More On What's Bugging Tucker

I ran into a YouTube commentary by an Australian lady more or less at random, but in the middle, she made a point I hadn't seen before: Tucker Carlson's wonderful new Muslim audience is courtesy of state media in certain Islamic countries. I was puzzled at this, because the Arab states are positioned against Iran, which Carlson supports. Poking around farther, I got this response from Chrome AI mode:

Tucker Carlson's content is being broadcast by state media in certain Islamic countries, most notably Iran. Current reporting and social media evidence from early 2026 indicate that the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the country’s state-controlled media, has been airing his interviews dubbed into Persian on its 24-hour news channels. State TV has utilized Carlson's segments to support its own narrative, specifically amplifying his criticisms of Western foreign policy and Israel. Observers note that his commentary often aligns "point for point" with the strategic messaging of the Iranian government.

But that's just AI, I had to do more digging, and I came up with this, from early January of this year:

As Iran’s protest movement intensifies, the Islamic Republic has moved on two tracks at once: cut the country off from the internet while flooding state TV with curated messaging—including Persian-dubbed Tucker Carlson content.

Sources inside Iran are consistent with what outside reporting has captured: when the internet is throttled, IRIB becomes the loudest -— and for many, the only -— national feed. In that information vacuum, clips from Carlson’s interview with Iran’s leadership can be edited into “proof” that the regime is right and its critics are liars.

There can be no question, months later, that Carlson's stance is pro-mullahs and anti-US. The mullahs are at minimum exploiting this:

There is broad commentary and reporting about Carlson’s repeated criticism of Israel and claims he amplifies narratives about Israeli influence in U.S. politics; this has generated strong backlash from pro-Israel voices and analysts.

Why Tehran benefits: Iranian state TV can clip Carlson’s Israel-critical framing and present it as: “Even prominent Americans admit Israel is the problem,” which supports Tehran’s external narrative while it represses dissent at home.

This has been noticed here and there on social media:

Just perfect https://t.co/u1WSFHEGBL

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 8, 2026

But neither legacy nor alt media has picked this up. This is puzzling, because to do this sort of thing is, as Ben Bankas put it in another context, to swim with the sting rays like Steve Irwin.

Let's look at two potentially parallel cases: First, William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw, who made pro-Nazi, anti-UK broadcasts from Germany throughout World War II:

Joyce was captured by British forces in northern Germany just as the war ended, tried, and eventually hanged for treason on 3 January 1946. Joyce's defence team, appointed by the court, argued that, as an American citizen and naturalised German, Joyce could not be convicted of treason against the British Crown. However, the prosecution successfully argued that, since he had lied about his nationality to obtain a British passport and voted in Britain, Joyce owed allegiance to the king.

Another is Iva Toguri, one of several English-speaking Japanese women who broadcast propaganda aimed at US troops from Japan during World War II, collectively known as "Tokyo Rose":

After World War II ended in 1945, the U.S. military detained Toguri for a year before releasing her due to lack of evidence. . . . But when Toguri tried to return to the United States, an uproar ensued because Walter Winchell (a powerful broadcasting personality) and the American Legion lobbied relentlessly for a trial, prompting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to renew its investigation of Toguri's wartime activities. Her 1949 trial resulted in a conviction on one of eight counts of treason.

She was fined $10,000 and sentenced to ten years in prison, but paroled after six. During the 1970s, investigative reporters uncoovered numerous irregularities in the trial, and President Ford gave her a full pardon in 1977.

This suggests that people who broadcast support for US warrtime enemies in particular face at best unpredictable consequences. Jane Fonda never suffered legal consequences for posing on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun in 1972, but it tarnished her reputation as "Hanoi Jane", something no public figure presumably wants. It appears that Tucker Carlson's son Buckley, who had what appears to have been a patronage job as J D Vance's deputy press secretary, may already have suffered for his dad's sins:

The son of right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson has left Vice President JD Vance’s press team to set up his own political consulting firm amid escalating tensions between his father and President Trump.

Buckley Carlson, a 20-something who had served as Vance’s deputy press secretary since the start of the second Trump administration, is joining a group of several White House alumni departing for the private sector.

While such moves can be typical in presidential administrations, Buckley’s departure comes against the backdrop of a growing rift between Trump, 79, and Tucker, 56, once an avid backer.

It seems to me that Tucker's problems are twofold. The first is that although he's now well known for his anti-Trump stance over the war, neither legacy nor alt media has covered the issue that his podcasts have become a direct anti-US priopaganda tool for the Iranian mullahs. If this changes, it could certainly hurt Tucker's public image, perhaps as much as "Hanoi Jane" hurt Jane Fonda's. Consider that the mullahs don't even have the underdog leftist appeal of the North Vietnamese; they're nothing but murderous thugs who happen to like Tucker.

The second issue is whether Tucker was paid in any way by the mullahs for the use of his podcasts. It's bad enough that the mullahs like them, but if they were in any way paid propaganda, Tucker would run into bigger problems for violating US sanctions and failing to register as a foreign agent. The overall issue of working on behalf of the mullahs, even if unpaid, could well trouble his conscience.

And there's a bigger overall question. Estimates of Tucker's salary at Fox run from $15-20 million per year, with total compensation including bonuses as high as $35 million per year. Nobody makes that kind of money from YouTube -- even if they have millions of followers, they have side hustles selling merch or promoting other businesses. Tucker has an expensive lifestyle, with two multimillion-dollar adjoining homes in Florida and and a sumnmer home in Maine. And even if Iran was making up for houusehold deficits, I can't imagine it's paying him now, with Trump cutting off its oil money.

Yesterday I posted comments questioning where Tucker's often bizarre behavior comes from -- the possibilities include addiction, neurological, psychological, or medical problems. I think we can reasonably add others, including a troubled conscience, fear of potential prosecution, and dire financial straits. What's surprising is that nobody seems to be seriously following through on pretty obvious leads.