President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Thursday to highlight his favorability advantage over Tucker Carlson, escalating a feud with the commentator and several other conservative media figures who have broken with him over Iran policy.
Trump's post included a Mediaite article recapping a CNN broadcast in which journalist Harry Enten shared polling data showing the president's favorability among U.S. adults at more than double Carlson's. The March YouGov poll found just 17 percent of American adults held a favorable view of Carlson, compared with 36 percent for Trump, the Washington Examiner reported.
The numbers tell a sharper story among Republican voters. A UMass Lowell poll cited by CNN showed Carlson's net favorability among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents cratered from +54 in early 2024 to +7, a collapse of more than 40 percentage points over the past year. Trump, by contrast, stood at +61 in the same survey.
That gap frames the political reality behind a public split that has consumed parts of the right for weeks.
Trump did not limit his criticism to Carlson. His post swept in Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones, all of whom have voiced opposition to the president's Iran decisions. The language was blunt, even by Trump's standards. He called Carlson "a broken man when he got fired from Fox" and said "he's never been the same," adding that Carlson should "see a good psychiatrist."
Trump also suggested he might compile a list of podcasters and conservative influencers he considers "good, bad, and somewhere in the middle." The message was clear: loyalty has a ledger, and the president intends to keep it.
The feud has roots in Trump's escalating posture toward Iran, which triggered a rupture inside his own media coalition. Carlson accused Trump of "falling" for Israel's pitch to force regime change in Iran. The Washington Times reported that the dispute was driven by Trump's threatening rhetoric about Iranian civilian infrastructure, including demands that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
As we covered when Trump first launched his broadside against Carlson, Kelly, Jones, and Owens, the president framed the critics as out of step with his base, a claim the polling now appears to support.
Carlson has not backed down. Last week he dismissed the idea that he has fallen out of the president's favor and offered a pointed response, saying he "feels sorry" for Trump as he does "for all slaves." The implication, that Trump is being controlled, was hard to miss.
When pressed on whether that characterization was accurate, Carlson said it was "not as simple" as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dictating Trump's decisions, but added that such a description "wouldn't be totally inaccurate." He also launched merchandise bearing the "low IQ" label Trump had pinned on him, turning the insult into a brand.
Earlier, Carlson had called the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran "absolutely disgusting and evil," marking a hard break from a figure who had been one of Trump's most visible allies. Trump responded by telling ABC News that Carlson had "lost his way" and was "not MAGA," as the New York Post reported.
The fallout extended beyond media figures. Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also attacked Trump over the Iran strikes, writing on X that voters supported "ZERO wars" and calling for his removal via the 25th Amendment. Trump mocked her as well.
Whatever sympathy Carlson's anti-war argument may command in certain corners, the numbers suggest Republican voters are not following him away from Trump. A 40-point favorability drop among your own party's voters is not a sign of a movement gaining traction. It is a sign of one losing it.
CNN's Harry Enten put it in plain terms. When you challenge Trump for the loyalty of the Republican base, Enten said, "to quote the movie 'Good Burger,' you go in the grinder."
That observation holds whether the challenger is a cable-news host, a podcaster, or a sitting member of Congress. Recent polling has shown Republican voters siding with Trump over Carlson and Kelly on Iran by wide margins, reinforcing a pattern that has repeated itself throughout Trump's political career: critics from within the right who bet against him tend to lose more ground than they gain.
Trump, for his part, has framed the Iran operations as necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, a position that aligns with the majority of Republican voters and with allies like Sen. Lindsey Graham, who backed the president's action.
The split also exposed a tension that has simmered beneath the surface of conservative media for years. Figures like Carlson, Kelly, Owens, and Jones built enormous audiences in part by aligning with Trump. When they broke with him on a high-stakes foreign-policy question, the audience did not follow. The Washington Times noted that Trump labeled the group "stupid people" with "low IQs", language that, whatever one thinks of its tone, reflected a president confident he held the stronger hand.
This is not the first time opponents have tried to peel Trump's coalition away from him. Democrats explored impeachment, only to see the effort fizzle. Internal Republican critics have periodically challenged Trump's direction, usually to their own political cost.
Carlson's case is instructive because he came at Trump from the right, arguing that the president had abandoned the "America First" anti-war posture that defined his 2016 campaign. That argument has a logical core. But politics is not a logic seminar. It is a trust exercise. And the polling says Republican voters trust Trump more than the commentators criticizing him.
Carlson called Trump's Easter Truth Social post "vile on every level." Trump called Carlson a broken man. Neither side is showing interest in a ceasefire.
The question now is whether any of these critics can convert their objections into lasting political influence, or whether, like so many Trump opponents before them, they will discover that the base was never really theirs to command.
In politics, the scoreboard matters more than the argument. Right now, the scoreboard is not close.
