Buckley Carlson — Tucker Carlson’s brother, a lifelong Washington DC resident, WASP, and former speechwriter for Donald Trump in 2015 — explains why he supported Trump from the very beginning, why millions of early supporters now feel betrayed, and why he believes Trump has failed the country on virtually every level that matters.
Why Buckley Supported Trump So Early
Buckley was drawn to Trump in 2015 because Trump represented a total departure from the poll-tested, packaged Republican candidates who had dominated Washington for decades.
He had worked in politics and corporate PR in DC since the 1990s and had grown disillusioned with Republican leaders who had no principles they were willing to defend.
The starkest example was John McCain, whom Buckley had personally liked and respected, leading the charge against Big Tobacco in a grandstanding, fraudulent way that sold out both the industry and the American heritage intertwined with it — and then refusing to properly vet or oppose Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign.
By the time Obama’s second term ended, the country felt transformed in ways Buckley found disgusting: anti-white messaging had permeated education and culture, open discourse had become impossible even with Democratic friends, and the country had gone from self-confident to apologetic.
Trump’s core policy priorities — immigration enforcement, trade reform, putting America first — aligned closely with Buckley’s worldview, and Trump articulated them with a consistency and refusal to bend under attack that Buckley had never seen in American politics.
Buckley was especially impressed that Trump never backed down under the most aggressive personal attacks from every quarter, including his own party.
Trump also flipped the Republican coalition-building script: instead of surrendering cultural ground to appeal to new voters, he said America’s strengths and identity were worth defending.
Buckley began writing rally speeches for Trump in late 2015, mostly on immigration, working with Stephen Miller. He was given unusual creative freedom and felt the speeches wrote themselves because they were honest, straightforward, and aligned with his own views.
The Cost of Supporting Trump in Washington DC
Buckley lived in a neighborhood that voted 4.1% for Trump in 2016. He was a WASP in the group that hated Trump most, working in the political world Trump was railing against.
He put a bumper sticker on his truck (“pro-life, pro-gun, pro-Trump” with a sunset graphic), had his car defaced repeatedly, and had small American flags stolen from his vehicle.
His wife, who is apolitical, publicly said she liked Trump at a neighborhood Christmas party and was met with genuine anger and embarrassment from people who had been friends for years.
Buckley attributes his ability to withstand social pressure to having worked from home for long-standing clients since 2004, never being subservient to institutional power, and growing up in an era when Americans could express opinions without apology.
The 2016 Victory and the Promise of Trump’s First Term
Buckley attended Trump’s sparsely attended 2016 victory party at the Javits Center, where the campaign had not even assembled the full team because they expected to lose.
The most memorable aspect was a wall of televisions showing the Hillary Clinton victory party in real time — celebrities and elected officials in tears as Florida flipped.
Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, privately told Buckley the night of the election that she expected Trump to lose, something Buckley had never encountered from a campaign manager on election day.
Buckley’s early disillusionments during Trump’s first term included:
Empowering Jared Kushner, a former Democrat and globalist, and surrounding himself with Goldman Sachs figures instead of people who understood how to navigate Washington against a hostile Republican establishment.
Paul Ryan, newly elevated to Speaker by Trump’s victory, actively obstructed Trump’s agenda out of personal bitterness and weakness.
The Russia collusion investigation, which Buckley considered absurd on its face given how disorganized the campaign was, but which paralyzed the administration for years — a failure Buckley blames on Trump’s inability to delegate and account for his own weaknesses.
COVID, George Floyd, and the Stolen 2020 Election
Buckley did not take the COVID vaccine and never considered it, but Trump not only took it publicly and encouraged all Americans to do so through Operation Warp Speed, but never apologized even after it became clear the vaccine caused widespread harm including myocarditis, cancers, and infertility.
When Buckley raised this with Trump, Trump deflected by asking whether Buckley believed in the polio vaccine — a nonsequitur Buckley recognized as a deliberate tactic to shut down the conversation.
During the George Floyd riots of 2020, Buckley saw a manufactured crisis from the beginning (Fentanyl was found in Floyd’s system, and Floyd had told officers “I can’t breathe” before the encounter began), but Trump failed to exercise his power as chief executive.
Trump allowed riots to rage across the country and even near the White House, failed to articulate what was at stake, failed to defend law enforcement, and failed to protect American cities and citizens.
Buckley believed Trump won reelection in 2020 and that the election was stolen through a coordinated effort involving the FBI, DHS, and institutional corruption.
During the “wilderness years” (2021-2024), Trump raised over a billion dollars, but every dollar and every word was about Donald Trump’s personal victimhood — never about the January 6 political prisoners who were being abused in prison, never about the Americans who had exercised their First Amendment rights and been crushed by their own government.
Trump had the biggest microphone in the country and could have held an impromptu press conference anywhere, but he never used it meaningfully to support the people who had sacrificed for him.
The Breaking Point: Iran, Charlie Kirk, and the Epstein Files
Buckley identifies several moments that crystallized his sense of betrayal:
The Iran war: Trump launched an attack on Iran that he had explicitly promised for a decade not to do, with no clear plan, killing Americans and degrading the country — a war widely understood to have been pressured by Israel. Trump could have been forthcoming with the American people about the pressure he was under but chose not to.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination: Trump failed to display sufficient sympathy or urgency, failed to use the full apparatus of the US government to investigate, and the official investigation under Kash Patel raised more questions than it answered — inexplicable references to “Valhalla” (a pagan concept inappropriate for a Christian victim), emphasis on the number 33, low-quality video released when high-quality existed, and a narrative that required believing the killer incriminated himself in detail through text messages.
The Epstein files: Trump had committed to releasing the Epstein files, the JFK files, and the 9/11 files. He released none of them. When pressed, he redefined MAGA as whatever he said it was on any given day, told supporters who demanded transparency that he didn’t need them, and staged a ham-handed PR stunt bringing right-wing influencers to the Oval Office to show them binders of already-public Epstein material. He then turned viciously on Marjorie Taylor Greene — one of the most sincere and hardworking Trump allies in Congress — and when she told him her son was receiving death threats because of her stance on Epstein, Trump texted back that the boy “deserved it” and it was her fault.
Failure to hold anyone accountable: Despite having the Department of Justice, the FBI, and Congress at his disposal, Trump failed to prosecute or even meaningfully investigate anyone for the Russia hoax, COVID policy crimes, January 6 abuses, the autopen scandals, the preemptive pardons, or the Obama administration’s documented surveillance and obstruction of Trump’s presidency (which Tulsi Gabbard revealed constituted treason).
The Deeper Pattern: Disdain for Supporters and Loyalty Only to Donors and Neocons
Buckley observes that Trump’s only consistent loyalties are to his donors (like Miriam Adelson, who gave $250 million despite her obvious allegiance to a foreign power) and to the neoconservative establishment he once ran against.
Trump attacks Islam and then attacks Jesus, but will never attack the Lubavitcher Rebbe — a revealing pattern Buckley cannot fully explain but finds deeply significant.
Trump has shown total contempt for the working-class Americans who put him in office, treating them as disposable once they are no longer useful, while protecting the institutions and people who tried to destroy him.
Buckley believes the entire trajectory of the last decade — the cultural degradation, the COVID response, the George Floyd operation, the election interference, and now the Iran war — cannot be accidental. It is clearly by design, a long-term program to weaken and divide the country, and Trump has either been complicit in it or has been neutralized by it.
Where This Goes
Buckley sees the current moment as the most fertile ground for genuine unrest he has ever witnessed, driven by the Iran war, higher prices, economic misery, AI disruption, and a government that is not responsive to the people it serves.
He believes the 25th Amendment exists for a reason and that honest people within the government who have the power to act should consider using it if the country is suffering great and lasting damage.
He notes that the Republican Party is likely to lose power in the midterms because it has delivered nothing but war and misery, and the left — vindictive, effective planners with long memories — will use that opportunity for retribution against Trump’s supporters, not Trump himself or his family, who have insulated themselves financially.
Buckley feels personally implicated in what has happened, having written speeches for Trump and supported him publicly, and he is sorry for misleading people — though he emphasizes it was not intentional.
He does not feel personally threatened physically, but he believes the backlash from the left will be overwhelming and that Trump’s supporters — not Trump — will bear the consequences.
