A surprising headline from the Daily Beast suggests President Trump could be bucking his own administration hawks on Iran with help from an outside source: “Tucker Carlson Is Privately Advising Trump On Iran” — the headline reads.
Over and against uber-hawks John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, the report says “there’s been another, far different voice in the president’s ear: that of Fox News host Tucker Carlson.”
For at least the past year Tucker Carlson has been a rare, outspoken non-interventionist voice on prime time network news, aggressively questioning US military presence and past regime change actions in places like Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, as well as Washington’s long-time weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. He’s come under fire from Republican neocons and Democratic hawks alike for frequently hosting foreign policy skeptics like Tulsi Gabbard, Glenn Greenwald, Rand Paul, and others.
Carlson recently even questioned mainstream media claims that Syria’s Assad is gassing his own people, presenting leaked evidence that suggests the rebels could be staging such atrocities to draw the US military into action against Damascus.
And now, apparently the president is relying on Carlson as a dissenting voice against the foreign policy establishment at a moment of soaring tensions with Iran, according to the Daily Beast:
A source familiar with the conversations told The Daily Beast that, in recent weeks, the Fox News host has privately advised Trump against taking military action against Iran. And a senior administration official said that during the president’s recent conversations with the Fox primetime host, Carlson has bashed the more “hawkish members” of his administration.
The popular Fox host has publicly pushed back against the march to war against Iran in recent weeks, saying an escalation and war scenario would likely not be “in anyone’s interest,” while also being a persistent critic of Bolton for his well-known hawkish rhetoric on Iran.
The Daily Beast report further points out that Carlson has lately question the administration’s “evidence” that Iran was behind last week’s tanker attacks in the Gulf of Oman:
The Fox News host compared Pompeo’s “misplaced certainty” that Iran attacked the tankers to former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s now-discredited claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
“We’re still paying a price for that,” Carlson said.
As the report also notes, Trump has personally tweeted out content from Carlson’s Fox show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, on at least 20 separate occasions over the past year.
Last year Carlson predicted that another disastrous regime change war in the Middle East would destroy the Trump presidency…
“Washington loves… pointless wars half a world away. Contractors get rich, neocon intellectuals feel powerful.”
The report further cites what “one knowledgeable source” told The Daily Beast in August, that, “Trump thinks Tucker is one of the sharpest minds on television — [Trump has said], ‘So smart, a thinking man’s show.’”
Could Tucker Carlson be in the process of convincing Trump to return to his non-interventionist instincts voiced on the campaign trail in 2016?
Has Tucker been brought in as Trump’s private counsel to push back against the pervasive influence of the military-industrial deep state?
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WTjgRg Tyler Durden