Tucker Carlson Retracts Past Anti-Islam Claims: “Nothing About That Is True”

Far-right commentator Tucker Carlson publicly retracted his past hostile comments about Islam and Muslims, saying he had once believed and repeated claims that were not true.

In a Sky News interview with Yalda Hakim, Carlson said he had previously portrayed Islam as the central threat to the West, but now rejects that view entirely. The remarks were notable because Carlson spent years as one of the most prominent conservative media figures warning about Islam, terrorism and the threat he believed Muslims posed to the United States.

Carlson directly described the kind of language he used in the past.

“Many times I said on television, ‘The problem is Islam. The problem is Muslims. They all want to kill us. They’re all crazy. They’re all in this lunatic suicide cult created by Muhammad in the 7th century.’ And I believed that,” Carlson said.

He then said he no longer stands behind those claims.

“I was hysterical. I believed that. No, that’s not true. Nothing about that is true, but I believed it,” he said.

The comments were not a minor adjustment in tone. Carlson presented them as a full reversal of a position he said he had sincerely held and promoted publicly. He acknowledged that he had helped spread the idea that Islam itself, and Muslims broadly, were a threat, and said he now believes that view was false.

Carlson’s comments also came after months in which he has increasingly defended Islam from attacks by figures on the American right. In April, he criticized President Donald Trump for a post threatening Iran that ended with the phrase “Praise be to Allah.”

“No president should mock Islam, that’s not your job,” Carlson said at the time, arguing that a president should not mock another religion.

The latest interview focused more broadly on Carlson’s sharp break with Trump over the war with Iran. Carlson accused Trump of abandoning the “America First” message that helped define his political rise. He also said the Iran war had ended MAGA as a political movement.

“The future of the MAGA? Well, that’s over. There’s no future of the MAGA movement, obviously. We’re done,” Carlson said.

Still, the most striking part of the interview was Carlson’s admission about his own rhetoric on Islam. His comments cut against years of post-9/11 conservative messaging that presented Islam as a civilizational threat, and they come as parts of the American right are openly divided over Iran, Israel and U.S. involvement in the Middle East.