On his podcast “The Tucker Carlson Show” a couple months ago, former Fox News Channel host asked former Orthodox comedian Ari Shaffir about what learning in yeshiva was like. Shaffir said it was okay to ask questions and even explained the seven Noachide Laws.
“That sound like a great education,” Carlson said of yeshivas, who also noted that many Orthodox marriages survive with a low divorce rate. Carlson said the Talmud is “really interesting” and seemed to think yeshivas are cool.
Carlson’s praise for yeshiva life stands in stark contrast to the controversy that the former Fox News host has gotten himself into lately. Carlson, who recently spoke at the Republican National Convention, platformed a Holocaust revisionist/distorter, Darryl Cooper. On a recent show, Carlson called Cooper the “most important popular historian” in the country “with relentless curiosity” and “really intense research,” while Cooper made a number of absurd statements.
Cooper said he wants to “break the ice” on looking at World War II more objectively. He referred to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as a psychopath and pitted him as the real villain, not German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, whom he did not call a psychopath.
He said Churchill was supported by “financiers, by a media complex that wanted to make sure he was representing Britain in that complex for a reason” which can be interpreted as Jews.
Speaking of Germany, Cooper said: “In 1941, they launched a war where they were completely unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war, of local political prisoners.”
In fact, Germany had a systematic apparatus of murdering Jews as part for the Final Solution in which Jews were shot and buried in pits, and killed in death camps, totaling an estimated six million.
Cooper did not deny that six million Jews were killed; however, ignoring the fact that the Nazis set up death camps can be viewed as a form of Holocaust denial. It is unclear why he did not mention the Wannsee Conference on January 1942, when the Final Solution was agreed upon, including logistical details of transport and murder.
Strangely, at one point, Cooper said Jews were rounded up and thrown in death camps, as if it was done haphazardly.
White House Senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates, in a statement shared with CNN, declared, “Giving a microphone to a Holocaust denier who spreads Nazi propaganda is a disgusting and sadistic insult to all Americans, to the memory of the over six million Jews who were genocidally murdered by Adolf Hitler, to the service of the millions of Americans who fought to defeat Nazism, and to every subsequent victim of antisemitism.”
In an interview with conservative Charlei Kirk, Carlson claimed Cooper’s stance that Churchill was the villain is “a defensible position” and said the interview should not have provoked “hysteria.”
It is vogue to look at history with a new lens, but it is unclear what lens would make Hitler, who aimed to kill every Jew in Europe, less of a villain than Churchill, who tried to save the world. Cooper saying the problem was that Germany was unprepared is simply ahistorical, as they were able to murder so many Jews precisely because they were so prepared.
For a time, Carlson’s lack of speaking at all about Israel was considered to be part of his stance that America should focus on domestic issues and not be engaged in foreign wars. But he criticized Ben Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew and co-founder of The Daily Wire, for being too emotional over October 7, also saying Shapiro did not care about America.
On the show “Breaking Points” Carlson told host Saagar Enjeti, “I’m shocked by how little they care about the country and including the person you mentioned [Shapiro]. And I can’t imagine how someone like that could get an audience of people who claim to care about America, because he doesn’t, obviously.”
Shapiro challenged Carlson to a debate which he did not accept.
Carlson first raised eyebrows by editing out footage of his interview with rapper Kanye West in which he said he wanted his children to learn about Chanukah for “financial engineering” on his Fox News show “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Several moths later he was fired by Fox News.
Though he may be seen as less powerful now than when he hosted his top-rated primetime show, his podcast has more than three million followers, and he still influences many.
Former New York State Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind told The Jewish Press he was troubled by Carlson’s interview.
“I listened to the whole thing,” Hikind said. “I’m bothered by what’s going on right now with Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. What in G-d’s name is Tucker Carlson so excited about with this guy who turns World War II history on its head. Hitler wanted peace but Churchill was the bad one, the guy he has on his show says. It’s revisionist history. In talking about the camps, he calls Jews ‘prisoners.’ It’s so convoluted, pathetic and sick. It’s a terrible situation. When people on the left indulge in antisemitism or revisionist history against the Jewish people, we speak out and demand action be taken, and rightfully so. There has to be one standard for hate. I don’t know why there’s so much silence on the right.”
Owens, who was a star of The Daily Wire, and had been pro-Israel until defending friend Kanye West saying he was not antisemitic, and then feuding with The Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro. Owens and Carlson questioned why Shapiro and others were so emotional after October 7, with both downplaying the severity of the attack.
Hikind said he was also angered by Owens, who in a debate with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on Piers Morgan Uncensored, said the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Shneerson, was a Jewish supremacist.
“I don’t know if she fell on her head or something terrible happened with her brain,” Hikind said. “It was mindboggling for her to say that. She says Jews were responsible for the Kennedy assassination. She had indulged in every anti-Jewish trope we have. She has gone beyond the pale.”
Hikind said he brought it to the attention of Robert Kennedy Jr, who posted a picture of his father, Robert Kennedy, with the Lubavitcher Rebbe and posted online that his father considered the Rebbe to be a spiritual mentor who preached love, tolerance, and respect.
Hikind said his organization, Americans Against Antisemitism, is seeing more antisemitism on the right in recent times.
“It’s not a healthy situation,” Hikind said. “Not enough people are speaking out against it.”
Owens has more than 18 million followers across her platforms. The video in which she defamed the Lubavitcher Rebbe has been seen by more than two million. Carlson has more than 12 million followers on X and his show on that platform is viewed by massive amounts of people.
Kingsborough College Professor Jeff Lax, who founded S.A.F.E. CUNY, to help battle antisemitism in the CUNY system, said he was appalled by Carlson’s interview. Lax, who is Orthodox and the grandson of Holocaust survivors, said the interview was damaging.
“I think it’s as simple as he hates Jews,” Lax said of Carlson. “When Israel was at war, he barely mentioned it. He had Kanye on and edited antisemitic stuff out and told people he wasn’t crazy. Most Christians are incredible to the Jewish community. There is a tiny percentage who have a problem with Jews. I think him being an isolationist is an excuse to say they don’t want to give money to Israel. Israel is a key strategic ally.”
Lax said he used to look up to Carlson.
“I loved his show (on Fox), was the best on television because I thought he was a critical thinker,” Lax said. “I didn’t always agree with him, but his monologues were well-done. He’s a brilliant guy. But this interview was a joke. Most people listening will take what he said at face value that this guy is some great historian. He’s appealing to low-information people. I posted about this, and nobody said anything. My conservative friends stay away from it. Not all people are intellectually honest. I know we’re in a political campaign. But if you’re honest and you care about antisemitism, you have to speak out about it, wherever it comes from. Tucker is powerful and very dangerous. He had tens of millions of followers. I think if it had happened on Fox, his career there would have been over.”
On her show, Owens once incorrectly said Israel was founded in 1945, and said she was told by a rabbi, and believed, that all Muslims in Jerusalem were required to live in the Muslim quarter.
Political consultant and marketing guru Hank Sheinkopf said in the case of Owens, “She needs professional help, and she hasn’t read a book. She doesn’t know what she is talking about.”
He said with Carlson platforming the man with revisionist views of the Holocaust, “the message is that hate against Jews is coming from the right and the left and it’s nothing new.”
Sheinkopf said some may hold their tongues and not criticize Carlson or Owens until after the election, if at all.
“The message is that politics come before the safety of the Jews,” he said.
Carlson was ousted by Fox News in April of 2023 with no specific reason given, around the time the network settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems for more than $787 million. Owens and The Daily Wire parted ways in March 2024 after a strange back and forth online in which she claimed she could not serve both G-d and money, and Shapiro posted that she could quit if she wanted to. In one of her last major shows on The Daily Wire platform, she interviewed Rabbi Michael Barclay who pressed her to answer if she made a moral distinction between Israelis killed by Hamas on October 7 and Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers. She said she considered both evil.
