On Tuesday, Tucker Carlson reposted a photograph of him alongside Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie and Joe Kent, captioned: “MAGA was betrayed. We all were. It’s time for a new path forward.” What this meant was revealed yesterday in the form of “Rebuilding America After the Great Betrayal”, a 94-minute video on what should replace a political system that “has collapsed into paralysis and looting”. Anyone expecting a party launch instead received a 10-point plan and four ad breaks.

This is not the first time that Carlson has openly distanced himself from the President. He apologised in April for “misleading” listeners into voting for Donald Trump, swore off Republican ballots in June, and told the Columbia Journalism Review in July he would “help build” a third party. Yesterday, Carlson offered a glimpse of what this third party would look like: no immigration “of any kind” until the labour effects of AI are known, English-only federal documents and ballots, and criminal liability for officials who lie to citizens.

As a prospectus for winning elections, it has limitations. Only 30% of Americans now want immigration reduced at all, let alone frozen, and English has been the official language under an executive order since March 2025. Carlson’s plank merely reinforces that point.

Carlson dated the two-party system’s terminal diagnosis to “on or about 28 February”, the night of the joint American-Israeli strikes on Iran. At that point, in his telling, the absence of Democratic Party protest proved both sides of the aisle share “exactly the same agenda”. He said Trump took the country to war “under bribery or threat or both by Israel” and is “openly threatening the use of nuclear weapons”. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, never explicitly named, is said to jump around “like a deranged, bloodthirsty monkey calling for the murder of innocents”.

But even if Carlson is jettisoning the GOP, he is sticking with MAGA. The movement he backed from the start, in his framing, was betrayed, rather than being wrong on its original principles. This makes his broadcast episode less a declaration of foundational principles in a new third party than a claim on future control of MAGA. Trump is the bad guy who bent the knee and defected; the supporters should pass to the purer MAGA man. Unsurprisingly, rival claimants surfaced before last rites were delivered.

Kent told WIRED the group “could eventually become a new party” with Carlson as its pick for 2028, yet the podcast star seems unwilling. Fellow political influencer Nick Fuentes waved away the idea of the party on Telegram since it “has to exclude me”, and predicted everyone involved will back JD Vance anyway. Whether this proposed party becomes a force is hard to say. The faction is already strained, even if Fuentes is marginal, and Carlson’s ostensibly large audience is smaller than his view counts suggest. The history of third-party candidates is discouraging. Ross Perot won 19% of the vote in 1992 and carried no states. Pat Buchanan tried the third-party route in 2000 and watched the Reform Party split at its own convention; his remnant regrouped in 2002 as, of all things, the America First Party and went nowhere.

Carlson knows this, which may be why he is playing coy about the movement’s exact future. Besides, a movement within an existing party might serve him better in the long run for switching out personnel, as the Democratic Socialists of America are currently doing with the opposition. The Tea Party never ran a presidential ticket and still reshaped the Republican Party’s roster from within during the Barack Obama years; its energy eventually became MAGA.

The most realistic 2028 role for Carlson remains as a spoiler, not as a serious candidate. That next nominee already exists in outline: Trump told donors this week that “we need to elect JD” and, interestingly, across 94 minutes of this indictment Carlson never mentioned the Vice President. But if Vance continues to defend the Iran war, Carlson has a worthy foil for the next three years. Carlson may not be ready to leave MAGA behind, but he is clearly positioning himself for whatever comes after Trump.

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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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