Tucker Carlson, for years one of the most influential voices on the American right, says he wants to help build a new political party — a public rupture with the Republican coalition that helped elect President Trump.
What he said
In an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review published Wednesday, Carlson said, "I'm going to help build a third party," adding that "there should be a good-faith effort to figure out what benefits the country." He described the American political system as "a one-party state posing as a democracy" that, in his view, "needs to be broken."
Carlson was clear that he does not intend to seek office himself. "I don't want to be a candidate," he said, framing his role as an organizer and advocate rather than a politician.
The break with Trump
The comments cap a months-long deterioration in Carlson's relationship with the president. Asked whether the two still speak, Carlson said they had not talked in some time. "I haven't spoken to him since the regime-change war began," he said, referring to U.S. involvement in the recent conflict between Israel and Iran, which he has sharply criticized. "I'm not interested in talking to him. I feel sorry for him."
Carlson, who was ousted from Fox News in 2023 and now runs his own online media operation, has spent recent weeks arguing that both major parties move in what he calls "lockstep" on foreign policy and finance. Earlier this summer he said he would not back Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections. Trump, for his part, has publicly derided Carlson in the past, and the White House has not embraced his criticism.
He is not the only figure on the right voicing such frustration. Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has also signaled openness to a new party, writing that Carlson "is not the only one who is done supporting the Republican Party," according to news accounts of her posts.
Why third parties rarely work
Whatever momentum the idea has, the structural barriers are formidable — a point election experts stress regardless of ideology. The United States runs almost entirely on "first past the post," winner-take-all elections, a design that mathematically favors two dominant parties and tends to squeeze out alternatives.
Ballot access alone is a gauntlet. Requirements vary enormously from state to state, from a handful of signatures in some to tens of thousands in others, and new parties shoulder far heavier burdens than the established two. Third parties also struggle for money, media attention and credibility, and voters often fear that backing one amounts to a wasted vote.
History underscores the difficulty. The strongest modern independent showing was Ross Perot's in 1992, when he won about 19% of the popular vote but no electoral votes; Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose run in 1912 drew roughly 27% and finished second, splitting the Republican vote. Since then, sustained third parties have repeatedly failed to take root, and even movements that gained ballot access in one election have seen it erode in the next.
What's actually been announced
For now, the effort remains a stated intention more than an organization. Carlson has not laid out a platform, a name, a slate of candidates or a timeline, and it is unclear who beyond a few sympathetic voices would join. What he has offered is a declaration — a prominent conservative saying he is done with the Republican Party and wants to build something new. Whether that becomes a functioning party, or joins the long list of American third-party efforts that flared and faded, is a question his announcement leaves unanswered.
