Lara Trump urges GOP to stay united after Tucker Carlson calls Trump an 'Israel puppet'

WASHINGTON, DC: Lara Trump said she has "no clue" why several former leading conservative influencers, including Tucker Carlson, have started accusing President Donald Trump of being a puppet of Israel. She warned that such rhetoric threatens Republican unity ahead of the midterm elections.

In her public comments on the widening divide, Lara Trump said many individuals who were once strong supporters of the president have changed their views in ways she finds concerning.

Lara Trump defends Trump's leadership

"There have been a lot of these, at one time, very influential people who were huge Trump supporters, who were very strong in terms of their support for, you know, the conservative movement, MAGA, all of it, who seem to have started peddling very crazy ideas out there, like that Donald Trump is a puppet of, you know, Israel and that he's only doing the things he's doing to benefit Israel and Netanyahu," she said.

"It's crazy stuff." Pushing back firmly on the characterization, Lara Trump said there is only one driving force behind the president's decisions.

"I can promise everyone out there, there is only one goal in mind at the end of the day for this president. It is the best thing possible for the United States of America, period, end of story," she said.

She added that the timing of the attacks made them especially damaging.

"This sort of thing, where now we're a couple months away from midterm elections, and you have someone like Tucker Carlson saying he's not voting for the Republicans in the House and Senate races," is not something the party can afford, she warned.

Tucker Carlson escalates criticism of Trump

The remarks came after Tucker Carlson gave a wide-ranging interview to the Columbia Journalism Review, in which he said he has not spoken to Trump since the US and Israel struck Iran and that he is "not interested in talking to him."

Carlson described the president as someone who is no longer in control of his own decisions. "He's not a man in charge of his own life at this point," Carlson said, adding, "I feel sorry for anybody who's enslaved, including him."

Carlson also said he wants to build a new political party, calling the US government "a one-party state posing as a democracy" that "needs to be broken."

He said he visited Trump at the White House three times before the strikes on Iran to warn him against military action, and that Trump responded by saying, "I know."