• What Happened: Tucker Carlson used a March 13 Piers Morgan interview to publicly attack Franklin Graham, calling him "un-Christian" and "sneaky" over an alleged private letter to Trump. Graham's organization flatly denied Tucker's version of events.
  • Why It Matters: The BGEA confirmed Graham wrote Trump a letter about Ambassador Mike Huckabee, mentioned Tucker's views "could be interpreted as anti-Semitic," and never told Trump to stop talking to Tucker. Tucker also mocked Graham for "learning to fly at 74." Graham has been a licensed pilot for over 55 years and was in required annual recurrent flight training.
  • Bottom Line: Tucker Carlson is a podcaster who has been disavowed by Trump, is under CIA surveillance, and is now publicly attacking one of America's most respected Christian leaders with a story his own target says is false.

Tucker Carlson has been picking fights across the conservative movement for weeks. He broke with Trump over the Iran war. He feuded publicly with Ted Cruz. He disclosed on social media that the CIA has been reading his texts and is preparing a criminal referral against him for alleged Foreign Agents Registration Act violations related to his contacts with Iranians before Operation Epic Fury. Trump called him "not MAGA" and said he has "lost his way."

Now Tucker has turned his fire on Franklin Graham. And the story he is telling does not hold up.

In a March 13 interview with Piers Morgan, Tucker claimed that President Trump showed him a private letter from Graham in which Graham called Tucker an anti-Semite and advised Trump to never speak with him again. Tucker called Graham "un-Christian" and "sneaky," said some evangelical leaders are preaching a "sick, weird, culty version" of Christianity, and complained that Graham would not take his phone call because he was supposedly learning to fly a plane at age 74.

Every significant part of that account has been disputed or corrected.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association issued a detailed response to the Christian Post. According to BGEA, Graham wrote Trump a brief private letter about U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and the excellent job he is doing. After Tucker's recent combative interview with Huckabee, Graham noted in the letter that Tucker's views on Israel "could be interpreted as anti-Semitic." That is a far cry from calling Tucker an anti-Semite outright. More importantly, BGEA stated directly that "Mr. Graham did not tell the president not to talk to Tucker Carlson again" and that "those claims are completely false."

On the pilot comment, Tucker mocked Graham for being a 74-year-old man learning to fly, implying he was too busy with a hobby to answer a phone call. That too was false. Franklin Graham has been a licensed pilot for more than 55 years. He was not learning to fly. He was in required annual recurrent flight training that every pilot must complete to maintain their certification. Graham was out of town and unavailable, not dodging Tucker's calls from a cockpit lesson.

So what Tucker presented as a shocking act of backstabbing by a fellow Christian turns out to be a private letter that mentioned his views were troubling, a disputed account of what was in that letter, and a snide joke about flight lessons that got the basic facts wrong.

Franklin Graham has spent his life doing things Tucker Carlson has not. He has led Samaritan's Purse through decades of disaster relief operations, delivering food, medicine, and the gospel to suffering people in war zones and disaster areas across the globe. He serves on the White House Religious Liberty Commission. He has been a faithful advocate for persecuted Christians worldwide and a trusted counselor to American presidents for decades. He is the son of Billy Graham, whose legacy of faith and integrity defined American Christianity for generations.

Tucker Carlson is a podcaster who was fired from Fox News in 2023, who has been disavowed by the president he spent years championing, who is now under CIA scrutiny for his contacts with Iranian regime officials before a war, and who is apparently more interested in settling personal scores on Piers Morgan than in any of the things he claims to care about.

Tucker has every right to hold and express his views on foreign policy. He has every right to criticize American involvement in Iran. But publicly attacking one of America's most respected men of faith with a distorted account of events, mocking him with factually incorrect details, and calling his theology "sick" and "culty" is not courage. It is recklessness. And Franklin Graham deserves better than that.