In 2008, Tucker Carlson was emceeing a rally for former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul when he heard a speaker question the government response to the 9/11 attacks. Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura asked why Osama bin Laden had yet to be indicted — a sign that he didn’t buy the U.S. government’s explanation. His comments so enraged Carlson that he walked out.
“It wasn’t controversial, it was stupid. And if there’s any evidence that the government was behind 9/11, look, you know I’d believe anything, if there’s evidence. But there isn’t any,” Carlson said when a group asked about it in 2012. “I hate that 9/11 crap.”
Things are different now. Carlson is using his YouTube channel and subscription-based platform to showcase for millions the very narrative he once disparaged: that the government is not telling the truth about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In August, amid speculation that he would run for president, Carlson outlined a 10-point platform for the U.S., one item being that “America should be honest,” and declassify more 9/11 records.
He has attempted to discredit the 9/11 Commission Report — the official account of the attacks produced by an independent, bipartisan group — and the reports from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which thoroughly investigated the collapse of World Trade Center 7.
Carlson said that while some parts of the attacks are self-evident, “Some of it, like Building 7, which collapsed for, still, no explicable reason, are totally confusing 25 years later.”
His criticism of the government’s actions echoes decades-old claims perpetuated by 9/11 “truthers”: that the government had foreknowledge of the attacks and failed to stop them, that World Trade Center 7 did not collapse because of a fire, and that foreign entities, particularly Israel, withheld information from the U.S.
These conspiracy theories took hold in Carlson’s YouTube channel, which has amassed 5.7 million subscribers as of Sept. 10, more than three years after he left Fox News.
“I can’t think of any other figure as visible as Tucker Carlson who has associated himself with 9/11 conspiracy theories,” said Michael Barkun, Syracuse University professor emeritus who studies conspiracy theories and political extremism.
In that same 2012 video, Carlson said that Alex Jones, who was perhaps the most prominent 9/11 conspiracy theorist at the time, “freaks me out.” In 2025, Carlson posted a two-hour interview with Jones, starting with a segment about how Jones supposedly predicted the Sept. 11 attacks. It gained nearly 3.3 million views.
Jones’ diminished platform after social media bans and bankruptcy created an opening for a leading 9/11 skeptic.
“That crown is now available and Tucker Carlson seems to have taken it,” said Mark Fenster, a University of Florida law professor and author of “Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture.”
In September 2025, Carlson released a five-part documentary series called “The 9/11 Files,” gaining 320,000 subscribers over five weeks, according to data from Social Blade, a platform that tracks analytics.
The first episode of the series is the second-most viewed video on his channel, amassing 7.9 million views. The series collectively gained 16.5 million views.
Carlson has discussed the Sept. 11 attacks multiple times this year. In January, he interviewed Cenk Uygur, a left-wing commentator who has questioned the authoritative account of 9/11. In July, Carlson talked about the WTC7 collapse and Israeli connections with Pink Floyd cofounder Roger Waters.
Experts who study conspiracy theories told PolitiFact that 9/11 content aligns with Carlson’s populist rhetoric, and that the people who consume it likely possess similar sentiments.
“When someone as prominent as Tucker Carlson amplifies these theories, they gain more credibility. They become increasingly normalized,” said Kathryn Olmsted, distinguished professor at the University of California, Davis, who wrote the book “Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11.”
Carlson’s team did not respond to PolitiFact’s emailed request for comment.
Carlson promotes old theories without new evidence
Carlson’s documentary series perpetuated the narrative that the government had ample warning that 9/11 was going to happen, but failed to stop it.
He also questioned the credibility of the 9/11 Commission Report, which explained the events leading up to the attacks and the response, and recommended steps to prevent similar attacks. Carlson said in the second episode of the series, “The 9/11 Commission Report was a cover-up from beginning to end. That is true.”
The 9/11 Commission reviewed 2.5 million pages of documents, a large portion of which were classified. Some victims’ families have urged President Donald Trump to declassify records relating to Saudi Arabia to determine whether its government supported the hijackers.
There is legitimate criticism of the report, Fenster said. The commission tried to work quickly to produce a readable document using classified information that they could not declassify.
Adam Enders, University of Louisville political science professor who studies conspiratorial thought, said that Carlson’s content is typical of what 9/11 “truthers” promote.
“There’s a heavy reliance on purported experts,” he said, such as a former CIA officer and a widow of a victim killed in the attacks. Their testimony, in contrast to evidence, is used to legitimize claims and to instill doubt in official accounts, he said.
In the fourth episode, Carlson promoted a long-running conspiracy that fires could not have caused the collapse of World Trade Center 7.
The official explanation says debris from the twin towers caused fires to start in the building, eventually causing a thermal expansion that made a key structural column fail. An ensuing series of failures led to the building’s collapse.
Carlson cited a 2020 study, led by J. Leroy Hulsey, professor emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, that said that kind of fire could not have such a collapse, contrary to the explanation from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
The study was funded by the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a prominent conspiracy-theorist group.
Carlson doesn’t go so far as to conclude what caused the collapse, saying: “The unedited video leaves more questions than it answers. It calls into question the official NIST narrative, but it doesn’t conclusively show a controlled demolition either.”
Carlson’s claim that Israel had foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks is unsupported
Carlson’s focus on Sept. 11 is sometimes a vehicle for his larger skepticism of the U.S.’ relationship with Israel.
“A number of foreign governments may have had foreknowledge of 9/11, but the Israeli government stands out in particular,” he said in his 2025 series.
There are many antisemitic narratives that attempt to connect Jews and Israel to the attacks.
Carlson pointed to a group of five Israeli nationals who were seen watching the attacks from a roof and seemed to be celebrating. He showed a supposed FBI document saying the group had videotaped the attack and “may have possessed foreknowledge” of it. The FBI wrote that they may be spying in the U.S., Carlson said.
This group of five Israelis came to be known as the “high fivers” or the “dancing Israelis;” they were eventually released without charges, and went back to Israel.
Separately, Carlson said there’s evidence that numerous Israeli spies posed as art students across the U.S. and lived near the 9/11 hijackers; 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, the rest were either from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, or Lebanon. He cited a 2004 memorandum submitted to the 9/11 Commission; it was written by an international corporate lawyer calling for a public inquiry.
In 2002, U.S. officials dismissed a similar claim about 120 Israelis posing as art students.
At one point, Carlson mixes up information. While on the topic of the art students, he cited an article by the Forward and said Israel confirmed the operation and apologized for not coordinating with the U.S. But that line in the article was about the group of five Israeli nationals.
9/11 conspiracy theories remain part of political fabric, experts say
Carlson likely knows that his following is interested in conspiracy theories, and is therefore providing more of that content, experts said.
Conspiracy theories about 9/11 have become more accepted among right-leaning Americans than they were during the George W. Bush administration, said Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami professor who has co-written books on conspiracy theories.
“(Carlson) is now out of mainstream and cable news, so he needs to appeal to audiences that aren’t going to those news sources,” Uscinski said. “That inevitably leaves him with a more conspiracy-minded audience and he needs to appeal to them in a way that opens up different avenues for revenues.”
In 2011 and in 2021, 19% of Americans agreed with the theory that some U.S. officials planned the attacks to start a war in the Middle East, a 2022 study found.
An August 2026 survey of 1,000 U.S. adults found that 25% agreed with the statement, “The U.S. government helped plan the attacks of 9/11.”
“In that sense, he’s catering to audience demand more than acting as an external force that’s changing hearts and minds about 9/11,” Enders said.
This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this fact check here.