@EdCates @blogdiva

It's two factors I think.

Firstly, Carlson is a different sort of weird Catholic. Many of the senior Trump warmongers are weird Catholics, as opposed to the senior Bush warmongers who were mostly weird Protestants.

Crucially, Carlson takes his faith more seriously but not in a good way; he opposes the Vatican II theological reforms and (although he has not said it openly) opposes the church's move away from dogmatic antisemitism. This differs from the circle around Trump, who mostly could not give a shit about actual doctrine or theology but are in it for the aesthetics. In this instance Carlson is no friend of Israel (but not in a good way) and also no friend of the weird Catholics that Trump wants to install in power in Iran, which leads him to a radically different position.

Secondly, there's a thing fash grifters do when there are only so many people to grift: they turn on one another and try to outdo them, in the hopes of stealing the limelight. A lot of modern fascism is fundamentally about getting elderly people with hateful views to give their money, and this leads people to say things they don't believe (hi there, Milo Yiannopoulos.)

This is kinda a fusion of the old televangelist and Fox News pundit scene with the post-gamergate youtuber scene. It leads people to vie for the crown, often in a race to the bottom of the barrel; and if they can't win that crown, they try to form their own little niche audiences which they jealously guard.