Trump Makes Light of War; Carlson Says He Should Be Removed From Office for Threatening Nukes

Speaking with National Public Radio for a Newsmakers interview released today, podcaster Tucker Carlson recounted telling President Donald Trump not to go to war against Iran for myriad reasons.

Trump told Carlson that he was correct, Carlson remembered, and then said this: “We all die anyway.” The revelation came in yet another interview in which Carlson explained his break with Trump, having campaigned for him in 2024.

Carlson also said Trump’s Cabinet should have invoked the 25th Amendment and removed him when he threatened a nuclear attack on Iran. Trump has never threatened such an attack directly, but instead has repeatedly called for flattening the country. Most recently, he said he would “annihilate” Iran and send the nation to “hell.”

Trump: Iran War Doesn’t Matter Because We’re All Dead Anyway

Speaking to NPR’s Steve Inskeep, Carlson recalled that the Iraq War destroyed President George Bush’s presidency, and that Trump “meditated on that for 20 years.” Indeed, the disaster the Iraq War became was a key plank in Trump’s campaign in 2016, and he promised no more foreign wars in 2024.

Carlson said he spoke to Trump when he returned from Israel after his interview with U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who claimed that Israel has the right to seize the entire Middle East because God said so in the Bible.

Two days after that interview, “I was in the Oval [Office] with Trump alone, and he was annoyed that I had given Huckabee a hard time,” Carlson said. He told Trump, “Your representative to this nation just called for rearranging the Middle East and allowing Israel to take parts of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria. Like, this is a diplomatic incident.’ And so we had this whole conversation about this.”

Then Carlson moved on to the question of waging war on Iran.

“I said, ‘This war is not about Iran’s nuclear program, which you told me and the world that you eliminated back in last summer, in June,’” Carlson explained:

This war is being pushed by Israel, with three aims. One, its own regional hegemony — take Iran off the map. … They don’t have freedom of movement as long as Iran is a regional power. Two, diminishing the power of the GCC [the Gulf Cooperation Council], the six Gulf states which are a rival to Israel and are becoming this kind of Switzerland of the Middle East. … That’s bad for Israeli interests. And three, getting the U.S. out of the Middle East because we constrain their ambitions, getting our bases out, destroying our bases. Israel wants our bases out of the Middle East. 

I said this to Trump to his face in the Oval Office days before the war began.

That Carlson’s plea fell on Trump’s always deaf ears is no surprise. But Trump’s answer was truly frightening.

“He looked at me and said, ‘Yes, you’re right. But in the end, we all die anyway, so it doesn’t matter.’” Carlson continued:

That’s exactly what he said. In the end, we all die anyway. And I said to him, shocked, “But what about our kids and our grandkids and like our country?” And he goes, “Ahhhhh.” That’s a verbatim exchange. …

The goal was to get the U.S. out to diminish the GCC, and obviously to take Iran off the map and sink it into permanent internal strife, into civil war, sectarian strife, … and he said it doesn’t matter because in the end we’re all dead anyway. And I was shocked by that because it’s nihilism, and that’s the last thing any leader should display — or any person should display. It does matter. Who lives or dies does matter. The future does matter. … I have four children. 

Impeachment Necessary

Carlson also said Trump’s Cabinet should remove him from office because of his repeated comments about erasing Iran from the world map, a veiled threat to use nuclear weapons.

During his speech to the UN two days ago, Trump threatened annihilation.

“I have a big decision to make,” Trump said:

Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world?

Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?

And that wasn’t Trump’s first time threatening the mass murder of Iranians.

On April 7, he threatened to destroy the entire country and everything in it. “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” he said. Before that, on Easter Sunday, he threatened to starve the Iranian people to death and deprive them of electricity and water. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” he wrote on Truth Social:

There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F****n’ Strait, you crazy b****rds, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.

On August 16, former GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene reported that top officials had discussed using nuclear weapons against Iran.

While Trump has not directly threatened nuclear war, his threats are clear enough.

When Inskeep asked Carlson whether Trump should be impeached because of the Iran War, Carlson rightly replied that Trump won’t be impeached because top Democrats such as Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York support the war.

“He should have been removed from office immediately when he threatened nuclear war. Threatening the offensive use of nuclear weapons, which is to say threatening the destruction of humanity?” Carlson said. 

Inskeep asked, “Okay. What about the war in Iran then?”

Carlson answered:

It’s enough for me to say he should be removed from office. He should have been removed from office by his own Cabinet secretaries the moment he threatened a nuclear attack. … He should have been bundled up and taken out. 

That is a crime — there’s no greater crime than that. You think of all the people you know who go to jail for … cheating on their taxes. Here you have a guy threatening to eliminate the human race, and that’s not considered a crime? It tells you how deranged our moral scale has become. So he should be removed from office for threatening first-use nuclear strike.

NYT Interview

In a lengthy sit-down with The New York Times, Carlson explained that Trump’s starting the war with Iran ended his support for the 47th president.

He told the Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro that Trump knew how disastrous the war in Iraq had been, which was a “main reason” Carlson supported and campaigned for him.

“It was really central to my views of Trump’s candidacy and presidency,” he said:

So when it became clear in June that we were starting down this road toward a regime change with Iran, I was baffled. I was very upset. …

I thought it would be terrible for the United States, as it has been, worse even than I imagined. But I could see exactly where this was going. And [Trump] was under enormous pressure to do this, as all presidents in my lifetime have been. So we talked a lot in June. He embarked on this effort to take out Iran’s nuclear program, which is really just the opening salvo in a regime-change effort. He knew that. I told him that. Charlie Kirk told him that.