Pastor: Tucker Carlson is sorry. What in God’s name do we do with that? | Opinion
Last week, Tucker Carlson, who has built his career as a pundit by making outrageous and offensive statements, finally said something that shocked me. Those words? “I’m sorry.”
In a two-hour conversation with his brother Buckley, a former Trump speechwriter, he acknowledged that “in very small and very real ways, you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now.” He apologized for “misleading people” and said he would be “tormented by it for a long time.”
His apology hasn’t won him any new friends. Many question his motives and sincerity. Others rightly point out that Carlson’s apology does not include a disavowal of the racist, misogynist and nativist views that won him to Trump’s side in the first place. He expresses no remorse about his role in pushing the “Big Lie” that Trump won the 2020 election. His speculation about the influence of Israel in Trump’s foreign policy is anti-semitic. As mea culpas go, it leaves much to be desired. Even still, I am astonished.
Years ago, I heard a simple phrase that has become something of a mantra for me as a person, parent and pastor. Don’t punish the behavior you want to see. When a perpetually disorganized child manages to turn in their homework and is rewarded with a sarcastic, “finally,” when a chronically late person makes it on time only to hear, “nice of you to join us,” when the sanctuary is packed on Easter Sunday and those who attend more consistently grumble about how “all the C&E Christians have taken the best spots,” we are shaming and mocking people for exhibiting the behavior we have been asking for. Change is incredibly hard. Soberly acknowledging the ways your actions have harmed other people is excruciating. We don’t have many models for apology and accountability in contemporary American culture. The amount of scorn and derision people receive as they navigate accountability publicly is a huge incentive to deny and double-down on destructive behavior.
I believe that the Trump administration and those who have championed it have caused catastrophic damage to the country and destroyed countless lives here and around the world. I don’t think that a casual sentence or two in the context of a two-hour conversation is a sufficient expression of repentance, and it is certainly not repair. Tucker Carlson’s apology isn’t enough. But it is a start. Perhaps it shouldn’t be celebrated, but it also shouldn’t be mocked or scorned.
I am a disciple of Jesus Christ whose righteousness was expressed in his mercy and tenderness toward sinners. Scripture tells us that ‘a bruised reed he would not break, a smoldering wick he would not cut off.’ To the religious authorities, his habit of eating and drinking with sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes was disqualifying. Surely, they reasoned, a truly righteous person would scorn these unworthy and immoral people. Jesus did not come into the world to condone unrighteousness or to condemn the unrighteous. Jesus extended extraordinary and costly forgiveness to sinners and that forgiveness included his grace that transformed them into radically new people. A changed life is the gift and inevitable consequence of grace.
Years ago, a clergy colleague told me a story about a crisis in the AA group that rented space in his church. The group’s long-time treasurer relapsed, emptied their bank account and spent all the funds on a bender. The pastor assured the AA leaders that the church would work with them on the rent and expressed his concern that the treasurer had burned the only bridge that could ever help him stay sober. The leaders looked at him quizzically and asked what he meant. The pastor said, well, he can’t be part of AA anymore. They said, “no–he can’t be our treasurer anymore, but he’s already returned to the group.”
America is addicted to what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King called the triple evils of racism, poverty and violence. We need to get clean and sober, all of us. We need a radically new common life. But that rarely happens instantly and perfectly. Change is usually a long, painful, costly process. In sermons and speeches he gave during the last year of his life, King warned Americans that “we must learn to live together as brothers or we will surely perish together as fools.” Carlson’s apology has not earned him grace. But grace, by definition, is undeserved. I don’t believe shame or rejection ever inspires true repentance, only the hope of a new life. The only truly free and flourishing future available to any of us has to be available to all of us. As much as I abhor his ideology, Carlson is part of the American story. His apology is woefully incomplete. It in no way undoes the harm the MAGA movement has caused. Still, I want to nurture it. Because small, flawed, self-interested apologies won’t produce real national reconciliation and repair, but they might be the first step in the long road to getting there.
KKate Murphy is pastor of The Grove Presbyterian Church in Charlotte.
This story was originally published May 5, 2026 at 2:05 AM with the headline "Pastor: Tucker Carlson is sorry. What in God’s name do we do with that? | Opinion."