Tucker Carlson questions if Israel is ‘blackmailing’ Trump

Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson claimed on Friday that US President Donald Trump may be facing "pressure" from Israel as he seeks to end the war with Iran, adding that the country has a history of “blackmailing” US presidents.

“Establishment media never reports this, but the Israeli government has a storied history of blackmailing U.S. presidents,” Carlson wrote in the newsletter.

“Based on the country’s past, its leaders are doubtlessly willing to push as hard as necessary to ensure the bloodshed continues. That could mean Clinton-style blackmail against Trump, or something far more morbid,” he stated.

“We do not know for sure whether that is happening,” he added.

He said Trump is facing “a level of pressure that most people cannot fathom.”

Carlson suggested such pressure could be “dark enough to make him abandon his campaign promises,” framing Trump’s recent actions as a response to external influence rather than a political shift.

The remarks came hours after Trump accused Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones of being "nut jobs, troublemakers," and having "low IQs."

"These so-called 'pundits' are losers, and they always will be! Now fake news CNN, the failing New York Times, and all of the other radical left “news” organizations, are 'hailing' them, and giving them 'positive' press for the first time in their lives. They’re not 'MAGA,' they’re losers, just trying to latch on to MAGA," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Carlson, Kelly, Owens, and Jones have long played a critical role in Trump's MAGA movement but have increasingly spoken out against his foreign policy decisions, particularly after he went to war with Iran. That decision, perhaps more than any other in his over one year in office, jeopardizes Trump's campaign pledge to keep the US out of "endless" conflicts.