The episode came after he hosted pro-MAGA, anti-Trump acolytes at his Maine cabin last weekend, including former Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), and one-time Trump administration aide Joe Kent, who stepped down as Trump’s counterterrorism chief in March over the Iran war.

The trio implored Carlson to run for president, according to Kent during a separate episode of The Young Turks on Wednesday.

“I’d say all of us at one point in time told Tucker he needs to run, and Tucker’s been pretty public that he’s not going to run,” Kent told host Cenk Uygur. “So we all made our pitch to Tucker as to why he should run, and hopefully he wakes up one day and says he’s gonna run. I fully support that.”

Carlson did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment, but conservative commentator and American Conservative Executive Director Curt Mills endorsed a potential Carlson presidential campaign, but “especially in the Republican Party a la Donald Trump in 2016.”

“But I do not believe he will run against JD Vance,” Mills told the Washington Examiner. “I think Carlson would likely only run himself if Trump did something as rash and establishment-minded as endorsing [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio over Vance.”

Just this week, the Washington Post reported that Trump told donors in the White House last month that, “At the end of the day, we need to elect JD.”

“No, no,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Thursday. “I think he’s great, but we’re way too early to even be thinking about that.”

Mills, however, added of Carlson that the former Fox News personality would be unlikely to “win the general election as a member of a third party,” considering he would not have immediate ballot access or political party infrastructure.

“Carlson is really smart, so he also knows that. So it would be a different kind of move if he did,” Mills said. “It would be a callback to Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot’s runs, in that case.”

Regardless of the logistics, Mills argued that “there is clearly a constituency for Tucker Carlson in the United States,” with “exact details to come.”

A Republican strategist granted anonymity in order to speak candidly disagreed, contending the idea of an anti-Trump MAGA lane in a prospective 2028 election was antithetical.

“There’s no such thing as ‘anti-Trump MAGA,’” the strategist told the Washington Examiner. “Trump is MAGA, and anyone who believes an anti-Trump MAGA candidate is viable spends way too much time online.”

Of Carlson’s 2028 prospects specifically, the source said, “The MAGA base still stands firmly in President Trump’s corner. No chance in hell.”

That has not stopped Carlson from amplifying his 10-point platform, summarizing his points as what “America should be, and probably has been in the past, but certainly should be.”

Carlson’s points include fairness, sovereignty, productivity, beauty, health, honesty, optimism, wisdom, decency, and unity, using his 90-minute podcast to directly and indirectly criticize Trump and his administration, particularly regarding the war in Iran, U.S. foreign policy toward Israel and Gaza, and the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

“Lying is bad, and unless you continue to say that, in fact, it’s an unacceptable, disqualifying sin in a leader,” he said, citing Trump’s insistence Iran’s most significant nuclear enrichment facilities were “completely and totally obliterated” last year. “We do not have that posture with our leaders. We allow them to lie and to penalize us for lying, and that’s really the basis of a lot of the unfairness and corruption that we endure and that has sapped the faith of most people in their government and even in their nation.”

Carlson started criticizing Trump more publicly during the administration’s first strikes against Iran as part of Operation Midnight Hammer before breaking with him more forcefully over Operation Epic Fury, the start of the Iran war.

VANCE STEERS CLEAR OF MAX MILLER CONTROVERSY — FOR NOW

“I mean you, and I, and everyone else who supported him — you wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him — we were implicated in this for sure,” Carlson told his brother Buckley on his podcast. “We’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional.”

Trump, who complained when Fox News pushed out Carlson, has responded by calling him “kooky” and quipping that he should get himself another cable television network show.