Politics
REPORT: Chaos Erupts At Fox News As Murdoch, Popular Host Undermine Trump
A simmering feud between former Fox News colleagues is threatening to break out into open warfare as major media personalities begin to personally lobby President Donald Trump about his plans to negotiate a peace deal with Iran.
In an exclusive interview, Tucker Carlson reacted to news that Fox News host Mark Levin recently met with Trump and Steve Witkoff, the president’s top Middle East envoy, to urge them against seeking peace with the unstable Islamic nation. Levin, on numerous occasions, has used his show to chastise the Trump administration over its pursuit of peace.
“It’s amazing how much old people love wars,” Carlson said, a slighting reference to Levin and his war-hawk stance with respect to Iran.
Levin is not the only titan at Fox News to complain about the president’s attempt to negotiate with the ayatollahs. Fox founder Rupert Murdoch has reportedly discouraged the deal, too, with his New York Post paper running multiple columns expressing doubt about Iran’s sincerity in negotiating a peaceful future for its nuclear program.
Carlson, who formerly worked with Levin at Fox, is a famously anti-war Trump supporter who opposes any future possibility of putting troops in the Middle East. His career came of age during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, both quagmires that have turned Americans’ opinions sharply against international involvement.
He previously cautioned Trump about listening too closely to Levin after learning his former colleague had visited the White House.
“Mark Levin was at the White House today, lobbying for war with Iran,” Carlson wrote on X. “To be clear, Levin has no plans to fight in this or any other war. He’s demanding that American troops do it.”
He argued that Levin’s “hyperventilating” about Iran’s nuclear program was a distraction from sending American soldiers back to the sandbox.
“A war with Iran would amount to a profound betrayal of his supporters. It would end his presidency. That may explain why so many of Trump’s enemies are advocating for it,” he added.
After Politico ran an article reporting his visit with Trump and Witkoff, Levin responded, calling the outlet a “propaganda” arm of the legacy media.
“He and I are very close friends,” Levin said about Trump, adding, “The president knows exactly where I stand on Iran, and he told me he knows exactly where I stand on Iran because he watches my shows on Fox.”
Politico is “a group of people who were pushing propaganda,” he added. “What I am not doing and what I would not do to Donald Trump is lead a lobbying campaign of hawks.”
In a fiery missive, he accused an isolationist “cabal” of actors like Carlson — whom he nicknamed Chatsworth Osborne Jr., a TV star with a penchant for bow ties — of leaking news of his meeting with Trump.
“Levin won’t take your crap,” he said, referring to Carlson. “He doesn’t like bullies, I’m more than happy to engage with you.”
He blamed Carlson for “constantly lobbying the White House” against war with Iran.
“I know who the leakers are,” he said and added, “it’s the isolationists who are doing it, it’s them, they’re doing it, they’re trying to undermine the president and what they’re actually doing, America, is they’re making his job 1,000 times more difficult.”
Levin, who is Jewish, accused critics of weaponizing the term “neoconservative” into an antisemitic attack.
“By the way, neocon is a pejorative for Jew. Unbelievable,” he wrote.
Carlson told the Daily Mail that his former friend is badly misguided.
“I worked with Mark. I’ve always gotten along with Mark, always been nice to me. But yeah, he just accused Trump, the Trump administration of anti-Semitism for calling someone a neocon,” Carlson said, adding, “[H]e accused Steve Witkoff of anti-Semitism. And I just want to say, I think Steve Witkoff is, if there’s anyone who is, you know, has the hand of God on him, it seems to me. I sort of overstate it, but I feel that way.”
Witkoff, another anti-war member of Trump’s inner circle, is currently lobbying for peace, which Carlson said put him in the crosshairs of Levin.
“We’ve reached peak crazy, I mean, I think Witkoff is Jewish, right?”
On his radio show, Levin fired back by calling Carlson a “schmuck” who “doesn’t call me” before spouting off to the press.
“Why do they keep saying neocon? Because many of the neoconservatives were old-time, left-wing, Democrat Jews,” he said on Tuesday.
“Any of the people that use that phrase either don’t know what they’re talking about, but in the magazines and on the internet, they know it. So they’re not going to say the Jews are dragging us into a war, they’ll say Israel is, Netanyahu is. They’re not gonna say the Jews this and the Jews-, so they use neocon.”
“Do whatever you want, it’s perfectly fine by me. But don’t screw with me, you little bastard, by twisting my words,’ Levin fired back at Carlson. ‘And you should have picked up the phone because I would have cleared things up for you,” he exclaimed.
