Trump vs. Tucker: Enten reveals which way MAGA is breaking

[0:00] Overnight, President Trump going hard on some of his really political allies, Tucker Carlson, [0:06] Megyn Kelly, others. This is what he wrote about Carlson. Again, they have been critical [0:10] of the war in Iran. He wrote, Carlson, who couldn't even finish college, he was a broken [0:16] man when he got fired from Fox and he's never been the same. Perhaps he should see a good [0:21] psychiatrist. That was some of the nicer stuff he wrote. CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten [0:27] is here right now. So the president attacking Tucker Carlson, Tucker Carlson going after [0:33] the president on Iran and other things. When voters were predisposed to, like both of them, [0:39] look at this, I suppose the question is, what do they see? How are they doing with Republicans [0:44] and Republican-leading independents? Yeah, let's start off with Tucker Carlson, [0:49] who has been in absolute free fall with Republicans. I mean, just take a look at this. [0:54] Look at this trend line, Tucker Carlson's net favorable. Back in March of 2024, when he [0:58] and Donald Trump were very close friends, look at this, he was at plus 54 points. Look at where [1:03] he is today at only plus seven points among Republicans, and that includes GOP-leaning [1:09] independents. I mean, that is a drop of, what, 47 percentage points. My goodness gracious, [1:16] when you go up against Donald Trump and you want to appeal to the Republican base, to quote [1:20] the movie Good Burger, you go on the grinder. And that is exactly what has happened to Tucker [1:24] Carlson, who has absolutely collapsed among Republicans. So if it is a choice between the [1:29] president and Tucker Carlson among these voters, what do they basically say? Yeah, they choose [1:34] Donald Trump basically every single time. Look at this. Okay, the exact same poll, this U.S. [1:39] Lowell poll. Look at this. Net favorables among Republicans. Again, this is Republicans [1:42] plus Republican-leaning independents. You see Carlson on the right side of your screen at plus [1:46] some points. Look at where Donald Trump is at plus 61 points. And this is actually a little bit [1:50] low for Donald Trump. In other polls around the same time, he was even higher than this. Again, [1:54] he is crushing, crushing Tucker Carlson. What is this? This is a 54-point advantage for Donald [2:02] Trump over Tucker Carlson when it comes to who is more popular among Republican voters. And of course, [2:06] this is even just talking about the MAGA base, where Donald Trump is running an approval rating [2:10] somewhere between 97 and 100 percent. Okay, so what does this mean for Tucker Carlson going forward? [2:16] Say Tucker Carlson wanted to build some kind of a platform where he could run for office, [2:22] say, president. Yeah, okay. So you see Donald Trump crushing, crushing Tucker Carlson here. [2:28] Take a look at this. Look at the Calcio prediction markets when it comes to his chance, [2:31] Tucker Carlson's chance to be the 2028 GOP nominee for president. It's just five. When you can put it on [2:37] one hand, you know it's low. It's just five percent that Tucker Carlson actually has enough support [2:42] within the GOP, at least those who are putting their money where their mouth is, to actually be the GOP [2:46] nominee in 2028. Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance are running well ahead of him. Okay, so again, in this [2:51] imaginary world, you know, if the prediction markets are wrong, Tucker Carlson were to become [2:57] a candidate, how might he do? Okay, why don't we take a look against the most likely Democratic nominee, [3:02] Gavin Newsom? And this is, I think, so important because it's not just that Tucker Carlson struggles [3:06] now with Republicans. He is electoral poison when it comes to general electorate. So Gavin Newsom [3:11] versus potential GOP nominees in the 2028 presidential matchup. Against Tucker Carlson, [3:15] look at this, Gavin Newsom crushes, crushes Tucker Carlson by 11 points. J.D. Vance actually beat, [3:21] actually beat Gavin Newsom in this poll by three. So Tucker Carlson very much struggling, [3:26] runs way behind the GOP baseline in the general election as well. You pick, you pick Newsom because [3:31] he's leading in some of these early, early polls. He's the most likely Democratic nominee in the [3:36] prediction markets at this point. Interesting. Vance beats him right now, but Tucker Carlson, [3:39] not so much. Not so much. Not well-liked among Republicans and not well-liked, hated among the [3:44] general electorate. Aaron, thank you very much. Thank you. We've got a lot of great political [3:48] reporting today here at CNN, and I'm going to bring yours in now, Aaron. You did a great piece [3:55] about the divide among sort of MAGA media, people with big MAGA platforms in the podcast universe in [4:05] particular. And one of the things that you talk about are Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and people [4:12] like that who are really separating from the president. The president put out a pretty lengthy [4:19] social media post about this yesterday, and I'm just going to read part of it to you. You have it [4:25] there on the screen. Pardon me, my allergies. Tucker Carlson, who couldn't even finish college, [4:30] he was a broken man when he got fired from Fox, and he's never been the same. Perhaps he should see [4:34] a good psychiatrist. Narrator's note, I should tell you, he went, Tucker Carlson went to the White [4:40] House as recently as February 23rd, five days before the war began. Okay, Megyn Kelly, who nastily asked [4:46] me the now famous only Rosie O'Donnell question. Narrator's note, she campaigned with Trump in [4:53] November of 2024. Candace Owens, who accuses the highly respected first lady of France of being a man, [4:59] and she is not. She interviewed the president in 2021 at Mar-a-Lago. Or bankrupt Alex Jones, [5:06] who says some of the dumbest things and lost his entire fortune, as he should have for his horrendous [5:12] attack on the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims, ridiculously claiming it was a hoax. [5:18] And final narrator's note, Trump appeared on Alex Jones' show in December of 2015. It was a little [5:25] while ago, but he said to him, your reputation is amazing. It's been pretty remarkable to see the [5:31] influencer class, the kind of independent media types, including some of the ones that we just saw [5:36] there, split with Trump over the war in ways that we haven't necessarily seen the opinion hosts on Fox [5:43] News or conservative media traditional broadcast. And what I did is I actually looked the Spotify [5:50] charts to see the top podcasts. And we're going to put that up because it's fascinating. Yeah, it's very [5:54] interesting because the top 14 podcasts on Spotify, six of those podcasts, these are not all politics [6:02] podcasts, but six of those people happen to be people who have aligned with Trump in one way or [6:07] another or endorsed him in the 2024 campaign, but have split with him at least on the war, if not on [6:13] other issues. So that creates this kind of unusual and unprecedented dynamic where people who are [6:19] subscribing to these shows and hearing them who may be more casual voters, maybe not, you know, [6:24] politics watchers intensely are getting some very skeptical takes on these issues in ways that they [6:30] may not have otherwise before. And so I'm going to be really interested to see how this might play out [6:35] in the election. I don't know if we know exactly how something like this plays, but it is very one [6:40] sided right now in this space. And these are these numbers are so remarkable, I thought, because these [6:48] are the most popular podcast. So this is a lot of people we're talking about. This is a very big audience, [6:53] probably, no offense, bigger than CNN daytime, right, in the aggregate. And this is a lot of people who [6:58] are, you know, hypothetically potentially interested in Trump's politics, who are now hearing, as you [7:05] said, a lot of criticism from a lot of these figures in a space that is not all that political, [7:12] right? So these are exactly the type of infrequent potential voters that Republicans are so worried [7:17] about in November, because those are the ones that they think Trump is discouraging and at risk of losing. [7:22] When we look at how all of this is playing out for the president, it has been striking this week [7:26] to hear the backlash from a number of voices in conservative and mega media when it comes to the [7:31] president, specifically his threats involving Iran and annihilation of a culture. Take a listen to some [7:38] of that. I don't know about you, but I am sick of this. I'm just, I'm sick of it. Can't he just [7:47] behave like a normal human? I mean, honestly, like the president, all right, 3D chess. Shut up. Shut up [7:56] about that. You don't threaten to wipe out an entire civilization. It is vile on every level. [8:06] There will be nothing like it. Open the effing straight. How dare you speak that way on Easter [8:11] morning to the country? Who do you think you are? How do we 25th Amendment is ass? [8:16] If I was the Democrats, I'd stop poking Trump and messing with him. That only makes it worse. Like, [8:21] you guys need to watch out. This isn't a guy acting like he's crazy. This is real. [8:26] So there you have some of the backlash, which is, you know, based on what we're seeing from [8:29] the president, it's making its way to him. I see no altruism in any of it. I'm sorry to be [8:36] so cynical. It's all about clicks. Look, President Trump is never one to turn the other cheek. So when [8:42] they engage him, of course he was going to respond in kind. But this is exactly what makes that part of [8:49] the media industry sadly thrive. It's all about clicks and eyes to websites and so forth. And [8:56] something has changed. You know, there's a very fragmented media landscape now. It used to be [9:02] that on the right, it was a world of terrestrial talk radio and Fox News. There were corporate [9:06] interests and there were some parameters around behavior. Now it's individuals who are entrepreneurs [9:12] with very few guardrails and it's fueled toxicity. I want to get your pulse on, look, [9:20] President Trump blasting right-wing pundits who've criticized the war. Public polling, [9:24] though, does show Trump's war with Iran is backed by a large majority of Republican voters. [9:29] But do you believe the likes of Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens and more speak for a [9:35] significant part of Trump's base? How do you assess their voices in this? [9:44] The voices matter. And the fact that the president doesn't have a united front at this moment [9:49] among people who backed him in 2024 is of obvious concern. But the critical nature for me as a pollster [9:58] are the independents. These are individuals who will vote in 2026, are not aligned by political party, [10:07] are not particularly ideological and are not particularly political. And their opinions [10:13] matter most because they're the deciding vote in the two dozen seats that determine who controls [10:19] the Congress. And right now their hostility to the war, at least at this moment, is going to be a [10:27] problem for the Republicans. But again, it's only the middle of April and so much can change [10:33] between now and then. Yeah, it's still a warning sign. The red lights flashing everywhere. But that [10:41] just tells me that the White House and Congress needs to do a better job of explaining why, [10:47] how and what happens at the end.