Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host and right-wing media personality, suggested on Monday that the U.S. had lost its “moral authority” because it has refused to call for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas.

“If you see a nation with awesome power abetting war for its own sake, you have a leadership that has no moral authority, that is illegitimate,” Carlson said at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he was participating in a discussion on the future of “storytelling.”

The answer came in response to a question asking him to assess why the U.S. had vetoed a U.N. resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.  

“It’s something that I try to express, and I’m often called a traitor for saying that. It’s the opposite,” Carlson added to applause. “I say that because I believe in the United States. I think it has been a morally superior country, and if we allow our leaders to use our power to spread destruction for its own sake, that is shameful.”

Carlson used a family-related analogy to illustrate his point. “The United States is for this moment the most powerful country in the history of the world,” he told the crowd, “so if you were to frame this in terms we’re all familiar with, which are the most basic terms, the terms of the family, the United States would be Dad, it would be the father, and the father’s sacred obligation is to protect his family and to restore peace within his walls.”

“If I come home and two of my kids are fighting, what’s the first thing I do, even before I assess why they’re fighting, before I gather the facts and know what’s happening? ‘Stop the fighting,’” he continued. “So if I come home and I have two kids fighting and I say ‘Go, go, beat the crap out of him!,’ I’m evil, because I’ve violated the most basic duty of fatherhood, which is to bring peace.”

He clarified that his comments, which did not mention Hamas, were not in reference to “any specific region of conflict,” but said he was “deeply offended by” U.S. conduct abroad. 

He concluded that he was “very distressed and concerned that we are entering an era where this awesome force for good is instead being used for evil.”

His new comments underscore the extent to which Carlson is leaning into his role as one of the leading figures promoting a neo-isolationist message that is now gaining traction even among some of the most hawkish Republicans in Congress. Only 18 Republican senators — less than half of the GOP caucus — voted for legislation that would advance military aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan over the weekend.

Elsewhere in the discussion on Monday, Carlson, who recently stirred controversy for interviewing President Vladimir Putin of Russia, reiterated his claim that the U.S. had provoked Russia into its war with Ukraine and said that his first visit to Moscow had been “radicalizing.”

Calling Putin “impressive” and “very capable,” Carlson, who was dismissed from Fox News last spring and now runs a media platform whose interviews run largely on X, formerly Twitter, also said that Moscow was “so much cleaner and safer and prettier, aesthetically,” than “any city in” the U.S. — an observation he described as “radicalizing, very shocking and very disturbing.” 

In another sign of how Carlson, 54, has embraced conspiratorial thinking as he cultivates an audience on the populist right, the longtime conservative  media commentator repeated a claim that the U.S. government had for years “prevented” him from arranging a sit-down with Putin by “spying on” his text messages and “leaking them to The New York Times,” which he said had “spooked the Russian government into canceling the interview.”

“My country’s intel services were working against me illegally,” he alleged, “and that enraged me.”