Few Republicans back Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly in spat with Trump – poll

Just 6% of Republicans say they side with populist podcasters Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly over President Donald Trump, backing the president’s decision to strike Iran.

By David Rosenberg, World Israel News

Republicans are overwhelmingly siding with President Donald Trump over his right-wing critics when it comes to foreign policy and his decision to launch Operation Epic Fury against Iran, a new poll shows.

Since last June, when the US conducted a one-day air campaign against Iranian nuclear facilities, Trump has come under growing criticism from far-right media personalities, in large part over differences on foreign policy.

The isolationist wing of the MAGA movement – represented online by a cadre of populist podcasters including Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Steve Bannon and Nick Fuentes – has blamed Israel for both the current conflict with Iran and the June 2025 air campaign, accusing the president of allowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to determine American foreign policy.

Former NBC News and Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who now appears on her eponymous show aired by SiriusXM, has also publicly criticized Trump’s decision to strike Iran while feuding with former Fox News peer Mark Levin.

The increasingly hostile rhetoric from some of Trump’s most vocal supporters during the 2024 presidential election stoked fears on the right that the Iran war could be irreparably splitting the Republican Party and the MAGA coalition that twice sent Trump to the White House.

However, a pair of recent polls suggest that outside the world of online punditry, the war has done little to fracture the president’s base.

On Thursday, J.L. Partners published a poll of 1,018 likely Republican voters that was conducted March 17-18.

The poll found that among likely GOP voters, Carlson and Kelly have minimal influence, with the vast majority of Republicans siding with the president.

Just 6% of respondents said they had more confidence in the judgment of the two podcasters than they do in the president’s, while 83% said they trusted Trump’s judgment more.

A slightly higher margin, 84% to 6%, said they agree more with Trump’s foreign policy views than with those of Carlson and Kelly. Even more (85%) said that they take Trump more seriously than Kelly and Carlson when it comes to world affairs.

Another poll, published by NBC News last week, showed that 100% of Americans who identify as MAGA approve of Trump’s job performance, even as the percentage of Americans who identify as MAGA rose from 28% of the country to 30%.