Buckley Carlson has quit working for Vice President JD Vance, ending a brief stint in the vice president’s office that began in January 2025. The 28-year-old son of conservative media personality Tucker Carlson had been serving as a press assistant.
The vice president’s office said Carlson had planned to leave in December and stayed on until now “for a smooth transition.” His departure comes as his father remains one of the most outspoken conservative media figures against President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, a fight that has put Tucker Carlson in Trump’s crosshairs.
Trump has attacked Tucker Carlson in a series of Truth Social posts, calling him “highly overrated” and a “Low IQ person.” In one tirade, Trump wrote: “Tucker Carlson, who couldn’t even finish College…was a broken man when he got fired from Fox, and he’s never been the same — Perhaps he should see a good psychiatrist!”
The family connection has long run through Republican politics. Before he was fired from in 2023, Tucker Carlson invited Vance onto Tucker Carlson Tonight more than any other GOP Senate candidate in the 2022 election cycle, and Vance appeared on the show 46 times before it was canceled. Carlson also pushed for Trump to endorse Vance in the Ohio Senate race and later helped propel him to the vice presidency by urging him to join Trump on the Republican ticket.
Vance has also echoed that political bond. In a 2023 op-ed, he said he was supporting Trump’s third run for president because Trump “started no wars.” Buckley Carlson’s exit does not appear to signal a rupture with the vice president’s office; by the office’s account, he had already planned to leave and simply remained in place until a handoff could be completed. What it does show is how closely the careers of Tucker Carlson and Vance remain entangled, even as Trump turns his anger on one of the men who helped lift him both on television and in politics.