Tucker Carlson Reveals Main Issue He Feels Is On Young Voter’s Minds. It’s Not What You Think.

In an interview published Saturday, Tucker Carlson told the New York Times that he believes the most important issue that will impact young Americans in the long term is access to economic opportunities.

In response to the New York Times’ question about where controversial podcaster Nick Fuentes, 27, fits into the future of the American right, Carlson said it’s “so hard to know,” adding that most “debates about race, ethnicity, religion, and to some extent immigration, have less long-term resonance than debates about the economy.”

“I think the main frustration among young people is not just that the makeup of the country is changing too quickly, which it certainly is,” the Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder said. “But the biggest concerns are about the lack of economic opportunities for young Americans, who are totally screwed, on a deeper level than we realize. Older people don’t recognize that.” (RELATED: Generation May Influence US Politics More Than Race or Gender, Poll Finds)

Carlson also told Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the New York Times that he recently had dinner with “a group of really smart kids from Stanford.”

“And one of them said his best friend had just graduated with a computer science degree last year and hadn’t been able to find a job,” he said. “So this is a window into the total destruction of economic opportunities for young people, and what looks to me, as a non-economist, like a real hoarding of capital by a small group of people.”

Carlson said this creates “a very unbalanced and unfair economic system that guarantees the radicalization of young people – and not just young people, but especially young people.”

“So I think most of the future political discussions will be about the economy,” he stressed.

“[T]The future I imagine is not one in which we yell at each other about race. This is a future in which people are legitimately revolutionary, perhaps even violent, on the basis of thwarted economic opportunities,” Carlson said later in the interview.

Garcia-Navarro pressed Carlson on whether he saw Fuentes’ “power diminishing.”

“Of course,” he replied, adding that he was “not even aware” of the podcaster, citing his age.

Far-right political figure Nick Fuentes rally outside the Turning Point USA People’s Convention on June 15, 2024 in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Dominic Gwinn/Getty Images)

“I’m older, okay? So I’m not an expert on Fuentes’ range or even what he says on a day-to-day basis. I really don’t know. But he’s been caricatured as a runner, which maybe he is,” Carlson told Garcia-Navarro.

Fuentes has made several comments in the past widely considered racist, misogynistic and anti-Semitic – including calling the Holocaust “exaggerated” in a live broadcast in 2023. Despite this, he maintains a strong popularity, particularly among Gen Z men. Fuentes did not respond to DCNF’s request for comment.

“I’m just telling you that I think the future, the energy, not just on the right, but I think the right and the left agree on this, the under 30s, is that young people have been harassed by older people, especially by baby boomers, people born between 46 and 64,” said Carlson, born in 1969 and part of Generation X.

“And I think they’re right about that. I think this is the most selfish, the most disgusting, the most mediocre generation that this country has ever produced,” he added in the New York Times interview, referring to baby boomers. “Not all, but in general, I would say. Their behavior has been shameful and selfish.” (RELATED: More than three-quarters of voters say they’re worse off than previous generation, poll finds)

“And I hear young people not saying, ‘I’m angry at the Jews,'” Carlson said. “I hear people say things like, ‘Only baby boomers would have a second home in Isle of Palms, South Carolina, but wouldn’t help their kids buy a house.’ » That’s what I hear. I hear from people who understand that their lives will be nothing like those of their parents and grandparents and they are really upset about it.

He also pointed the finger at people “making billions from clearly fraudulent businesses,” including some related to cryptocurrency, “that do not add to the total prosperity of this country and do not make the country better.”

“So that’s where I think the radicalism is going to start,” he said.

He also alluded to the cult of personality that Luigi Mangione — the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024 — has developed among many young Americans.

Supporters of Luigi Mangione gather in front of Manhattan Federal Court on January 9, 2026 in New York. Lawyers from Mangione’s attorneys are in court for the 27-year-old accused killer in an attempt to avoid the death penalty in the 2024 fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare’s top executive. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

“I was surprised but not really shocked by the positive reaction. All these normal-looking people on the Internet are saying, ‘I’m glad they killed him.’ [Thompson]'” Carlson told Garcia-Navarro. “They don’t even know his name. This reflects this revolutionary frustration. And I think it’s revolutionary.

Asked again about Fuentes by the New York Times host, Carlson reiterated: “I think the real issues aren’t about Fuentes or even about race.”

“Immigration has a direct effect on the economy, and that is why the overwhelming majority of newly created jobs over the last five years have gone to foreign-born people,” he explained. “This is not an attack on the foreign-born, saying it’s not really the role of the U.S. government to provide economic opportunity to the world. The job is to protect its own people.”

Carlson notably interviewed Fuentes in a more than two-hour episode of his podcast in October 2025.

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