Normally, when you trade vile insults with someone, you don’t suddenly become their best friend – unless one of you is running for political office and hyperbole is expected.
White supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes had claimed on his show that Tucker Carlson was a federal agent and a liar, while Carlson, on his show, had said that Fuentes was a “weird little gay kid,” a strangely inappropriate comment for many reasons.
But wouldn’t you know it? Fuentes then went on Carlson’s show, and it was a love fest. Carlson was more smitten with Fuentes than even Qatari leader Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani or Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian (and he sure thought they were cool dudes he’d love to play poker with).
Carlson apologized to Fuentes, telling him: “I’m sorry I called you gay, by the way. But I think I’m just too old or something. I’m like, why isn’t anyone married? You tell me. Why aren’t people married?”
Did he think Fuentes was an Orthodox Jew? Maybe then, someone at 27 and not married would be considered an outlier, but according to wedding website The Knot, the average age of marriage for an American in 2023 was 32.
Putting aside that Carlson once said he was attacked by a demon – he clarified that he meant this literally – and that his lawyer once told a judge his words are to be taken as entertainment and not fact, Carlson made himself the mouthpiece of Russia and Qatar. While he had the right to interview President Vladimir Putin, his questions were far too soft. But more quizzical was his marveling at bread in a Russian bakery, then fawning over how clean the Moscow subway system was as opposed to New York City’s. While he is correct on the last point, I think citizens might prefer a dirtier train and the freedom to speak against leaders without having to worry about being poisoned, falling off a building, or having their sons sent to be killed in an unprovoked invasion of a neighboring country.
Carlson was fine to warn that American soldiers would be killed in great numbers if America attacked Iran, but of course that didn’t happen. The same man who said that if Iran had a plot to assassinate Trump, that country should be nuked, then criticized Israel, saying collateral damage wasn’t acceptable. It would be a comedy if it wasn’t a tragedy.
Carlson wants revenge after being ousted from Fox News. He is highly motivated. His first flex was the Putin interview. His next flex was after the Hamas terrorist attack October 7. He did not mention that Americans were killed or kidnapped, and he questioned why Daily Wire co-founder and Orthodox Jew Ben Shapiro was so emotional, questioning his allegiance to America. You heard that correctly: The same person who gives favorable interviews to the leaders of Russia and Iran declares that Shapiro is not a patriot! And what happened when Iranian missiles flew over Qatar? Carlson looked like he was about to cry. Paid for his service or not, Carlson is part of Qatar’s information war. Whichever students they don’t brainwash in American colleges with their millions, they hope that Carlson can sway.
In his interview with Fuentes, Carlson said Shapiro is irrelevant. This is a tell that Carlson knows it’s the opposite, as Shapiro is not only a massive success, it eats at Carlson’s kishkes that an Orthodox Jew can get millions of Christians to watch him and agree with his pro-Israel takes. You won’t see Carlson debate Shapiro because Shapiro would wreck him.
Of course, at the memorial for Charlie Kirk, Carlson could not help himself and had to ask the crowd to picture people eating hummus (i.e., Jews) preparing to kill Jesus.
Carlson doesn’t hold much sway over Trump. But his son is the deputy press secretary for Vice President J.D. Vance, the presumptive Republican candidate for president in 2028. There are rumors that Secretary of State Marco Rubio could be his running mate. According to a Pew Research Center poll, the number of Americans who say Trump is favoring Israel too much jumped from 31% in March to 36% (though the September poll was prior to the ceasefire), and it is not outside the realm of possibility that Carlson would make the case to Vance that against a Democratic presidential candidate like Alexandra Ocasio Cortez or Gavin Newsom, he would be a better pick than Rubio.
It is also significant that the head of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin D. Roberts, stated that the organization is not distancing itself from Carlson after his interview with Fuentes. Again, the talking point is not to “cancel someone.” Everyone has the right to speak, but Roberts could have said they don’t condone normalizing antisemites. It should be noted that Patrick Bet-David interviewed Fuentes before Carlson on his influential PBD podcast, but he also interviewed Benjamin Netanyahu, and interestingly, only had Fuentes on the show after he promised to stop using the “n” word in reference to Black people.
While Vance has called Fuentes a loser, things change. At a Turning Point USA event, Vance was asked by a college-age student about Israel “prosecuting” Christians (he likely meant “persecuting”), and Vance ignored that and rather than give a statement supporting Israel, he simply said there are times when America and Israel’s interests align and times when they don’t. Vance is far less pro-Israel than Trump, and the enemies of Israel who for years have done all they could to push daylight between America and Israel are sharks who smell blood and know that come 2028 it will be feeding time.
The years of professors getting students to hate America and Israel are paying off. You can wait for an investigation against Qatar until the cows come home – the poisonous and duplicitous country will continue to turn the American electorate.
People test the waters to see what they can get away with in the world of public opinion. Be sure there are bots praising both Carlson and Fuentes. But there are real people also, posting antisemitic things.
As vile as he is, Fuentes is highly skilled in angry rants that can mobilize people against Jews. Carlson’s main objective now is to do whatever he can to prevent Saudi Arabia from joining the Abraham Accords. It wasn’t going to happen while the war was going on, but depending on what happens now, it could.
The Carlson who was the Fox News host would have railed against the likely next New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani for going on the show of Hasan Piker (who said America deserved 9/11) without rebuking him, and would have said something about the fact that Mamdani’s father dedicated a book to his son in which he condoned suicide-bombing. Instead, Carlson stuck his thumb on the scale for Mamdani in an absurd way.
“That guy was the only person in the New York City mayor’s debate to say he wanted to focus on New York City,” Carlson said of Mamdani, as he sat with his pal Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has promoted a conspiracy theory that Jews have space lasers and were responsible for the California wildfires. Of course, Tucker-I’m-just-asking-questions-Carlson had no questions for her about that.
Carlson lobbed his volleys in a war to turn Christians against Israel, but if there was any semblance of a mask, it came off when he told Fuentes that he hates people like Mike Huckabee, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, more than anyone, and that Christian Zionists “have been seized by this brain virus.” It is Carlson – paid by foreign funding or not – who knows his information war can succeed if there isn’t sufficient opposition.
There is free speech and he is entitled to say what he wants. The train has left the station in that antisemitism and hatred of Israel have been normalized. Now there is the push that such views are “real patriotism.”
There is no clear answer of what to do other than being vocal. In a battle of the best ideas, the good ones should float to the top. But that often does not happen. Well-funded charlatans can make good ideas sink.