First there was the meeting at his villa in Maine, then on Wednesday evening Tucker Carlson used his hugely popular social media channels to present his ten-point vision for America, which serves as the manifesto for the MAGA faction he leads and represents – the faction opposed to wars, the one that flirts with anti-Semitism, the one that has turned its back on the Trumpism that created it – and which many are already calling a new party. Carlson was one of Fox News’s most famous presenters, a protégé and mouthpiece of Donald Trump; he then struck out on his own – with a few bumps along the way – but eventually found his way back into the MAGA fold, until the rift became clear with the war against Iran – which, for Carlson, is the war that Israel made America fight – though it was already present during the Epstein affair. In July, Carlson had said he wanted to “help build a third party”, and last weekend he hosted other MAGA “dissidents”, who told him: you must stand for election. So Carlson presented his new political order, a manifesto for “whatever comes next”, which could take any form, but which is based on ten extremely clever and inclusive words on what America should be like.
It must be ‘fair’; the rules apply to presidents, federal agents and elites such as the unpunished Jeffrey Epstein; ‘sovereign’, not at the service of the ‘corruption and threats’ of countries such as Israel or other nations that use US debt as a form of ‘enslavement’; ‘productive’ and based on agriculture, manufacturing and craftsmanship, not on finance or the arms industry; ‘beautiful’, not ‘marred’ by brutalist town planners or by crime and drugs; ‘healthy’, in the sense of healthy as envisaged by Minister Robert Kennedy Jr, with his diet, and healthy without the anti-anxiety drugs and antidepressants that leave Americans ‘half-dazed’; “honest”, which does not lie about the past as governments have done in cases such as the Kennedy assassination or 9/11; “optimistic” and therefore having children (a biological imperative); “wise” and therefore far removed from screens and tech trends, but also from an obsession with academic qualifications; “decent” – an untranslatable term – meaning that it does not wage wars (civilians killed should be compensated) and does not aid countries that commit genocide, such as Israel; and “united” and therefore without immigrants.
As far as Trump is concerned, Carlson and his cronies are nothing more than an ‘embarrassing little band of turncoats’ – whingers who think too highly of themselves. But Carlson wants to pursue his new ambition: he’s thinking of going to speak to the radical wing of the Democratic Party, which is on the rise. He knows that on many issues, starting with Israel, they see eye to eye. He either doesn’t know or isn’t saying that this coalition has a colour: reddish-brown.
