It’s official: Tucker Carlson is a kook. The man who once hosted a show that commanded Fox News’s largest audience has exposed himself as little other than a conspiracy theorist nutter who so often blurs the lines between fantasy and fact as to leave one wondering if he recently escaped an asylum.

Recently, The New York Times interviewed Carlson. The goal was to stir the pot because the onetime vocal supporter of Donald Trump and his America First agenda has since turned against the president over his support for Israel and actions against Iran.

For the Times, the burning question was also its desperate hope: “Will Carlson’s anti-Trump conversion last — and portend a wider cracking of the MAGA movement?” For those of us who voted for Trump to fight against the Democrats’ increasingly radical-left and inherent anti-American agenda, the question is, what happened to Tucker?

Following this interview, it becomes apparent that conspiracy theories abound in Carlson’s mind. It’s reminiscent of Candace Owens and her infamous source of vacuous evidence, her intuition, “I don’t ‘know’ know, but I know.”

Back to the interview, the Times begins with Iran, asking Carlson why he thinks Trump launched the joint strike with Israel against the Islamic Republic.

Interestingly, Carlson suggests that Trump really didn’t want to engage Iran. Carlson believes that Trump is both a “slave to foreign interests” and, at the same time, has a spellbinding quality that “engenders cowardice in the people around him through intimidation.” Indeed, Carlson likens this quality to “smoking hash,” explaining, “You spend a day with Trump, and you’re in this kind of dreamland.”

When pressed on what evidence he can provide to substantiate these claims, Carlson was quick to revert to the position of simply asking the “obvious” questions, especially regarding Trump’s decision to attack Iran. To Carlson, Trump’s military action represents a betrayal of his “no more forever wars” campaign.

But even on that point, Trump never said he was unwilling to go to war; he said he didn’t want to get Americans into any more “forever wars.” That is a distinction Carlson fails to recognize, insisting that it is Trump who suddenly seems to have changed his policy views.

When the Times pressed Carlson on his claim that Trump supposedly had no choice regarding Iran, he answered with his classic “just asking questions” gambit, but also asserted, “That is my strong view. And not just my strong view, the view of others who are around him and involved in this deliberation to the extent it was a deliberation, which is not much.”

What is glaring in Carlson’s assessment is the complete lack of acknowledgment of the historical record. He seems to see Iran as simply another country in the Middle East, quietly going about its business, and it would still be doing so if it weren’t for big bad Israel.

Never mind the fact that Iran has been the number one sponsor of global terrorism for almost 50 years. It has effectively been at war against Israel, the U.S., and the West since 1979, when the mullahs took over and founded the Islamic Republic.

Furthermore, is Carlson ignorant of Trump’s long-held views on the Islamic Republic? For decades, Trump’s stance regarding Iran is that it cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. “Well, I’m sort of opposed to nuclear weapons,” Carlson opined. “I don’t want nuclear weapons, I don’t want Israel to have a nuclear weapon, I don’t want anyone to have a nuclear weapon. It doesn’t seem like a good thing. But that’s not the question. The question is: What do you do about it? And that was the end of the rationale for doing this. He never seemed enthusiastic about it, ever.”

But Trump is doing something about it. Carlson intentionally downplays the primary reason for Trump’s action against Iran so he can throw shade at what has become his favorite target of late: Israel. For Carlson, all of Trump’s foreign policy decisions that don’t align with his own isolationist interpretation of America First are tied to Israel’s money and manipulation.

Carlson’s cognitive dissonance has many former listeners and followers wondering what the heck happened. Is he a closet antisemite? Based on his comments on Israel, he has done a 180 over the past couple of years. Maybe the executives at Fox News saw this, which is why they fired him while he was their leading show host.

Everyone was scratching their heads at the time, but now it’s clear that Fox News made a wise decision.

To be fair, perhaps Carlson should never have been classified as a conservative. He’s always been a bit of a contrarian, which served him well when he conducted interviews and offered political commentary, especially during Joe Biden’s presidency.

But now, unconstrained by an employer like Fox News, Carlson has let his freak fly and exposed himself as a wildly unclear and inconsistent individual who too often mistakes his own emotions for reasoned, coherent thoughts.

As a result, he has become little more than a court jester, pointing, wailing, and laughing, while shrugging and claiming he’s “just asking questions.”