Mike Cernovich, the former manosphere influencer, this week floated a Tucker Carlson/Joe Kent ticket. His framing about “good looking, physically fit white men” being “back in” was bizarre, but the underlying premise is not.

Despite his proposal drawing immediate fire from the Right, Cernovich is not the first person to suggest this idea. Earlier this month, former Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene publicly declared that Carlson would “beat Trump”, claiming that the President “doesn’t even know what MAGA is anymore and turned it into MIGA [Make Iran Great Again]”. Carlson himself fuelled more speculation over a possible run, telling Piers Morgan: “Ted Cruz says he’s running against me for president. I almost want to run for president just to debate Ted Cruz, because I think it would go about the way it went last time.” In an interview with The Economist this week, he appeared to walk back this claim, asserting that he would “of course not” run.

Even so, the historical framework for a Carlson candidacy already exists. Sebastian Gorka, the White House senior director for counterterrorism, said as much at the Hudson Institute last August. Gorka called the former Fox News host “basically Pat Buchanan in a new guise”, before dismissing Carlson’s worldview as “a shallower version” of isolationism.

Gorka intended this as a barb, but the parallels between Carlson and Buchanan are undeniable. Both are elite-educated writers-turned-cable news combatants who became outspoken internal critics of a sitting Republican president over a war in the Middle East. Both authored books challenging the Republican economic consensus: Buchanan’s The Great Betrayal condemned free-trade orthodoxy, while Carlson’s Ship of Fools argued that market capitalism had eroded American families. In his 2018 book, Carlson acknowledged adopting Buchanan’s views — the very views he dismissed in 1999 as “kind of kooky” and even antisemitic, and which he now preaches to millions.

Buchanan challenged George H.W. Bush over the Gulf War and Nafta. Carlson has called Trump’s Iran strikes “absolutely disgusting and evil”, told Morgan that Trump committed “a betrayal” of his voters, and grilled Ambassador Mike Huckabee over the US-Israeli relationship. Buchanan’s insurgency shook the GOP — helping pave the way for Ross Perot in the general and winning New Hampshire in 1996 — but he never broke through nationally. Carlson, by contrast, has turned that fight into a platform with millions of listeners.

Today, the podcaster commands 22 million followers across YouTube and X, hosts the most-streamed conservative podcast in the country, and has already demonstrated he can humiliate likely primary opponents on camera. When Cruz appeared on his show last June, the Harvard Law graduate and former top appellate attorney did not appear to know the population of Iran, the country whose government he wanted to topple. The clip drew over 36 million views.

Cruz, in turn, called Carlson “the single most dangerous demagogue in this country” at an antisemitism symposium this month. Trump himself said Carlson was “not MAGA” and “not smart enough”. But every one of these attacks works as free advertising for the insurgent, as Trump demonstrated in 2015-16.

Buchanan broke Bush’s coalition badly enough to reshape the party, and the issues he raised — trade, immigration, anti-interventionism — eventually became the core of Trumpism, even if Trump hasn’t delivered on all those promises. Carlson is Buchanan 2.0, with a dedicated base and no party gatekeepers to limit his access or funding.

The question for 2028 is whether the Republican Party can survive the same fracture twice, now that the insurgent has a bigger platform than any of the actual candidates. America may never produce a viable third party. But if Carlson runs and wins, he could decisively break the Right-wing movement and remake it in his image, in a way Trump, who has governed as a colourful but conventional Republican on most domestic and foreign policy issues, never could.

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Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work

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