Tucker Carlson broke his silence on the GOP’s midterm bloodbath with a brutal four-word verdict that stunned even his own audience. The ex-Fox News host laid into Donald Trump’s Republican Party, its failed candidates, and the president himself in a wide-ranging podcast postmortem.
Tucker Carlson talks about Republicans losing midterm elections
Tucker Carlson called the 2026 midterm elections a “disaster” for Republicans and declared the “end of the Trump era” on his podcast on Wednesday.
The ex-Fox News host and one-time MAGA loyalist said just seconds into the latest episode, “Well, that was a disaster.” He compared the loss to “the Lusitania sinking” rather than “rain at the wedding reception.” Carlson broke with Trump earlier this year over his Iran war policies and ties to Israel. He described the results as the “biggest blowout of our lifetimes.”
Carlson argued that Trump’s 2024 supporters would call the midterm results disastrous but acknowledge they aren’t “entirely sad” about them. “This may not be what we deserve but it’s definitely what the Republican Party deserves,” he said. He has teased starting a third party but backed away from talk of a 2028 presidential run.
Carlson then targeted several of Trump’s preferred candidates who lost their races. He criticized Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.), saying her late brother’s championing of the unpopular Iran war “destroyed” the GOP. “Maybe we don’t try and resurrect the failed and frankly repulsive and antihuman policies of Lindsey Graham through his sister,” he added. He called the candidacy “a humiliation ritual.”
Carlson also addressed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s failed bid for a historic fourth term. He noted Abbott supported data centers, calling it a “super unpopular” position. The losses extended across multiple battleground states for Republicans.
“Almost kind of no matter what they do, given the numbers of it, if you game it out, there’s kind of no coming back for a generation,” Carlson warned. His remarks signal a broader reckoning within conservative media over Trump’s political influence heading into 2028.
