Victor Davis Hanson: Could Tucker Carlson Split the Republican Vote in 2028?

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**Victor Davis Hanson** (0:38)
I don't know the purpose of what the Tucker Carlson group is because historically it would suggest that all they want to do is make sure that Donald Trump successor JD Vans or Marco Rubio loses the 2028 election.

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**Victor Davis Hanson** (1:16)
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. Tucker Carlson recently assembled a group of like-minded, apostate MAGA conservatives for a meeting to discuss, apparently, a possible third party run in 2028
I think a lot of us were mystified for a lot of reasons. One of them was that third parties in American political history really have had no record in the modern era of ever winning. They do affect the election in some cases, but that's only to hurt the party that is more ideologically akin to the third party run. For example, in 1912, William Howard Taft, the incumbent president, was challenged by his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, who didn't like the first term of Taft. He created the Bull Moose Third Party. What was the effect of that? Well, he split the conservative Republican vote, and thereby he elected one of the most liberal progressives in the history of the United States, contrary to both his views and Taft's, Woodrow Wilson.
Ross Perot was a conservative, he said he was, from Texas. So was George HW. Bush, up for re-election in 1992 against Bill Clinton. What did Perot do? He ran a third party ticket. He was angry at the Bushes. He felt they were not correct on some conservative issues, debt and other things. And he succeeded in ensuring that Bill Clinton, a Democrat, would win the election with less than 50% of the vote. He did it again in 2000, excuse me, 1996 He may have had an effect even on that election, when Bob Dole lost the election, but Bill Clinton once again didn't win 50% of the vote, given the 10% that Ross Perot won. Of course, most famously in 2000, Al Gore ran against George W. Bush. It was a very close election. It was contested in Florida. As you remember, after the vote was counted and George W. Bush won, Al Gore contested it. He lost that vote, but the margin was almost minuscule in Florida, which determined the entire election. You could argue that the one or two percent of the vote that third party candidate Ralph Nader got ensured that Gore lost that election. So I don't know the purpose of what the Tucker Carlson group is because historically it would suggest that all they want to do is make sure that Donald Trump successor, JD. Vance or Marco Rubio, loses the 2028 election. What is their agenda? Well, they've said that they have ten points if they really are going to form a third party. I looked at them, I could say confidently that 80 percent, eight out of ten, are what they're getting right now with Donald Trump. They're worried about the poorest border. They're worried about crime. They're worried about DEI. They're worried about the family. They're worried about all of these things. But who is giving them relief? Who's offering a remedy to their anxieties? Donald Trump is. Do they really think the left has better idea that will better fit their agenda on the border that saw 12 million people come in under Biden or defund the police or the DEI chauvinism that came in under the Democrats? So their agenda is very similar to what they're getting now, except on two issues of which they differ. They do not want wars abroad, and they feel if we have collateral damage, we had it in World War II, we had it in Korea, we had it in Vietnam, we've had it in every war that we've fought, especially now in the Middle East where the enemy uses human shields on the premise that the United States doesn't deliberately hit civilians, and therefore they are willing to expose their own civilians' lives to protect their combatants. Tucker would have us pay cash reparations to any civilian who was killed in a war. You can imagine how that would work in the real world. So, given all of this, that the agenda they are getting pretty much dovetails with what we have in Washington, and given the record that third parties don't work too well other than to hurt the similarly ideologically akin party, why are they doing this? And I think you could argue that they have two concerns. One of them is their careers had once been rather spectacular. Tucker Carlson had the largest audience on Fox News. He was getting paid $20 million a year.