US Politics
Tucker Carlson’s brother is latest person to get dragged into MAGA’s civil war
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Conservative commentators lit into Tucker Carlson’s brother over the weekend, the latest sign of increasingly public tensions inside the wider MAGA world.
The conflict kicked off on Saturday, when writer Eitan Fischberger, a critic of Carlson’s views on Israel, claimed on X that an upcoming episode of Tucker Carlson’s show featuring his brother, Buckley Carlson, would involve the Carlsons projecting their “unresolved daddy issues and familial psychodrama onto the American public.”
Fischberger also posted a “psychodrama bingo” drinking game for viewers to play while following the eventual episode.
Buckley Carlson responded with mockery of his own.
“So glad you will be watching, ‘Eitan!’” he wrote. “Do try and keep your clothes on…and your hands firmly on the keyboard. Can’t recall if we mentioned you specifically by name, but we sure did talk about your kind.”
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The spat soon roped in Laura Loomer, the conspiracy theorist and influential outside adviser to Trump.
“The [Turning Point USA] humiliation ritual continues. Tucker’s brother recently accused [TPUSA executive Tyler Bowyer] of being a homosexual and often tweets attacks on President Trump and his biggest Allies,” Loomer wrote. “So naturally, Tucker is having him on his show. I’m sure TPUSA will continue platforming Tucker and his associates though. Anything to not have moral clarity. Am I right?”
Buckley Carlson met this post by questioning how Loomer could have “moral clarity,” accusing her of being “a relentless and bloodthirsty cheerleader of genocide, perpetual land-theft, US-focused espionage, blackmail, and extortion,” a potential reference to her support for Israel’s war in Gaza, which some international observers have declared a genocide.
The online sparring was a microcosm of a series of fiery clashes that’ve been playing out for months within the right over the movement’s future.
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Once-prominent figures in Trump’s MAGA movement like Marjorie Taylor Greene have split from the president — and in Greene’s case, resigned from Congress altogether — accusing him of violating past promises by pursuing interventionist foreign policy and fighting to block the release of the Epstein files.
Over the fall, Tucker Carlson was involved in another intra-right battle, this time over his interview with Nick Fuentes.
The interview sparked divisions within the broader conservative movement, with some figures, like commentator Ben Shapiro, sharply criticizing Carlson, while others, like the Heritage Foundation, affirmed their affiliation with Carlson despite the backlash.
Shapiro, during a December Turning Point USA conference, tore into fellow commentators on the right like Carlson, Fuentes, and Candace Owens, blasting how a “Hitler apologist” like Fuentes could have a platform in the movement, while criticizing those spreading conspiracy theories tying Israel to the recent assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
More recently, Carlson took his fellow conservatives to task for their highly partisan response to an ICE agent fatally shooting a civilian in Minneapolis, accusing them of trying to score “political points” and failing to see Renee Good’s death “through a human lens.”
