A burglar who sees an unlocked window makes sure to open it slowly, in case the residents are home. Now imagine him pushing that window further and further until he is able to jump inside, and then trying to convince the residents he isn’t a home invader, but really the fix-it man.
Tucker Carlson has taken the Overton window – the term that describes what is viewed as acceptable at any given time – and has pushed it to the point where antisemitism and anti-Israel conspiratorial sentiment is cool, though he certainly did not do it by himself.
Many Jews were disappointed that President Donald Trump didn’t rebuke Carlson for his Jew-hatred, only calling him “cooky,” “not MAGA,” and, in his biggest insult yet, “low IQ” in a Truth Social post targeting Carlson and others.
Method to Carlson’s Madness
While Carlson has little knowledge of the Middle East, he is not low IQ. He is highly manipulative, and while at times he simply says false things – like when he absurdly claimed Chabad was a catalyst for the war in Iran and that Israeli President Isaac Herzog was on Epstein’s Island when he was not – he sometimes takes a small grain of truth and weaves it into a big lie. An Orthodox rabbi, making a foolish joke, said that if it were up to him, Israel would hit the Al Aqsa Mosque and make it look like Iran did it. The rabbi is in no way currently connected to the IDF and did not seriously think that this should be done. Yet Carlson aired it on his podcast as if this was a legitimate plan to be carried out. He is smart enough to know that if he debated Ben Shapiro, Douglas Murray, or Shabbos Kestenbaum, he’d be exposed as a fraud.
Kanye, Cooper, Bread of Putin
While at the height of his powers as the host of his top-rated Fox News show, Carlson brought on rapper Kanye West, who said some questionable things about Jared Kushner, but Carlson deleted a portion where West said that he’d prefer his children celebrated Chanukah instead of Kwanzaa for “financial engineering.”
After being ousted from Fox, Carlson hosted Darryl Cooper. Cooper is not a historian, but that did not stop Carlson from announcing Cooper as one of the most important historians of our time. Cooper said that the greatest villain of World War II was not Hitler, but Winston Churchill.
Carlson not only gave a friendly interview to Russian President Vladimir Putin; he marveled that they had bread in a supermarket there and that the train stations were clean.
Israel, Qatar All the Time
In the past, Carlson – who never finished college, didn’t attend his mother’s funeral, and had a father who was pro-Israel – barely mentioned Israel or Qatar for any reason. Suddenly, he is obsessed with Israel as though it is the land of Satan and Qatar is the best place in the world, so much so that he will buy a place there. Whether he is paid by Qatar or not, his motive – aside from the possibility of money – is clear.
Turn Evangelical Christians Against Israel
Carlson’s goal became clear not long after October 7, when he mocked Ben Shapiro caring so much about the horrific event. He shamelessly questioned Shapiro’s loyalty to America when it was Carlson’s loyalty that should have been questioned, as he didn’t seem to care that Americans were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas. Meanwhile, he looked flummoxed when Iran shot missiles into Qatar, his home away from home. It doesn’t sit well with Carlson and Owens that Shapiro can connect with Christians who believe they will be blessed by blessing Israel. This is why both Carlson and Owens spread conspiracies about Israel being involved in JFK’s assassination and the Mossad being involved with Epstein, and blame the Jews for nearly everything. Carlson claimed that the Israelis in Israel may not be the same ones as those of the Bible and that there should be DNA testing, an absurdity involving enough buzzwords that it may stay in the zeitgeist for a while.
Why Carlson May Run for President
Carlson knows that if he ran for president, he would not win. But he could get donations and unprecedented airtime. A victory, in his mind, would simply be sharing a debate stage with Gavin Newsom and JD Vance or Marco Rubio. Carlson has the gift of gab and is skilled at trapping people so that an audience that was ignorant of facts might think that he was correct. He could pick Owens, Megyn Kelly, or Joe Kent to run with, but the point would be to be destructive enough so that Republicans could not win.
We need look no further than the case of Jill Stein. She is a Jewish woman who is anti-Israel, has said barely an intelligent or charismatic sentence in her life, has little name recognition, and yet, in 2016, got more than 1% of the vote. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, known as CAIR, claimed its exit poll of 1,575 Muslim voters revealed that Stein picked up 53%, meaning a majority were willing to throw away their vote in the form of a protest as they were unhappy with the major candidate of either party. Could Carlson pick up a similar percentage of Muslim votes? It is unclear. Interestingly, Mehdi Hasan, founder of media company Zeteo, and Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef recently discussed whether or not Muslims should trust Carlson and Owens based on their past comments about Muslims. They seemed to agree it was permissible to use their platforms, though Hasan was more reluctant to give them a pass. Some on the left, like Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks, have embraced Carlson for their shared anti-Israel sentiment.
It is regrettable that there have been no protests against Carlson by Jews of all denominations. (Not just specifically from Chabad, just as if a podcaster said Mormons were planning on destroying Yankee Stadium, not only Mormons would protest en masse.)
If he ran for president, Carlson would love to play spoiler to doom Republicans. But even if his margin was too low to make a difference, he would revel in the opportunity to slander Jews in front of a large audience, much like when he spoke at the memorial for Charlie Kirk and referred to Jews as hummus-eating people. He would tell voters that he is the outsider to save them from the two corrupt political parties.
Trump has plenty on his plate, but let’s hope that he picks the right time to say something cogent about Carlson, beyond simplistic insults.