Donald Trump reportedly turned on Tucker Carlson in the hours before striking Iran, brushing off MAGA isolationists to stage what author Michael Wolff calls a “vanity bombing.”
Trump’s intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard, meanwhile, is the designated scapegoat, Wolff told The Daily Beast Podcast on Sunday.
Publicly, Trump was inconsistent and noncommittal about his stance on U.S. involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict, right up until he announced on Saturday that the military had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites. According to Wolff, that same flip-flopping was going on behind the scenes, and Trump “dithered right up until the last minute.”
“The White House… are out trying to frame a case that this has been underway, that this is a plan, that this strategy has rolled out in a methodical fashion,” Wolff told host Joanna Coles.
“This is not true at all, this is completely made up,” he added.
According to Wolff, author of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Trump watched the explosive interview between Tucker Carlson and Senator Ted Cruz that aired on the former Fox News host’s show on Wednesday, and for a short time afterwards, leaned towards siding with Carlson’s isolationist camp. Carlson, Steve Bannon and Marjorie Taylor Greene have been some of the most vocal MAGA opponents of U.S. intervention in the regional conflict.
“Thursday, he was Tucker-Bannon, and he had seen Tucker’s interview with Ted Cruz where Ted Cruz got massacred,” Wolff said. “That was very much a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God moment for him.”
But come Friday, Wolff claimed, Trump changed course after speaking with hawkish congressional Republican leaders, who got it into his head that he would look like a “winner” if he took action.
“So by Friday afternoon, it was literally—in a whole series of phone calls— it was ‘f— Tucker,’” he said, noting Carlson’s role as the “point person representing the MAGA objection” to the move.
“Then the tenor of the phone calls was him saying, ‘I think I’m gonna look very good if I do this,’” he added, branding the precision strikes on Iran a “vanity bombing.”
As for Gabbard, who recently backpedaled after Trump called her intelligence on Iran’s nuclear capabilities “wrong,” Wolff says she’s “toast.”
“The head that will roll here is hers,” said Wolff.
“That’s what everybody inside the White House is clucking over her,” he added. “She’s the one—if there is MAGA blame to go around—it’s going to fall on her.“
“And there’s a lot of now, backpedaling, ‘he never liked her, she was forced on him.’ This is also, by the way, not true,” he went on.
Gabbard testified to Congress in March that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.
When a reporter brought that up to the president on Friday, asking him what evidence he has that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, Trump said his own intelligence community, and Gabbard herself, were wrong.
Gabbard quickly walked her comments back, claiming her March remarks were taken out of context and that her intelligence suggests Iran could produce a nuclear weapon “within weeks to months.”
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on Wolff’s claims about Carlson and Gabbard.
It did, however, pointedly post a picture on Sunday night showing Gabbard in the Situation Room a day earlier, following speculation she had been absent.
PHOTO: President Trump’s intelligence team in the White House Situation Room (June 21, 2025)@DNIGabbard @CIADirector pic.twitter.com/W1HDDAb84b
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) June 22, 2025
Trump’s base has been splintering since Israel launched its surprise attack on Iran last Friday, with days of public quarreling between prominent MAGA figures.
Shortly after Israel’s initial attack, Carlson accused Trump of being “complicit.” Trump publicly lashed out, but claimed on Wednesday he’d since received an apology call.
Carlson has not yet publicly weighed in on Trump’s decision to drop bombs on Iran.
The post What Trump Really Thinks About Tucker and Tulsi: Biographer appeared first on The Daily Beast.
