Iran War's Biggest Cheerleaders Are Treating Dissent Like Disloyalty

Asking questions isn't a moral failure

Source Images from Getty and Wikipedia (Gage Skidmore); Illustration made in Adobe Photoshop

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Hey y’all, welcome back to Unfit to Print.

The so-called “podcast wars” have reached a fever pitch. Let’s dive in.

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DON’T ASK ME NO QUESTIONS

Within just a few weeks of the United States launching strikes on Iran, asking questions about the war became practically verboten.

As I wrote in my first newsletter on this topic, we at the Daily Caller have all kinds of questions. Pretty much all of them can be condensed into the following bucket: What does this mean for the average American?

Yet I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among the online commentariat and how they treat those who don’t reflexively cheerlead the war. We’re panicans. Not plan trusters. Trump haters. At worst, traitors.

Over the weekend, our co-founder, Tucker Carlson, reported that he was told the CIA was preparing a referral to the DOJ about his communications with Iranian officials. His “crime,” as he put it, was “talking to people in Iran before the war.”

It’s no secret that Tucker has deep reservations about the U.S. getting involved in this conflict. He spoke to President Donald Trump a number of times before the strikes and urged him not to engage. He warned about Israeli influence and cautioned that, even with the best of intentions, this could turn into a long-term regime change war.

Trump chose a different path, as is his right as commander-in-chief.

But somehow Tucker, and others like him who wonder if the war is ‘America First,’ are being painted as this nation’s enemies.

Following Tucker’s revelation that a trusted source had warned him about an alleged probe, commentators on X wildly speculated with zero information beyond what Tucker himself reported that he had been colluding with Iranian officials to harm America. They demanded he be thrown in prison and tried for treason.

Some said that Trump must’ve known Tucker was a double agent and thus must have been using him to feed false information to the Iranians. There has been no real evidence for this as far as I can tell, just wishcasting from people who have made their feelings about Tucker very clear in these past few months.

Glenn Greenwald, who just taped an episode of Tucker’s show, said in response to all of this, “Tucker deserves praise, not vilification, for ensuring that his reporting and analysis of this war for his audience is informed not just by mimicking what the Pentagon and CIA tell him to say, but also by the views and perspectives of all countries in the region, including Iran.”

Compare that to Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, an Israeli politician, who said, “Tucker Carlson should be arrested and tried for treason.”

Excuse me? Why is a foreign elected official telling America what to do with its citizens?

Sadly, perhaps that is now the expectation. Sen. Lindsey Graham, after all, met with Israeli intelligence officials and then flew back to Washington to lobby Trump on starting a war. He even briefed Netanyahu on how to sell the war to Trump.

And this was treated as a fun little post-war anecdote in the Wall Street Journal.

Sadly, the backlash against Tucker is not unique.