This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Pity poor Tucker Carlson. Watching Donald Trump’s war in Iran—which Carlson has branded “the single biggest mistake” by a U.S. president in his lifetime—he is ruing his strong support for Trump in the 2024 election.“It’s a moment to wrestle with our own consciences,” Carlson, long the most prominent media personality in the MAGA movement, said this week on his podcast. “We’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”Or, even better, don’t pity Carlson. He is one of several media figures who are having second thoughts about Trump—and in some cases, receiving praise for it. But these pundits deserve no amnesty. Their second thoughts are wise, but to have erred so badly, when so many other commentators and journalists saw the truth, disqualifies them from being taken seriously on politics again.The problem is not just that Carlson ought to have known better. It’s that he did, as the journalist Jason Zengerle reports in his recent biography, Hated by All the Right People. Back in the early 2000s, Carlson harbored reservations about the war in Iraq, but he swallowed them to be what he felt was a good team player for the right, Zengerle notes. Later, he said, he’d gone “against my own instincts in supporting it. It’s something I’ll never do again. Never.” (The Iraq disaster may inform Carlson’s vehement opposition to the war in Iran.)And yet Carlson did just that with Trump, repeatedly. He initially found Trump coarse, but came around to him during the 2016 presidential campaign. By 2020, however, he’d become disgusted with Trump, including over his handling of COVID; Zengerle writes that Carlson first believed that the president’s approach was too blasé, then too strict. He told people he voted for Kanye West for president in 2020. When Trump tried to steal the election despite losing it, Carlson skewered Trump’s allies on air and was even harsher in text messages to colleagues.“I hate him passionately,” Carlson wrote in texts revealed a few years later in a lawsuit against Fox. “That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.” Yet after being fired from Fox, Carlson mended his relationship with Trump, counseling him to choose J. D. Vance as running mate and speaking at his rallies.Discerning the “real” Tucker Carlson is, Zengerle suggests, a lost cause, and anyway, it doesn’t matter whether Carlson was honest when he was backing Trump or is being earnest now. Either way, he’s forfeited any reason to listen to him. And yet Carlson’s turn against Trump has won him commendation of the “strange new respect” variety from liberals such as Jon Favreau of Pod Save America. This is ill-advised, and not only because Carlson continues to mingle anti-Semitism and other bigotries with his Trump criticisms. If these liberals’ goal is to make allies who can draw Trump voters away, it’s also likely to be ineffective. As Carlson rejects Trump, his own popularity is cratering faster than the president’s.Restoring American democracy after Trump will require reaching out to those who backed him. That’s good sense and good math: After all, he was democratically elected, and many of his supporters were fooled by him or didn’t believe he’d follow through on his more draconian promises. In the case of the unpopular Iran war, voters may have been tricked by Trump’s claims to be an antiwar figure; that impression was fostered not only by his rhetoric but also by credulous framing in the mainstream press. Every voter has a responsibility to do their best to understand the candidates in an election, and Trump’s foibles should have been plain long before November 2024, but most people are also busy and dependent on the media, whichever kind they choose, to inform them. Creating space for ordinary Trump voters to reject Trump doesn’t require welcoming or absolving the prominent figures who rallied the public to support him.One group ripe for shunning is broadcasters such as Carlson and Alex Jones, who has also reacted strongly to the Iran war. “I love the old Trump,” he said during an interview with former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, another MAGA apostate. “I’m just going to be honest. I hate this person. This is a disgusting husk of a former person.” (Strong words from a guy who falsely claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre was fake and the families of murdered children were “crisis actors.”)A second is the so-called Trumpist intellectuals, who have tried to create an ideological framework around MAGA. The writer Sohrab Ahmari argued (with Matthew Schmitz) in 2022 that Trump was “the only candidate who recognizes” that the establishment’s warmongering was the root of American problems. Now, as the journalist Michelle Goldberg points out, Ahmari writes that Trump’s “mad-king governance is exhausting for Americans and the world” and bitterly adds, “Bring back Hillary.” The conservative commentator Christopher Caldwell declared the Iran war to be the end of Trumpism and wrote that Trump’s “virtues are not the ones you need to run a free country.” You get zero points for recognizing Trump’s style and character only now, a decade into his era.A third is those you might call lifestyle podcasters, many of whom forswear any claim to be political commentators but happily take on the job anyway, interviewing political candidates or issuing endorsements for office. This includes Theo Von, who has called Trump’s strikes on Iran “diabolical,” and Joe Rogan. “Make America greater—I’m down. But Make America Great Again and then it becomes a movement of a bunch of fucking dorks? ’Cause a lot of them are dorks,” Rogan said last month, calling them “really weird, fucking uninteresting, unintelligent people.” If Rogan was unable to notice this before, this says little for his perception. (The White House seems to be eager to heal any rift and hosted Rogan at the White House this past Saturday.)The proposition that people such as Carlson, Ahmari, and Rogan offer their audiences is that they are smarter or better informed than a lay observer, or have access to politicians that allows them to be useful conduits for information and ideas. They have also argued loudly that they’re more trustworthy and have clearer judgment than the mainstream media. If their most prominent political position was backing Trump in 2024, and they have all come to regret it, that says everything we need to know about their credibility going forward.“It’s not enough to say, ‘Well, I changed my mind’—or like, ‘Oh, this is bad. I’m out,’” Carlson said on the same podcast episode. He’s right, for once; perhaps he should try saying nothing at all for a good long time.Related:Tucker Carlson is the emblem of GOP cynicism.Finally, someone said it to Joe Rogan’s face.Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:Shelly Kittleson: If I tried to escape, I would be killed.Trump voters like Marco Rubio more and more.Radio Atlantic: The Kash Patel falloutToday’s NewsThe Trump administration signed an order reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana as a less dangerous drug, moving it from Schedule I to Schedule III. The change, signed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, does not legalize marijuana federally but eases some regulations.President Trump said that he ordered the United States Navy to “shoot and kill” any Iranian boats laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz.Israel and Lebanon are set to hold a second round of U.S.-brokered talks in Washington today, continuing rare direct discussions following last week’s cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon. The talks come as both governments say they want Hezbollah disarmed, though the Iranian-backed militant group has vowed to resist those efforts.DispatchesTime-Travel Thursdays: The story of the Freedman’s Memorial shows just how quickly a nation’s ideals can erode, Jake Lundberg writes.Explore all of our newsletters here.Evening ReadAngelo Mastrascusa / Anadolu / GettyCubans’ DespairBy Gisela Salim-PeyerCubans for decades have been buffeted by great powers, repressed by their own government, crushed by economic crises, and paraded as the victims of a succession of sanctions imposed by the White House. Glimmers of a better life came and went, either because the regime in Havana briefly allowed a sliver of greater liberty or the U.S. government tried a new tack to overthrow the communist ideology that has reigned over the island for almost 70 years. So it is perhaps not surprising that Cubanos by now have had it up to here with pretty much everyone.Read the full article.More From The AtlanticThe posting will continue until morale improves.The flip-phone cleanseIsrael could have what it most wants in Lebanon.The questionable triumph of the “baling wire hippies”MAHA swing voters are an illusion.The Virginia gerrymander disenfranchises Republicans.Culture BreakIllustration by Tara AnandExplore. Celebrities aren’t just admitting they got work done—they’re showing all the details. Rheana Murray writes about the new plastic-surgery playbook.Watch. The new series Margo’s Got Money Troubles (streaming on Apple TV) tenderly illustrates the relentless, creative work of making a living online, Sophie Gilbert writes.Play our daily crossword.Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.