President Tucker Carlson?

Who is choosing the cabinet, President Trump or Tucker Carlson? That question is being asked following the Wall Street Journal’s report that Mr. Carlson blocked a former state secretary, Mike Pompeo, as a nominee to be defense secretary. The Journal says Mr. Carlson and Donald Trump Jr. pitched the president-elect on the dangers of bringing into the administration neoconservatives “who seek to control him, not serve him.”If anyone is seeking to control rather than serve the president-elect, it’s not the neoconservatives. Mr. Carlson has been moving in a disappointing direction since he was ousted from Fox. It’s reached the point where a lot of Trump supporters are wondering where Trump himself stands. It’s a moment for the president-elect to send a signal that he, not Mr. Carlson or Donald Trump Jr., is, as George W. Bush liked to say, “the decider.”Compounding the matter is the fact that Mr. Carlson this week published an online video interview with a Columbia professor, Jeffrey Sachs. As our columnist Ira Stoll put it in his substack, The Editors, Messrs. Sachs and Carlson used the event, which runs to more than an hour and a half and has racked up 34 million views on Elon Musk’s X platform, “to spread vicious, outlandish, conspiratorial lies about Israel.”Among those lies is Mr. Sachs’ claim — a classic — that America “gave away our foreign policy to Israel years and years ago.” Also, the claim by Mr. Sachs that Prime Minister Netanyahu and “neocons in the U.S.” are “dragging the United States into countless wars in the Middle East.” Mr. Sachs calls these the “Netanyahu wars” and avers that they have resulted in “a million or so deaths” and cost America $7 trillion.Unremarked thus far has been the role of Omeed Malik. He is the founder and president of 1789 Capital. Axios reported in October 2023 that Mr. Carlson, who left Fox News earlier this year, had raised $15 million from 1789, and that “Malik and Carlson have a long history, as the former banker once backed The Daily Caller, which Carlson co-founded in 2010.” Mr. Malik bought into the Daily Caller in 2020.As for Donald Trump Jr., our former New York Sun colleague Amanda Gordon, now at Bloomberg, reported last month that Mr. Trump Jr. would be going to work at 1789 Capital. Mr. Carlson’s studio has lately featured an image of Fatima with both Muslim and Christian imagery, a picture that one online commenter suggests “is designed to form a coalition of Muslim and Christian communities against a shared grievance.”The Jews? We wonder. Which strikes us as deserving of a cautionary note. President Trump has been heroic on Israel and other issues close to Jewish Americans. It would be a shame for his promises to be undercut from within. Never mind the legalities and the appearances — just on the substance alone, Israel-hate is not for what the Trump voters in the electorate were hoping. It would be a tragic turn.Including in respect of the president-elect’s own dreams. He’s on a track to be remembered not only for the Abraham Accords but for even more startling military advances and potential peace pacts that now look to be possible. The sooner the president-elect and his son distance themselves from Messrs. Carlson and Malik, the better. One way to make the point would be by naming Mr. Pompeo to a role that sends a message — say, ambassador to Iran’s Opposition.

President Tucker Carlson?

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