Tucker Carlson Doubles Down on Jews-as-Snakes as His Fuentes Video Tops 20 Million Views
Establishment Republicans are putting “Israel first,” complains Carlson, who spoke at 2024 Republican National Convention
Hours after the president and CEO of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, posted a video defending hate-hoster Tucker Carlson from what he called “the globalist class” and “the venomous coalition,” Carlson himself, in an email commentary headlined “Banish the Serpents,” doubled down on the classical antisemitic metaphor of Jews as snakes.
The commentary begins, “We love Donald Trump. We campaigned for him last year, attended both of his inaugurations, and would do it all again if given the chance.” It goes on, “The tragedy of the Trump story is that both times he’s taken office, usurpers in the GOP have engineered calculated efforts to steer his administrations away from their campaign promises in favor of the traditional establishment Republican agenda. That program is the precise opposite of what MAGA hat-wearing voters want.”
It goes on, “America First? These fake Republicans are totally against it. They’d rather put Ukraine and Israel first, and the United States somewhere between 22nd and 39th, if we’re lucky.”
The commentary goes on, “Starting foreign conflicts that have nothing to do with our country? Are you kidding? It’s not just what they live for; it’s all they live for. Have you heard from Lindsey Graham lately? He’s fully committed to wars with Iran, Venezuela, and probably any other non ‘ally’ you could find on a map. And he’s far from alone.”
Carlson also attacks the Republican-controlled House of Representatives for passing the Antisemitism Awareness Act. That act tells the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights take into consideration the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism when reviewing or investigating complaints of discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.
Carlson writes, “The House recently passed a bill mind-numbingly equating criticism of a foreign government to prohibited discrimination and harassment. There’s nothing more American than the freedom to critique your rulers. Anyone who says the government should block citizens from expressing hostile views about another country’s leadership clearly has no regard for the First Amendment.” The newsletter, which mischaracterizes the legislation, hyperlinks to the bill.
One can certainly understand why Carlson might be worried about a government crackdown on antisemitism.
Carlson’s October 27 interview with racist antisemite Nick Fuentes has amassed 16.9 million views on X and 4.4 million views on Google/Alphabet’s YouTube. That doesn’t count listens on Spotify, where the Tucker Carlson show is No. 3 on the list of top podcasts in the United States, or on Apple Podcasts, where Carlson is the no. 15 top podcast in the U.S. For comparison’s sake, Fox News’s primetime stars attract almost 3 million cable viewers, and President Trump’s State of the Union address attracted a reported audience of about 36.6 million viewers.
Rod Dreher, a conservative Orthodox Christian, has a long post about Fuentes. “Tucker Carlson has been up front about his own Protestantism. Funny that he didn’t ask Fuentes about this October 14, 2022 quote: ‘Protestantism is a Jewish psyop. It’s a subversion of Christianity. The Reformation was the original Jewish revolution against the Church.’” Also, Dreher writes that Fuentes “has engaged in Holocaust denial, in the sense of saying the numbers of Jews killed was greatly exaggerated, and has repeatedly praised Hitler.” Writes Dreher, “Donald Trump and J.D. Vance could go a long way in stifling the growth of this evil by forthrightly denouncing it. J.D. is a sincere Christian; I believe that eventually — and I hope soon — he will see what a threat these people are to the faith, and to the kind of America he wants to lead. That day cannot come soon enough.”
Erick-Woods Erickson also wrote about it: “now Tucker has put on Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who denies the Holocaust and mocks Jews and Charlie Kirk, and Carlson pulled every punch, allowing Fuentes to moderate his image.”
Highlights on Fuentes, courtesy of the Anti-Defamation League: “In June 2024, Fuentes posted on X, ‘These political people will say literally anything other than the actual truth. There are basically two things going on: White genocide and Jewish subversion.’”
More from the ADL: “During his livestream of President Trump’s inauguration in 2025, Fuentes said he believes Jews are in the way of the ‘sovereignty’ of the U.S., that they are the ‘most influential faction in our government’ and that Trump is ‘captured by this Israel lobby.” In a March 2023 livestream episode, Fuentes stated, “I think the Holocaust is exaggerated. I don’t hate Hitler. I think there’s a Jewish conspiracy. I believe in race realism.’”
More from the ADL: “On Feb. 12, 2025, during a livestream Fuentes denied the atrocities of Hamas’ October 7th terrorist attack on Israel, including acts of rape and the murder of babies that he claimed were ‘all a lie’ and that ‘none of it was real.’ On the first anniversary of October 7th, Fuentes asserted on X that the attack was ‘staged’ or used as a strategy to ‘justify Israel’s unfolding regional war’ with Iran.”
I meant to write, earlier this month, a piece about how both Trump FBI director Kash Patel and boycott-Israel-and-arrest-Prime-Minister-Netanyahu New York Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani each denounced the ADL. (“What Kash Patel and Zohran Mamdani Have in Common,” was my planned headline) Unfortunately it got away from me, but it was a telling and sad signal of where we are. You can blame the ADL for eroding its own credibility, but that seems to me not primarily what this is about.
Typically in a situation such as this, the opposing political party would make hay of it. President Biden made the Charlottesville neonazis the core of his 2020 campaign for president. He talked about it at every campaign appearance, explaining it as the rationale for his decision to run for office. Today’s Democrats have been mostly absent from the Fuentes-Carlson-Roberts-Vance discussion. Senator Schumer put out a tweet, which is welcome. Where is the rest of the party? And where are the Republicans? Senator Cruz made some noises at the Republican Jewish Coalition convention at Las Vegas, but they were disappointingly vague if directionally correct.
My friends at Heritage say it’s a fluid situation and they are hoping and praying for a course correction. Amen to that. But this goes beyond Heritage, to the broader political landscape. Has America really reached the point at which denouncing bigotry is a political negative? I don’t think it has. But it sure would be nice to have more contemporary evidence for that proposition.
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Far from an expert and probably subject to my own bias but I believe it is a slippery slope if you abandon either Israel or Ukraine.