Tucker Carlson Calls for Trump’s Removal in Explosive Iran Split

Tucker Carlson once urged Americans to put Donald Trump back in the White House. Now he says the president’s own administration should have stripped him of power.

In an NPR interview published September 24, the former Fox News host called for Trump’s removal over what Carlson characterized as threats to use nuclear weapons.

“It’s enough for me to say he should be removed from office,” Carlson told interviewer Steve Inskeep. “He should have been removed from office by his own Cabinet secretaries the moment he threatened a nuclear attack.”

When Inskeep asked whether he meant the 25th Amendment, Carlson confirmed that he did. He then accused Trump of conduct he considered criminal.

“He should have been bundled up and taken out,” Carlson said. “There’s no greater crime than that.” His comments represent his judgment, not a court finding.

Watch Carlson’s full interview on NPR’s Newsmakers.

The demand marks a dramatic escalation in Carlson’s break with a president he championed at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Their dispute has centered on the Iran war and Carlson’s opposition to American military intervention.

The interview’s publication followed Trump’s September 22 address to the United Nations, where the president presented a stark choice between reaching an agreement with Iran and devastating its government.

“Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly,” Trump asked, before describing destruction that would leave it with no prospect of recovery for generations.

But that passage did not explicitly specify nuclear weapons. Carlson’s characterization of Trump’s threats should therefore be distinguished from the president’s actual wording.

Trump also said he believed an agreement could follow the U.S. midterm elections. Later that day, he told reporters he expected an eventual settlement, while reiterating his position that Iran must not obtain a nuclear weapon.

Carlson, meanwhile, offered a bleak assessment of whether Congress would hold Trump accountable. Asked about impeachment, he argued that agreement between the major parties on the war made meaningful consequences unlikely.

His alternative would require far more than angry Cabinet members.

Under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, the vice president and a majority of the principal executive department officers can declare that a president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of office. The vice president then assumes those responsibilities as acting president.

That means JD Vance would have to participate in the Cabinet route Carlson endorsed. Cabinet secretaries could not trigger it alone.

Nor would the process automatically make Vance president for the remainder of Trump’s term. Trump could contest the declaration. If the dispute continued through the amendment’s prescribed process, two-thirds of both the House and Senate would have to agree that he remained unable to serve for Vance to continue as acting president.

The amendment addresses presidential inability. It does not itself determine criminal guilt or establish corruption as an automatic ground for transferring power.

The White House’s response to NPR underscored how bitter the relationship has become. NPR reported that officials supplied a Trump social-media post attacking Carlson and other critics as “stupid people” who wanted Iran to possess nuclear weapons, rather than specifically addressing Carlson’s account of a private conversation about the war.

Carlson’s demand does not establish that any removal effort is underway. It does, however, take his public opposition well beyond criticizing Trump’s strategy: a onetime campaign advocate is now arguing that the president should no longer exercise presidential power.