Hanson: Greene and Carlson Misjudge Their Ties to Trump

Victor Davis Hanson is probably right that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson got too comfortable assuming they had some permanent lane with Trump. That’s the trap with celebrity politics: you start confusing airtime and access with actual leverage. Trump is transactional, yes, but he’s also a meter reader. If he thinks you’re freelancing in a way that complicates his message, or turning yourself into the story, he moves on. Fast.

Greene has always operated like a one-woman cable segment generator, and it worked for a while because the party wanted fighters and she delivered noise on demand. But noise is not the same as usefulness, especially when a campaign is trying to look disciplined enough to govern. Tucker, meanwhile, built a brand on being the guy who says the unsayable, even to allies. That’s entertaining. It’s also a problem if the unsayable starts sounding like a rival power center. Presidents don’t like co-stars.

What’s interesting in Hanson’s framing, via Miranda Devine’s show, is that this isn’t a morality play about loyalty. It’s about miscalculation. People around Trump often think the relationship is personal, even familial. It rarely is. The relationship is a tool until it isn’t, and then it’s a memory. If Greene or Carlson believed past services bought them a standing exemption from criticism or a permanent seat at the table, they haven’t been watching the same Trump the rest of us have.

There’s a lesson here for the broader right, too, and it’s not “be nicer.” It’s don’t confuse the microphone with the mission. If the goal is winning and then actually running the country, the movement can’t be organized around who gets the most attention this week. Trump will keep choosing what serves him in the moment, because that’s how he’s wired. The question for everyone else is whether they’re building something sturdier than a relationship that can “go south” overnight.