Glenn Greenwald Predicts an Anti-Israel GOP Presidential Candidate in 2028: ‘I Hope It’s Tucker’

 

Glenn Greenwald, the veteran journalist turned pundit, joined Danny Jones on his popular podcast this week and predicted that a Tucker Carlson-like figure will run in the 2028 GOP presidential primary and find a lot of support, particularly by opposing Israel.

Greenwald, a fierce critic of President Donald Trump’s interventionist foreign policy, blasted Trump’s war in Iran and accused him of being blind to polls showing how unpopular Israel is.

“The problem is, Trump has made his choice very clearly. I mean, he denounced and basically expelled from his little tree house — the MAGA treehouse — Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie,Greenwald said as Jones jumped in:

This is the crazy thing to me: it seems like, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve never seen a president who’s more poll-aware than Donald Trump, who keeps track of the polls and knows exactly what the polls are doing at all times. But the one poll that he’s Helen Keller on is the Israel one and the Epstein one. That’s the one he just ignores completely.

“I mean, he knows this too, because he has talked about how the Israel lobby used to be this incredibly powerful, almost omnipotent lobby. Like, nobody would ever question Israel or cross the Israelis. And he’s criticized Israel on PR grounds — like, they don’t quite have the same kind of PR campaign power that they used to have,” Greenwald replied, adding:

And as a result, the popularity of Israel is declining in the United States, which it is — very rapidly, very precipitously, even very kind of shockingly — from, at least from my perspective, as somebody who’s wanted to see this for decades, never thought I would. Yeah. So Trump’s very aware of that because he said he’s very poll-driven.

And it is so interesting, is it not, that on these two issues — I’ll just, even like, even abortion, you know, Trump understood that even in red states after Roe v. Wade was overturned with Dobbs, even in red states when they tried to put very hardline anti-abortion bills on the ballot, it was getting defeated like 65/35. And he understood that if he wanted to win in 2024, he couldn’t be very hardline on abortion.

And he started moderating his language in a way that really alarmed pro-life activists. It was clearly just — you know, when he ran in 2016, it was standard pro-life rhetoric. So he’s not just conscious of it.

Later in the conversation, the pair turned to discussing the 2028 race and the possibility of Tucker Carlson becoming president.

“I don’t think a Democratic politician can win if they’re too associated with Israel. That’s how much the politics have changed,” Greenwald argued, adding:

Joe Biden won in 2020, and he spent 30 years saying, ‘There’s no bigger Zionist in Washington than me. No one’s ever done more for Israel. We love Israel, we should give them even more.’ All of that’s gone in the Democratic Party. In the Republican Party, there’s going to be a major candidate — I am certain.

I hope it’s Tucker.

“Really? I think it could happen,” Jones replied.

“This is my hope. I mean, Tucker’s a good friend of mine. I don’t exploit my friendship to pressure him to run for president. And he’s adamant that he won’t, publicly. And even if you talk to him and try to exploit it, he’ll kind of laugh. But stranger things have happened,” Greenwald continued, adding:

But anyway, I hope it’s him. But even if it’s not him, there’ll be a Thomas Massie figure, a Marjorie Taylor Greene — I don’t know who — who runs on a real America First platform, like a return to America First, and says, ‘Hey, remember this? Like, we’re not supposed to fight wars for foreign countries.

We’re not supposed to send billions of dollars out of our communities in the Midwest that have been deindustrialized and overrun with addiction and suicide and depression, and people having to work three jobs, not being able to buy homes until they’re 40 or start families until they’re 40, and maybe having one kid because that’s all they can afford, and both parents work outside the house. Until that’s fixed, we shouldn’t be sending billions of dollars to Ukraine or Israel, paying for their army, paying for their society.

Watch the clip above.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!

Tags:

Alex Griffing is a Senior Editor at Mediaite. Send tips via email: alexanderg@mediaite.com. Follow him on Twitter: @alexgriffing