Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson called for President Donald Trump to be removed from office by officials within his own administration under the 25th Amendment.
Carlson made the remarks in an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep that was published Thursday. During the conversation, Carlson continued his criticism of Trump, a man he once vocally supported, and moved from talk of impeachment to the 25th Amendment while discussing the ongoing war with Iran.
When asked whether Trump should be impeached over the war, Carlson suggested the president would not face consequences for it.
“He’s not going to be punished for it. They’ll get him on corruption or whatever,” Carlson said.
Carlson then went further, declaring that Trump “should have been removed from office immediately when he threatened nuclear war.”
“Threatening the offensive use of nuclear weapons? Which is to say threatening the destruction of humanity?!” a shocked Carlson said.
Carlson’s comments come after Trump’s address to the United Nations this week, in which the president threatened to “annihilate” Iran if the war continues.
“Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before — maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East, or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell, with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness for generations?” Trump said.
The president has made similar comments about Iran in the past.
Carlson told Inskeep that the threat alone was enough to justify removing Trump from the White House.
“It’s enough for me to say he should be removed from office. He should have been removed from office by his own Cabinet secretaries the moment he threatened a nuclear attack,” Carlson said.
Inskeep pressed Carlson on whether he was referring to the 25th Amendment, and the former Fox News host confirmed that he was.
“That’s correct. He should have been bundled up and taken out. That’s a crime. There’s no greater crime than that,” Carlson said.
Part of the 25th Amendment allows a vice president and a majority of Cabinet secretaries to force the removal of a president who cannot fulfill the duties of his office or is in direct violation of them.
Carlson argued that the reaction to Trump’s words reveals something troubling about the country’s moral compass.
“Here you have a guy threatening to eliminate the human race and that’s not considered a crime?!” Carlson said about Trump. “It tells you how deranged our moral scale has become. So he should be removed from office for threatening first-use nuclear strike.”
The remarks mark a dramatic escalation in Carlson’s break with Trump. Once one of the president’s most vocal supporters, Carlson is now publicly arguing that Trump’s own Cabinet should have acted to remove him from power over his rhetoric toward Iran.
Carlson’s comments to NPR go beyond his earlier criticism of the president, shifting from the question of impeachment to a direct call for Trump’s removal under the 25th Amendment, which he said should have happened the moment the president threatened a nuclear attack.
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