Whether he wants it or not, chatter about Tucker Carlson running for president in 2028 won’t go away.Carlson has reiterated that he has no desire to run for president himself, but his allies see him as the leader of the increasingly loud pro-MAGA but anti-President Donald Trump lane.Then, after telling the Columbia Journalism Review last month that he hopes to “help build a third party,” Carlson on Aug. 5 announced a 10-point platform for that would-be entity. Carlson did so in an episode of his eponymous podcast, which has been seen more than 1.5 million times on X and had almost 700,000 views on YouTube.
The episode came after he hosted pro-MAGA, anti-Trump acolytes at his Maine cabin in early August, including former Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), and one-time Trump administration aide Joe Kent, who stepped down as Trump’s counterterrorism chief in March over the Iran war.The trio implored Carlson to run for president, according to Kent during an Aug. 5 episode of The Young Turks.“I’d say all of us at one point in time told Tucker he needs to run, and Tucker’s been pretty public that he’s not going to run,” Kent told host Cenk Uygur. “So we all made our pitch to Tucker as to why he should run, and hopefully he wakes up one day and says he’s going to run. I fully support that.”Carlson did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment, but American Conservative executive director Curt Mills endorsed a potential Carlson presidential campaign. And a Carlson presidential bid would be more likely if the 2028 Republican field includes Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who built a foreign policy hawk reputation during 14 years as a GOP senator from Florida, while subsuming his own views to the president’s during Trump’s second, nonconsecutive term.A Carlson presidential run likely wouldn’t happen if Trump backs Vice President JD Vance, reportedly a skeptic of the Iran war, for the 2028 Republican nod, Mills added.“I do not believe he will run against JD Vance,” Mills said in an interview. “I think Carlson would likely only run himself if Trump did something as rash and establishment-minded as endorsing Rubio over Vance.”That seems unlikely about a year and a half ahead of the early 2028 Republican primaries and caucuses. The Washington Post recently reported that Trump told donors in the White House last month that, “At the end of the day, we need to elect JD.”Though Trump, on Aug. 6, demurred from backing his vice president, Rubio — a vanquished 2016 Republican presidential primary foe — or anybody else at this early stage.“No, no,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Thursday. “I think he’s great, but we’re way too early to even be thinking about that.”Challenges of running a third party campaign
