, prices keep going up and he dismisses your concerns as peanuts Trump, well, take a look at the numbers that don't lie.

4:4536 % job approval is abysmal. He's hit a second-term low. Washington Post reporting on Democrats seeing an opening. Midterm upsets in districts where Trump won safely that were MAGA turf. They think they can flip it. And that's not all. I want to show you something that you have to see to believe. I'm always transparent with you. We have this sound. I might play it more than once tonight. Okay, that's on purpose. but take in the sight of one of the greatest MAGA voices ever to grace your TV screen because he got big on Fox, Tucker Carlson, who also continues to be a big part of what we hear is the MAGA podosphere, the digital space.

5:24He kind of has been able to walk both of those paths with media success, if you want to call it that. And he actively campaigned for Donald Trump in 24 because having left Fox. There was no more standards or rules holding him back. And here is what Tucker Carlson has to say. Not that, oh, I disagree with Trump on some things like the high prices in the war. Not that maybe the Republican Party should look to someone else in the future. That's a lot of the half criticism we hear. No. I want you to know tonight, Tucker, Carlson is apologizing for ever helping to elect Donald Trump. We're implicated in this for sure.

6:01Yes. It's not enough to say, well, I changed my mind. Or like, oh, this is bad. I'm out. You and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now. I do think it's like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences. You know, 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. That's all I'll say. Tucker is sorry. And he's sorry not only that he campaigned for Trump, but that, as he says, if it was misleading, because how could you accurately sell this thing? That was itself not intentional. There's a lot there we might have to unpack.

6:43I want to bring in our experts tonight, Alex Wagner, MSNOW Senior Political Analyst. She's the host of Runaway Country and Crooked Media. Alex has just won a Webby Award for her Trump Land podcast, which covered those first eventful hundred days. So congratulations to you. We are somewhat biased and like you and work with you, but it's a real external award. We're very proud. We didn't give you the award, so congrats. Thank you. It was a ridiculously complicated and Herculean effort, and I stand behind the achievements of others. Well, there you go. Teamwork in journalism. And refreshing our table here is Morris Katz.

7:16He's a political strategist who worked on the very successful and at times controversial Mom Donnie New York City mayoral campaign. Not an exaggeration to say you are a new young voice. Thanks for having me. Said the old man. With no awards. I have no awards. Well, there's time. There's time. So, Alex, we landed on Tucker. Yeah. Your reaction to Tucker Carlson saying, I'm sorry I helped elect Trump. I mean, I guess it's welcome if overdue. Pardon me for being a little cynical about the mea culpa, Ari. This is someone who witnessed Trump's stage and foment an insurrection at the Capitol and still went and campaigned for the man.

7:57Like, did you not think his narcissism was malignant in early January of 2021? Because I sure did. Like, here was a man that clearly was going to stop at nothing, including tearing down our own democracy to regain power. So the idea that it's just dawned on him that this man's moral compass may not be pointing in the right direction and he may not be operating with the most strategic manual is like maybe a little bit late and maybe a little bit not as genuine as I wish it was at the same time. Once people finally have, you know, shall we call it a come to Jesus moment, clarity, mental clarity.

8:35Come to AI Jesus, but again. Come to AI Jesus. Come to the actual Jesus. Come to the doctor. Jesus. Come to the doctor who looks like Jesus. Come to the Red Cross doctor who, no, don't go to that. Right. Don't go to that. Jesus. Go to the real, go to someone who's going to offer your soul a pathway forward. Right. And I feel like it stopped making sense at a certain point, but I did it. Go ahead. We're just like trying to get back to a meme and we can't find our way there. But I do think it feels, I know this is hard for me to say, but it feels like the apology is genuine. And I also don't know that you can find your way back to supporting Trump once you have had that sort of emotional, sort of almost therapy-like session with his brother on his own podcast, right?

9:16I mean, this to me, I think, is a more significant break in MAGA world than certainly Trump would like to acknowledge, though I don't think it should be making Democrats think that Tucker Carlson is going to go out on the campaign trail for them just yet. Well, Morris, it is one of those moments. You remember when Cronkite said Vietnam was unwinnable. Tucker's not Cronkite, and this is not Vietnam. But in our world, it is very hard to come back from this. It is Tucker putting a mark in the public record, not only that Trump is over to him, that he's sorry, and he says, quote, we're implicated.

9:54You and me and millions of us are the reason this is happening. So this is so bad, the gas prices, the war, the other problems. And he's saying it with a level of accountability that most elected Republicans or not, as someone who works in the Democratic field, how do you view it? I think that what's interesting is it's indicative of, I don't think Tucker Carlson's a leader who's gotten here on his own through, you know, late nights of deep reflection. He's a podcaster who has an audience that he needs to keep engaged. And I think what he's probably seeing is his podcast audience start to turn against the president, against this war, against this agenda, against inflation.

10:29And now he's trying to meet his audience where they are. Which means I'll let you continue. But if I if I understand that point, it's worse than it looks. It looks like one prominent pundit says, I'm done with Trump. And you're saying behind that is a digital audience of millions that have forced his hand. I mean, the entire Trump Manosphere podcast movement has turned its back away from the president. You've seen people like Theo Vaughn critical of his actions in Israel. You've seen people like Joe Rogan critical of actions around the war. you know, Dave Portnoy, critical of the economy right now.

11:02The entire kind of movement that fueled the Trump surge has walked away. And now, you know, in response to that, Tucker suddenly decided to wrestle with his conscience for the first time in his life. Well, and as you say, it may be a performative wrestling, right? And a lot of wrestling is performative. Yeah, that's the thing about wrestling. But I want to go another step deeper because I actually think this matters so much. This is our part of our lead story. what matters is the war and the gas prices and the government dealing with that. But Tucker, as a person who has drawn this line matters.

11:33And then he says, quote, it was not intentional. I'm sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional. I'm going to play the whole bite again for you guys, the whole clip. But before I do, I want to do a fact check, which is people are welcome in our civic discourse to change their mind and share their views, and he's going out of his way to do that. But when he says this was not intentional, as if these are new thoughts for him, that is false. He is lying. And I just want to add that to the record of our reporting. And we know that for a very unusual reason, which is that when he was working for Fox, the level of falsehoods that they aired led to the largest defamation settlement ever and a discovery period where we got his real-time private communications, which is rare.

12:18And that was only under the court system we have. Everyone's so cynical, nothing works. It worked there. Here's what Tucker Carlson was writing in private when he didn't know this would ever be later come to light in public. Looking at how Trump was approaching the insurrection and trying to overthrow our democracy, he said, quote, we're very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. This is a text, January 4th, 2021. It was a tense time leading up to what we later know is a violent insurrection. And then he says the thought of not having to deal with Trump. Quote, I truly can't wait.

12:50I hate him passionately. This was in 2021. Now let's look at what he claims today. We're implicated in this for sure. Yes. It's not enough to say, well, I changed my mind. Or like, oh, this is bad. I'm out. You and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now. I do think it's like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences. you know, will 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. That's all I'll say. But he had hated Donald Trump and privately confided years before he went to push for his reelection that he looked forward to not having to do this.

13:36So how does that add to the record tonight? Well, I mean, if you go back, I think it's so important that you remind us of the text messages where Tucker truly expressed his feelings about Donald Trump and then basically got back on the bandwagon when it was ideologically and politically and financially convenient for him, right? And we have witnessed Trump lie to the American public. We have witnessed Trump's paramilitary army effectively murder American civilians. I mean, where was, he has launched tariffs that are such an embarrassment that this week the Department of the Treasury had to open up a website to return the money to small businesses across the country,$200 billion, a massive, massive mistake.

14:20I mean, everything this administration has touched has either withered or been revealed to be, I mean, I can't use the language that I want to on this family program, but, you know, it is, they are worthless. But Tucker hated him, he hated him passionately. He hated him passionately, but then was campaigning for his re-election five days before, you know, election day in 2024. I mean, this is a person who is, I mean, I think the reason that Tucker's so tortured by this is because I think he sees a similar psychology in Trump, the opportunism and the mendacity as a sort of calling card. At the same time, you know, he sees the reality that Americans across the country are seeing, which is gas,$5 a gallon.

15:01And that number's not going to go down until 2027, maybe. I mean, the economic stewardship, the broken promises, the fake Jesus memes. I mean, all of this is such a rejection of sort of if there was anything that was sellable in the Trump platform, he has thrown it out the window. And so what are people like Tucker Carlson left to hold on to? Nothing. And so they have to issue statements like that. Yeah, they have to issue these statements. They have to hope that their audience, which sees itself as, you know, do your own research and look into it. I mean, that's the part of the discourse on the pods.

15:33And I don't say it strictly sarcastically. There are some pods that dig into stuff. It's great. And there are others where you go, do your own research. I hate him in 21. So it can't be that you hated him, but then you honestly, genuinely sold him and now you're wrestling with it. I mean, you said that there's this larger reckoning and I want to show there's more podcasters and more people on the right than just Tucker. So we actually have our shortest break, 90 seconds, and then I'm going to show what Megyn Kelly and others are saying. We'll be back with Alex and Morris in 90.

16:10We're back with our colleague Alex Wagner and Mom Donnie, veteran Morris Katz. Other podcasters have been going from the right against Trump. Take a look. What American is this helping?

16:27Besides the war, the industrial war complex, I don't understand. That's what our president's up to, and it's baffling. We're supposed to just sit here and love this crap. It's just poll numbers go straight down. All the polls show the Republicans are going to lose the midterms in seven months by a landslide. A disaster. A total and complete disaster. I think there's a lot of frustration with President Trump right now. Obviously, the left hates him. But you've got 80 percent of independents who are against this war, who I don't think are enjoying his little parlor games.

17:01I mean, I'm just fascinated and excited to see what Megyn Kelly believes next week. But for the rest of the group, I think it is a massive exodus because it's a bunch of people and their audiences who are lied to by Donald Trump. And the same people who voted for Donald Trump because he said he would end forever wars, because he would clean up Washington, because he would release the Epstein files, and because he would tackle inflation, have now seen a president cover up the Epstein files, start a new endless war, and costs soaring. And Alex mentioned it might be another year until prices go down.

17:32Even if they go down, I feel like they've betrayed their fundamental promise of I care about you. I'm going to fight for you. And that can't be taken back. That's gone now. And to add numbers, gas prices, you ask people, well, how did we get here? We have a lot of debates. COVID was one where you had a whole split on what it was and where it was going. I mean, we lived through that. It's not always this united. 65 % of the public says Trump caused the gas price. Now, if you polled economists, you might get 98%. But that 65, Alex, is a lot of people who statistically would be conservative. Well, and can I just say, it's not COVID where we're debating what the truth is.

18:13Like gas prices are what gas prices are. Like you destroy refineries and storage facilities and oil gas fields, they have taken 10 % of the world's oil supply offline. It's just shut down. The energy secretary, who, by the way, was not consulted on this war, is like, this ain't coming back up till next year. They know the truth. And Americans aren't going to be duped by Trump saying this doesn't matter. It's no problem. The straits open or everything's normal. Like, as a matter of political strategy, what you would want to do, I would assume as a leader, is inure your people, get them sort of ready and primed to understand that gas prices are going to stay high.

18:52He didn't do that before the war. He's not doing it during the war. And now he's telegraphing, anybody who says gas prices are going to remain high is wrong. Like, how does that help? That's just going to make people feel further cheated by this administration. Right, and that's why we've covered this a bit, but it's really a key part of the second term and why I do think it feels different than the first. A lot of conservatives and MAGA voters today sound like liberals in the first term. Can you believe this? Megyn Kelly says his antics are no good. Don't make a mistake worse by lying about it.

19:22Right? They've now echoed those talking points. There's a little bit of a different tone and energy, but you get that. Democrats do see opportunities here. I've got a double question for you on the way out. They're aiming for midterm upsets. They're looking at MAGA areas. They think, quote, expanding the map will put pressure on Republicans to then spend in races that other years would be safe, which will also have a cascading boost on swing states. I'm paraphrasing some post-reporting. So two-part question. One, what is the right strategy, in your view, as someone who's been associated with the new wave of the Democratic Party?

19:52And two, although you're not, you know, strictly only a Mom Donnie person, you worked on this campaign, and we're hearing this week from certain rich or business New Yorkers who say, look, he's demagoguing the rich again without results. Your response to both those issues? I think on the first one, Democrats are going to have and incredible midterms. And I'll say, I think, you know, six months ago, people would have said it was impossible for Democrats to take back the Senate. I think we are going to take back the Senate and it might not even be by one. You see a Senate win. I see a Senate win.

20:24I see a path to 53 or 54 Senate teams. By taking what, Ohio and Alaska? Yeah, Alaska, Ohio, Nebraska. Some of the places the tariffs have hit hardest. Nebraska and Iowa are in play. We have Sherrod Brown in, you know, Ohio, Peltola in Alaska. The recruitment's been great. Tal Rico in Texas. It's a really exciting slate of candidates. And I think the thing that's going to determine how much we can expand here is, are we able to take back these voters? And are we able to the kind of Manosphere podcast groups? It's not enough for Tucker to just go out and turn on Trump. Are those listeners going to come to us because they see us as the party that's going to end the wars and that's going to tackle inflation, that's going to care about their issues?

21:01And if we can be a disciplined party taking on corruption, taking on forever wars and tackling economic greed and income inequality, we can win. And I think that's, you know, decent segue to your second question. That's exactly what we're seeing a model for in New York City, where we're seeing a leader and a mayor who's bold, who's willing to use every tool at his disposal to make government address an affordability crisis. And so we're asking the wealthiest New Yorkers to pay a little bit more and not even, you know, people who have second homes in New York worth a value of more than$5 million.

21:33The idea that doing that will create some kind of exodus is not backed by math. And more importantly, I think we have enough wealth in this city to be able to guarantee a better life for everyone. And that's the vision the mayor is laying out. And he's delivered universal child care. He's covered up more potholes than any mayor in this amount of time. He's paved more roads than any mayor in this amount of time. And we're seeing that when we make the wealthy pay their fair share and when we use government not as a tool to enrich our family members and start wars that, you know, enrich our son-in-laws, we can actually make regular people's lives better.

22:03There you have it. And we're reminded how the mayor sounds because, you know, you sound a little bit like him. Yeah, where did it come from? Morris Katz on all the questions. Thank you, Alex Wagner. Always good to see you. Coming up tonight, MS now has exclusive reporting on the ICE backlash. We also have the admiral who actually oversaw that bin Laden raid. Going to give us some strategic insights on what we're doing in Iran. But up next, critics say that Pam Bondi's replacement of the DOJ is actually taking all the wrong lessons, even though there was enough failure that Trump fired her and the DHS chief and more.

22:36We have one of the all-time greatest DOJ veterans next.

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