Fresh off the blowback from his decision to hand a microphone to white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson launched himself straight into the stratosphere — figuratively and literally. His latest episode insisted that “chemtrails” are real and part of a sprawling government conspiracy. To prove it, he brought on self-styled expert Dane Wigington of Northern California, who, Carlson assured viewers, has “been on this subject for almost 30 years” and “compiled what we believe is the most comprehensive account of what we’re seeing. And it’s very bad.”
Mainstream science does not support the claim that “chemtrails” are a form of deliberate global poisoning. To be fair, given how often experts and scientists have misled the public — or contradicted themselves — about climate change over the years, it’s understandable that many people no longer take what they say at face value.
Even so, Carlson’s conversation with Wigington veered quickly and unmistakably into conspiracy-theory territory. The episode was widely mocked online; critics dismissed it as pseudo-science, and whatever remained of Carlson’s credibility took another hit.
Perhaps the most entertaining reaction came from X user Legal Phil, who compared Carlson’s fact-finding adventure to Humpty Dumpty’s great fall — and somehow managed to link it to what many see as his escalating antisemitism.
Humpty Dumpty. We all know the tragic story. He sat on a wall. He fell. Or did he? And why was everyone so quick to reach that conclusion? My next guest, a historian, took a second look at the incident, and what he discovered will have you asking questions about Israel.
“It’s always the obvious questions that are so vigorously discouraged,” Carlson began. “One of the questions that’s been the most discouraged over the past 30 years is, what are those lines in the sky that you see trailing jets?”
Carlson said his team had been searching for “a serious, sane person with an engineering background who could tell us what we are looking at.” And, with that, he introduced Wigington.
According to The Huffington Post, Wigington “once pushed a pseudoscientific theory that California’s drought between 2011 and 2017 was the government’s doing.”
Throughout the exchange, Wigington treats his findings as established fact, rather than speculation. He tells Carlson that those lines in the sky are not mere contrails, but “sprayed particulate dispersion. There is no theory in this equation. … This is not ‘condensation.'”
“We found exactly what we knew we would find, starting with aluminum nanoparticles. Bioavailable free-form aluminum is toxic to all life, period,” Wigington said. “That element is named in numerous climate engineering patents as part of a geoengineering dispersion element. So again, there’s no theory involved in any of this.”
And on it went.
Carlson posted the interview on X, along with the claim that “the government has finally admitted that chemtrails are real. It’s called geoengineering and it’s far worse than anything you imagined.”
He highlights the most eye-opening moments of their discussion, including: “Are All These Strange Streaks in the Sky Chemicals Being Released Into the Air?,” “The US Military’s Role in Climate Engineering,” “The Mass Death of Insects and Trees Around the Globe,” “The Government’s Biological Warfare Tests on Unknowing Americans,” and “Is the Government Using Wildfires as a Climate Engineering Weapon?”
The post quickly accumulated a lengthy list of Community Notes (see “Readers Added Context”).
[The full interview can be viewed below and a transcript is available here.]
The interview, unsurprisingly, set social media ablaze. Here are some of the reactions:
The Babylon Bee lampooned the episode in a sharply satirical piece titled, “Latest Tucker Guest Bigfoot Reveals How Mind-Controlling Chemtrails Are Sprayed Over The Flat Earth By The Jews.”
One X user wryly noted: “Good thing nobody has hitched themselves or their institutions to this guy.”
Another wrote: “The moon. We all see it. Some people claim we’ve even been there. Maybe. Maybe not. But my next guest is here to answer the question we are never allowed to ask. Is it really made of cheese?”
Maybe the real conspiracy isn’t in the clouds at all — it’s in how far a man will go to stay relevant.
Perhaps Carlson’s most controversial moment since leaving Fox came in September 2024, when he interviewed Darryl Cooper, who claimed that Winston Churchill was the “chief villain of the Second World War” and that the Holocaust was essentially an “accident.” Carlson later praised Cooper as “perhaps the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.”
His interview with Nick Fuentes was a close second. And with his latest episode, Carlson didn’t do himself any favors. His descent from commentator to conspiracist now feels complete.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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