TEHRAN — The latest split inside the American right has produced a familiar and dishonest story. Donald Trump’s current and former defenders now want the world to believe he is not truly responsible for what he says, orders, or destroys.

They say the U.S. President is a “slave” to Israeli pressure, a victim of blackmail, kompromat, and threats from forces beyond his control.

That narrative may flatter Tucker Carlson and console the people responsible for Trump’s rise, but it's deeply deceptive.

It suggests that the United States is a "good boy" that has been led astray by a foreign parasite. In reality, Trump is a willing, enthusiastic architect of this carnage, and the empire he leads is the engine of its own destruction.

The excuse that explains too much

Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all broken with Trump over the war on Iran, and have received his full wrath in return. 

Carlson has openly suggested that Israeli blackmail may explain Trump’s behavior and even describing the president as a “slave” to forces he cannot resist.

That may sound radical, but it functions as a political escape hatch. It turns American aggression into something done to America rather than by America.

Trump does not behave like a man reluctantly dragged into catastrophe.

He boasts, threatens, humiliates, and takes credit. He reaches for the microphone after his war crimes and tells everyone how strong he was.

Trump’s record

Trump’s conduct toward Iran alone should end the “he was forced” theory.

He exited the JCPOA, imposed maximum-pressure sanctions, authorized the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, and then spoke about that assassination as if it were a personal triumph.

He has mocked critics of the recent war on Iran as “losers,” “nut jobs,” and “low IQ” people who lacked the courage to stand with him.

During his Easter Sunday 2026 post, he issued a crude threat against the Iranian people, saying he would strike Iran’s national energy infrastructure and that they would be "living in Hell." He then escalated further and warned that he would destroy the entire Iranian civilization.

The same pattern appears elsewhere. Trump has spoken casually about killing people, punishing families, and using force as a test of strength.

He revels in the performance of predatory power. That matters, because blackmail does not create a personality out of nowhere. It only works if the person being pressured is already willing to live inside the terms of brutality.

None of this excuses Israel’s role. Israel’s record is abominable, from the Nakba to Gaza and from Dahiyeh to Tehran; and its actions in the region are monstrous.

But acknowledging that does not require pretending Trump is innocent. He knew exactly what power he was seeking and what kind of machine he was climbing into. He wanted it all.

A consistent character from My Lai to Minab

Two massacres tell the story better than any speech.

My Lai, in Vietnam in 1968, was not a battlefield accident. U.S. soldiers deliberately murdered hundreds of unarmed civilians, including children, raped women and girls, and then the military machine moved quickly to cover it up.

The official instinct was denial, minimization, and the search for a scapegoat low enough in the chain of command to absorb public outrage.

Minab belongs in that same lineage. The strike on the elementary school in southern Iran, during the opening phase of the current war, killed children and teachers and was later folded into the usual language of “mistake” and “outdated intelligence.”

The children of Minab will never be forgotten, and their blood stains the hands of the American president who boasted about the lethality of the missiles that took their lives.

That is how America acts.

The Carlson turn

Carlson’s current line on Israel is welcome and contains real observations, but it stops too short.

He has made many Americans aware that Israel has been guilty of the Gaza genocide, has helped engulf the region in turmoil, and has maintained a brutal political order supported by American money, weapons, and diplomatic cover.

He is also right that the Epstein saga and its intelligence links remain extremely important. But from there he slides into the comforting myth that the United States itself is basically decent, merely misled by a foreign power.

That myth has done enormous work for decades. It lets Washington present itself as the reluctant superpower, the one that would prefer peace if only not for the lobby, the blackmail, the foreign influence, the bad ally.

But America’s wars in the Middle East did not begin with Israel’s influence, and they do not end there. The 1953 overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, support for Saddam Hussein during Iraq's 8-year aggression against Iran, sanctions, sabotage, assassinations, and military encirclement all predate the current fever. The empire had its appetite long before the latest excuse.

Conversely, the perception of many scholars and experts for decades has been that Israel is a U.S. proxy, dependent on American weapons, parts, intelligence, funding, and diplomatic shielding. The relationship works because Washington finds it useful. Israel can absorb some of the political cost, but the larger strategy remains American.

That strategy is not about one lobby or one president. It is bipartisan, structural, and old. It has to do with primacy, oil routes, military dominance, and confronting countries such as Iran, Russia, and China.

Once that is understood, the “Israel made Trump do it” story looks less like analysis and more like compartmentalization. It spreads the blame around just enough to hide the architecture.

The operative and the limited hangout

?We must also cast a skeptical eye on the so-called dissident media figures such as Tucker Carlson.

Carlson, whose father was in the CIA and a key figure in the U.S. information warfare apparatus at Voice of America, is a man of deep intelligence connections.

His sudden turn against the Israeli lobby may be a limited hangout, a tactical disclosure of some truth to protect a deeper agenda.

Carlson is deeply embedded with the Rockbridge Network and with billionaires such as Peter Thiel, whose influence appears across today’s news cycle, from the resignation of Joe Kent and the leaks related to Vance's opposition to attack Iran to Palantir’s technology being used in war zones.

Thiel’s network also extends into discussions about the links between "angels and demons" and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), a theme Carlson has repeated several times and Vance has recently said he believes as well.

Their goal is not to end the American empire, but to refine it into a more efficient, "Little Tech" version under figures such as JD Vance or Joe Kent.