Tucker Carlson done with GOP? Yeah, right. He'll be back. | Opinion

Oft-fired conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, less than two years removed from calling Donald Trump “a wonderful person,” has dropped a new grift, claiming on a recent podcast that he will no longer support the Republican Party.

He wasn’t gentle about his “I’m out” declaration.

“I don’t share their values on any level,” Carlson said on the June 18 episode of the “Can’t Be Censored” podcast. “Their personal values, the way they live, greedy, bizarro sex lives, loyal to a foreign country above the United States, it’s like everything I dislike. Beginning with the speaker of the House, Speaker Mike Johnson, and extending to the president and the leaders in the Senate, I have nothing in common with these people at all. I do not share their values, I find their priorities appalling and so I’m just not going to participate in that party.”

Wow. From speaking passionately at the 2024 Republican National Convention and saying “divine intervention” saved Trump from an assassin’s bullet so he could lead the nation to “I’m out! Y’all are a bunch of sex weirdos!” today.

Tucker Carlson abandons the Republican Party? Sure.

One might examine the evidence and conclude Carlson is a naked opportunist who, much like former MAGA devotee and congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, noticed that the grand Trump con is flailing and decided it’s time to find another scheme.

Greene even posted her support for Carlson’s announcement on X: “Tucker is not the only one who is done supporting the Republican Party. There is A LOT of us that are absolutely fed up and will not support a party that betrays its voters and country. That does not mean we are turning into Democrats either. But we are DONE with the America LAST Republican Party.”

So if bold right-wing thinkers like Carlson and Greene are “DONE” with the Republican Party, and they’re not going to become Democrats, where should we reckon they’re going to go?

The answer is simple: Right back to the Republican Party.

Conservatives love to say they don't like Trump before voting for Trump

Throughout the Trump years, people who cling to the mantle of conservatism have loved proclaiming their fierce independence from the foolish and often vile ways President Trump has behaved. They’ve harrumphed audibly at his decisions, the most recent one being the decidedly non-MAGA war with Iran.

But if you ask those people how they voted in the last presidential election, the answer is, almost without fail, “Trump.” And if you have a lick of common sense, you know full well that come the November midterm elections they’re going to vote Republican, and come the 2028 presidential election, they’ll do the same. They'd vote for Trump again if they could.

Whatever Tucker Carlson says right now will change come election time

This will be justified by hysterical fearmongering about Democrats destroying America as we know it if they return to power. The Carlsons and Greenes of the world will say the evil liberals are going to confiscate all the guns and turn all the children into socialists and blah, blah, blah.

Then, in the end, despite Carlson’s fearless declaration of “I’m out,” he’ll be right back in, and he’ll find a way to explain his pivot and praise the newfound glory of the Grand Old Party. And on and on we’ll go.

Republicans like to speak of principles, but at the end of the day, their primary principle is power. Period.

Trump was the funniest person Carlson ever met, and now he hates him?

The Republican Party now, at its core, is not that different from what the Republican Party has been for decades now. It’s a party that favors the wealthy, repels diversity, buoys religious liberty only as it applies to Christians and loves throwing wild conspiracies to its base like raw meat to famished lions.

At the 2024 RNC, Carlson said of Trump: “Whatever you say about him, and I think he’s a wonderful person, I know him well. By the way, the funniest person I’ve ever met in my life, actually. You can’t be funny without perspective or without empathy.”

From wonderful, funny and empathetic to someone whose values and priorities Carlson finds appalling.

Right-wing hucksters love to tease that they're abandoning the GOP

What has changed? Trump’s popularity is dropping like a rock. There’s money to be made in pretending to be a truth-teller and acting like your values are superior to the values of the party you suddenly allege abandoned you.

Carlson and Greene and Co. will talk that talk. They’ll cash the checks they earn in the attention economy. And then they’ll dutifully vote for Republicans.

Because that’s how the con works.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk.