- March 6, 2026
- 2:26 pm
- World News
On March 5, 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump publicly quarreled with Tucker Carlson and effectively pushed him out of the MAGA movement. The reason was the war around Iran and the U.S. involvement in strikes that Carlson called ‘absolutely disgusting and evil.’
This story quickly ceased to be just a debate ‘for’ or ‘against’ the operation. It turned into a demonstrative conflict about who has the right to speak on behalf of the slogan America First, and then into a conveyor of conspiracy theories, where the Temple Mount, ‘Al-Aqsa,’ and accusations against Chabad are already being dragged into the frame.
The next day, on March 6, 2026, the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, Moshe Asman, recorded an address linking this wave to long-standing anti-Semitic myths and specifically emphasized their Russian origin: ‘most likely from across the border (from Russia – ed.) … the idea has been thrown around for a long time … that Jews want to rebuild the New Jerusalem here in Ukraine.’
Strikes on Iran and the split of ‘America First’
The trigger was the U.S. (and Israel – ed.) strikes on Iran, which Trump announced on February 28, 2026, calling Washington’s actions ‘major combat operations’ and describing them as a large-scale military campaign, but not a war in the formal sense.
Against this backdrop, Carlson — a man who was recently considered one of the loudest media allies of the White House — gave an interview to ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl and uttered a phrase that spread across American media: he called the attack on Iran ‘absolutely disgusting and evil’. Carlson had recently returned from Israel.
Carlson added a second remark, purely domestic: according to him, this ‘will shuffle the deck in the deepest way,’ referring to the consequences for the coalition around Trump.
He then expanded the thesis to a direct accusation: the U.S., he said, is fighting not for its own interests, but because ‘Israel wanted it to happen.’ In his project’s release, Carlson formulated this as harshly as possible:
‘This happened because Israel wanted it to happen. This is Israel’s war. This is not the U.S.’s war. It’s hard to say this, but the decision here was not made by the U.S. It was made by Benjamin Netanyahu,’ Carlson said.
He also claimed that the hostilities are not related to U.S. national security, economic interests, or the threat of weapons of mass destruction, and that ‘no one wants this war to be fought,’ and it is allegedly ‘designed to harm the United States.’
Trump’s response: the dispute is not about Iran, but about ‘belonging’
Trump responded to Carlson not with arguments about Iran, but with a blow to status — in the logic of ‘are you with us or not.’
On March 5, 2026, in an interview with the same Jonathan Karl, the U.S. President stated:
‘Tucker has lost his way. I’ve known this for a long time, and he is not MAGA. MAGA saves our country. MAGA makes our country great again. MAGA is ‘America First,’ and Tucker is none of that. And Tucker is actually not smart enough to understand this.’
The meaning of the response was transparent: Trump defined the boundary of acceptable criticism not as a debate about war, but as a question of belonging to the movement. In doing so, he made the conflict demonstrative for the entire media ecosystem around him — and simultaneously made it clear that he does not consider Carlson’s attack a threat to his own base.
But the problem, as you emphasized in the text, is that Carlson is just the tip of the iceberg. The White House had to fend off accusations from allies of deviating from the slogan America First: the mere presence of public disagreements became news precisely because usually conservative media allies ‘sing praises,’ and now some of them dared to argue on the main topic of the first days of the war.
There is also an important backstory here: back in June 2025, when debates about the cost and goals of military pressure on Iran were already flaring up in Trump’s camp, Trump sarcastically attacked Carlson for his position, using phrases like ‘quirky Tucker Carlson’ and insisting that Iran should not get nuclear weapons, and Carlson ‘doesn’t understand this.’
‘Crazy Carlson’: from political criticism to ‘Al-Aqsa’ and ‘Chabad’
The story then turned into a much more dangerous zone.
In his show, Carlson claimed that ‘the goal of Israel’s war’ is allegedly related to the desire to destroy the ‘Al-Aqsa’ mosque and build the Third Temple in its place. As ‘evidence,’ he mentioned a patch with the image of the Temple symbol ‘noticed on some IDF soldiers’ during the hostilities, concluding that the very sight of this symbol implies a religious goal for the war.
Separately, Carlson ‘expressed bewilderment’ that soldiers of an army partially funded by American taxpayers display symbols that he associates with the construction of the Temple.
He then linked this plot to Chabad Hasidim and claimed that they have been promoting the idea of building the Third Temple for years, ‘in a rather subtle way — if you don’t look closely — promoting the construction of the Third Temple.’ And he added that many in the U.S. allegedly ‘do not know about this’ because it is a secular society and does not pay attention to the religious significance of such symbols.
This is no longer just a debate about foreign policy. This is a classic transition from the discussion of ‘why the U.S. is involved in the operation’ to a conspiratorial worldview where the war is explained by secret religious motives and ‘hidden players.’
Reaction from Kyiv: ‘anti-Ukrainian and anti-Semite’ and ‘across the border’ as a myth factory
It is against this backdrop that on March 6, 2026, the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, Moshe Asman, recorded an address where he ridiculed such theses and called Carlson: ‘Anti-Ukrainian and anti-Semite Tucker Carlson.’
Asman recounted the ‘new wow thing’ in Carlson’s logic — that ‘Jews, or rather Chabad, started this war to rebuild the Third Temple in Jerusalem’ — and then conveyed the main idea: anti-Semitic explanations lack logic, they are more interested in blaming than understanding.
The most important fragment for the Ukrainian context sounded like this: ‘most likely from across the border (Russia – ed.) the idea has been thrown around for a long time’ that ‘Jews want to rebuild the New Jerusalem here in Ukraine.’
In other words, Asman directly linked the current wave to a well-known mechanism: the same hatred can be ‘packaged’ in different versions — today ‘the Third Temple,’ tomorrow ‘New Jerusalem in Ukraine,’ the day after tomorrow ‘the Jews are to blame, who either leave or come.’ The versions are mutually exclusive, but the goal is the same — to incite.
Asman then expanded the frame: he called Iran a criminal regime that sent drones against Ukraine and threatened Israel with destruction, and concluded with a religious-moral conclusion: a call to ‘love each other,’ do good deeds, and bring light, ending with the words ‘Shabbat Shalom.’
Why this story is important right now
The Washington conflict between Trump and Carlson is not just a personal quarrel. It is a demonstration of how, in a moment of war, the MAGA leader protects his political capital: ‘America First’ he guards as a sign of belonging, not as a topic for discussion.
But far more dangerous is the second line — when part of the ‘anti-war’ criticism turns into conspiracy theories about religion and Jews. Such plots quickly become a convenient weapon: they can be picked up, translated into any language, attached to any country and any war — and launched further.
And that is why the Ukrainian reaction from Asman sounds not like a ‘comment on American news,’ but as a warning: the myths that are being spread around Israel today will work against Ukraine in the same way tomorrow — especially if they are ‘thrown in from across the border.’