Sean Hannity Says Tucker Carlson is ‘Not the Person That I Knew’ at Fox: ‘I Just Completely Disagree’ With ‘A Lot of What He Says’

(Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Fox News host Sean Hannity said the current Israel-obsessed version of Tucker Carlson is “not the person” he knew when they were both colleagues at the cable news network.

Hannity said he has no relationship with Carlson and that he doesn’t recognize what Carlson has become during an interview with Katie Miller, the wife of White House adviser Stephen Miller. Axios reported Hannity’s comments in a first look story on Tuesday.

“I don’t ever talk to him, ever,” Hannity said on The Katie Miller Podcast. “I wish him well. I’ve read a lot of what he says. I just completely disagree with it. And it’s not the person that I knew when he was at Fox.”

Carlson was the biggest host in cable news history before he was booted from Fox News in 2023. Tucker Carlson Tonight set a record when it averaged 5.36 million viewers in October 2020, and it routinely averaged more than 4 million viewers per month — giving Carlson so much sway that his program acted as a “senior adviser” to President Donald Trump during his first term, according to a recent biography. Following his exile from Fox News, Carlson found a way to stay relevant by building his own media network — while not approaching the visibility he had in his heyday. His YouTube channel has more than 5 million YouTube subscribers and he has 17.2 million followers on X.

Hannity, meanwhile, has remained a strong contributor to Fox’s continued dominance. His show averaged 2.87 million viewers last month, which more than tripled the number of viewers CNN and Kaitlan Collins got in the 9:00 p.m. hour; it was also more than the double what Jen Psaki averaged on MS NOW and was about 500,000 more viewers than Rachel Maddow averaged during her Monday broadcasts.

Carlson also appears to still have a pretty good relationship with the president and has been spotted meeting with him several times at the White House in the last year. But Trump on Monday said Carlson can “say whatever he wants; it has no impact on me,” after Carlson called the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran “absolutely disgusting and evil.”

Hannity was asked by Miller if he believes conservative media stars have spent too much time fighting with each other.

“I do,” Hannity said, per Axios. He added, “I’ve stayed out of it, if you’ve noticed. … That’s by design. To me, the big fight in this country is against the radical left. And [if] they all want to kill each other, have at it.”

Carlson has maintained an audience in large part thanks to a steady diet of Israel-critical content, like his latest video on the attacks that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Carlson argued this was not in America’s best interest, saying “this war is waged purely because Israel wanted it to be waged.” This isn’t abnormal — half of his most recent YouTube videos — 7 out of 14 videos posted in the past month — mention Israel in the title.

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