Conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson told his audience Monday that he is “tormented” by his decision to back Donald Trump in 2024, apologizing for what he called unintentional misleading of his listeners. Body language expert Inbaal Honigman, speaking to OK! Magazine, offered a skeptical read of the mea culpa, suggesting there is more to Carlson’s apology than meets the eye.
According to Honigman, “Carlson is hiding more than he is revealing.” She noted that his crossed arms — which she described as “extra tight” — combined with raised shoulders pointed to more than defensiveness. “His shoulders are raised protectively, indicating that he’s not just trying to defend himself from any backlash, but that he’s tucking away more information,” she said, calling the posture “furtive” and suggesting it reflected the body language of a man afraid his secrets might slip out.
Carlson’s facial expressions told a similar story, Honigman said. When he spoke about the days he campaigned for Trump, deep lines appeared between his brows, and his brows dropped — a physical response she interpreted as worry. “This is a frown showing concern,” Honigman said. “This expression reveals that when he thinks about those days, he feels worried.”
She added that Carlson appeared to be carefully managing what he disclosed: “There are skeletons in Carlson’s closet which he prefers to leave tucked away. He’s careful not to say too much, so that he doesn’t implicate himself.”
On the Monday, April 20, episode of The Tucker Carlson Show, Carlson sat with his brother Buckley Carlson, a former Trump speechwriter, and addressed his Trump endorsement in measured terms. “So, I do think it’s like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences,” Carlson said. “You know, 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. That’s all I’ll say.”
Carlson’s remarks came amid a growing public split on the right over Trump’s handling of the war in Iran. Once among the president’s most prominent media supporters, Carlson has since become one of his loudest critics. He has called the Iran war the “single biggest mistake” by Trump and described the president’s rhetoric on the conflict as “vile on every level,” saying that the latter “clearly had no plan,” went into it, thereby breaking a decade of promises to avoid such foreign entanglements.
Acknowledging his own role in Trump’s political rise, Carlson said: “You and I and everyone else who supported him — you wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him — I mean, we’re implicated in this for sure. It’s not enough to say, ‘Well, I changed my mind’ — or like, ‘Oh, this is bad — I’m out.'”
Beyond his criticism of the Iran war, Carlson also described Trump as a man “hemmed in by other forces” who “can’t make his own decisions.” After Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV on social media and posted an AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus Christ, Carlson raised a pointed theological question on his podcast. “Could this be the antichrist?” he asked.
Trump did not let the criticism pass. In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote, “Tucker is a low-IQ person — always easy to beat, and highly overrated!!!” In a separate April 9 post, Trump said Carlson and other allies-turned-critics “have one thing in common, Low IQs,” adding: “They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too!”