On MS NOW's The Weeknight, Angelo Carusone discusses fractures among right-wing media over Trump's war with Iran
Carusone: “They mostly decided that they're not going to be defending him or carrying water for him anymore”
Published
Citation
From the April 16, 2026, edition of MS NOW's The Weeknight
ALICIA MENENDEZ (CO-HOST): Angelo, in the absence of a coherent narrative coming from the White House, what is it that right-wing media is currently running with?
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Well, I mean, they're running with Trump, is doing a bad job and they're mad at him. That's what a large segment of them are. I mean, Tucker Carlson, who used to introduce Trump at rallies, right, was a big supporter, it's not just that he's been criticizing him. I mean, he recently questioned whether or not he was the antichrist. And I think the more significant thing that he's been saying is that Trump is lawless. And then on the other hand, there's a small segment, the traditional right-wing media, that are trying to figure out how to defend him on gas prices, because that's ultimately what this is about.
But I think at its core, what you're basically seeing is a coalition that is fracturing. And they're really not deciding how to attack Trump, but they think the more important thing is they mostly decided that they're not going to be defending him or carrying water for him anymore. That's, to me, the big takeaway from it.
JACKIE ALEMANY (CO-HOST): And, you know, it feels like really up until this week, we hadn't seen though, the MAGA coalition really start to fracture, at least with regards to attitudes about Iran. This week seems to be the first week where those numbers are starting to crater. How long, in your experience, do you usually see sort of the trickle down from people who take their opinion cues from people like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and when it actually becomes their true opinion, that's showing up in surveys?
CARUSONE: Yeah, I mean, look, I think what we're seeing right now is the cumulative effect of a bunch of fault lines that have been tweaked for the past, you know, eight or nine months. It started with Epstein last spring. People started to question. Then there was that flare up in the fall. Then it was gas prices in Iran. It's really been sort of this cumulative effect. It takes time and it is bearing out, because one of the effects -- and I think that's the question I get all the time -- is what's the "so what?" about these people doing it? It's exactly what you said. What does that mean in the grand scheme of things when it comes to people's political identity? And you're seeing that play out right now. It takes time.
And one is that they usually snap back. So we don't have a lot of test cases to say, how long does it take for them to have broad scale change in public opinion? Because the thing is, they almost always snap back, even when they do criticize. So his durability has been the testament to that effect. Right now, though, you're seeing amongst white people without college educations, Trump has lost 40% in the polling in the last month or so. That is the effect of this.
So it takes time. But I think what we're really seeing is a narrative that's calcified and that's the ultimate effect. And no matter which demographic you look at, that his numbers are all collapsing across the board. And that's the political "so what?" And that's why you get something like a Speaker Johnson saying, I called him to tell him to take it down. I mean, he hasn't called him, he hasn't bragged about calling Trump intervention up until this point. But that, I think, is the real tell is that you have the right-wing media and a lot of these people changing their narrative about Trump, that then changes the politics, the opinions across the segment. And then you have people beginning to take actions to try to respond more to where the political base is. I think this is not anything to laud here, but it's a reflection of just how much has changed.