Tucker Carlson’s interview with anti-Semite Nick Fuentes reveals discord among Republicans

Amna Nawaz:

This week, a task force dedicated to combating anti-Semitism reportedly decided to sever ties with the conservative Heritage Foundation. This comes after the head of the think tank, Kevin Roberts, defended Tucker Carlson’s interview with an anti-Semitic far-right activist.

This infighting has revealed a growing division within conservative circles over how to address anti-Semitism.

William Brangham reports.

Tucker Carlson, conservative commentator:

Nick Fuentes, thank you for doing this.

Nick Fuentes, far-right influencer:

Yes, thanks for having me.

Tucker Carlson:

I wanted to meet you.

William Brangham:

The interview, which lasted more than two hours, was published late last month and has been viewed more than 20 million times, in which conservative commentator Tucker Carlson interviewed Nick Fuentes, a 27-year-old far-right influencer with millions of followers known as Groypers.

Fuentes is known for his open racism.

Nick Fuentes:

White people have a special heritage here as Americans.

William Brangham:

His misogyny, such as when he wrote: “Your body, my choice” after the 2024 election.

Nick Fuentes:

The entire political system depends on women never being held accountable for any of their choices.

William Brangham:

and his overt anti-Semitism, ranging from Holocaust denial to his belief in a global Jewish conspiracy.

Nick Fuentes:

The biggest challenge to this is organized Jews in America.

William Brangham:

The interview with Carlson drew swift and sharp condemnation from many in the conservative movement.

“No to the Gruebers, no to cowards like Tucker Carlson who normalize their waste,” wrote Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of the conservative Daily Wire.

Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation:

Christians can criticize the State of Israel without being anti-Semitic.

William Brangham:

But Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, defended Carlson. Heritage is the influential conservative think tank behind Project 2025 and which has long backed Israel and America’s support for it. Roberts argued that attacking Carlson was a distraction.

Kevin Roberts:

The toxic coalition attacking him sows the seeds of division. Their attempt to abolish it will fail. Most importantly, the American people expect us to focus on our political opponents on the left, not attack our friends on the right.

William Brangham:

Roberts has faced strong backlash, including from those inside Heritage, and calls for his resignation. He later apologized and specifically condemned Nick Fuentes.

But the controversy exposed the ongoing challenge of balancing different factions within the MAGA base.

On the “PBS News Hour,” I’m William Brangham.

Amna Nawaz:

To learn more about this, we’re joined by Arno Rosenfeld. He’s an enterprise reporter with The Forward. This is a Jewish news outlet, where he writes the decoding anti-Semitism newsletter.

Thanks for being here, Arno.

Arno Rosenfeld, Enterprise correspondent, The Forward:

Thanks for having me.

Amna Nawaz:

So, this interview, with Tucker Carlson, a former FOX host and mainstay of conservative media, inviting a known Holocaust denier, a white supremacist in Nick Fuentes, to his show for a friendly, objective interview, what does that moment represent? Why does he do that?

Arno Rosenfeld:

So, I think there’s some things going on here, because in addition to being all the things I described about Nick Fuentes, he’s also an incredibly influential critic in a certain corner of the conservative movement.

He has a lot – hundreds of thousands of people following his live streams. He has millions of followers online. I think Carlson realized that Fuentes’ influence was growing, and Carlson wanted to exploit that influence. In this case, he was really trying to convince Fuentes to ally himself with him in trying to convince the MAGA movement to withdraw its support for Israel.

As part of that, he was trying to get Fuentes to back off some of his more inflammatory rhetoric about Jews, because Carlson thought that was bad for the larger goal they were involved in, which was trying to reduce American support for Israel.

That’s why Karlsson brought Fuentes on. It wasn’t just about giving him a platform, it was about trying to win him over or build an alliance. And I think that’s what worries a lot of people, because Karlsson has a lot more credibility than Fuentes. So, if they are joining forces, it would worry a lot of people.

Amna Nawaz:

Does this shift demonstrate a larger rift or division within conservatives?

Arno Rosenfeld:

definitely.

I mean, Trump has historically supported Israel. But there is a real dividing line there. And we’re starting to see some fissures in Congress as well, with people like Marjorie Taylor Greene becoming more hostile toward U.S. aid to Israel, but on the right, especially people like Carlson, and certainly people like Fuentes, are joining this hostility toward support for Israel with overt anti-Semitism, tropes, and conspiracy theories about Jews.

Amna Nawaz:

So, you have a statement from the president of the Heritage Foundation, stepping in to defend Carlson. What do you make of it?

Arno Rosenfeld:

So I think it was, in some ways, an unintentional error on the part of the Heritage Foundation. No one was actually asking them to fornicate here.

And so the fact that Roberts would go out of his way to defend Carlson, not just as a friend, but as a legitimate voice in the conservative movement, and his decision to interview Fuentes as a legitimate political decision has a lot of people concerned, because I think there are people who realize that Fuentes’ influence may be growing, but it exists in these dark corners of the internet.

And you can’t really monitor those very well. Carlson was fired from Fox News. He is also independent at the moment. But Heritage remains a highly influential gatekeeper and political voice within the MAGA movement in Washington, D.C

And so, if it’s not just that Karlsson is a more dominant voice than Fuentes brought Fuentes along, but then Heritage is giving their stamp of approval to Karlsson, I think that’s what scared a lot of people off. They started thinking, oh my God, where are the gatekeepers? Who will stop anti-Semitism and outright hostility towards Jews from entering the political mainstream?

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

So what about that? What about these firewall guards, so to speak? Because you’ve seen people like Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Ben Shapiro unequivocally oppose Nick Fuentes. But now he has hosted a show with Tucker Carlson. Does it exist in dark corners, or is this force and voice more prominent among conservative circles?

Arno Rosenfeld:

You know, I think what Carlson realized, and I think the reason why Carlson – and he said this in the conversation with Fuentes – brought Fuentes in is that these gatekeepers couldn’t stop Fuentes’ rise.

The only thing Fuentes talked about in that interview was his long-running feud with Ben Shapiro, who he said has tried for years to keep him out of the mainstream. And it didn’t work. We’ve already seen, I mean, the backlash has been strong, and it looks like Roberts had to apologize. Heritage has gone a bit of this back. They were certainly receptive to criticism.

But the fact that it happened in the first place is a sign of how far the discourse has moved.

Amna Nawaz:

I would also like to point out that President Trump has met with Nick Fuentes before at Mar-a-Lago. He said he did not know who he was or what he stood for. But he also met Kanye West, who has been anti-Semitic and pro-Hitler in some of his statements.

That was years ago. Is there anything different at this moment?

Arno Rosenfeld:

I think that’s part of how we got to this moment. So I think this is the culmination of years of these trends.

I mean, Donald Trump, in 2016, I think, had already fooled a lot of Republican politicians who were alluding to different things, but not saying them publicly about immigrants, for example. I think Fuentes has challenged the hoax of the conservative media, which has insinuated globalists, for example.

Fuentes came out and said: No, we’re talking about the Jews. And so I think they’re very like-minded in that sense, we don’t have to talk about these things. We don’t have to use euphemisms. We can just say that. Trump returned to office. Fuentes got a bigger platform. So, it’s really more of a culmination than just a transformation, I think.

Amna Nawaz:

But what does all this rhetoric mean in the real world? We know that there is a connection between what is said when it comes to anti-Semitism and real-life violence against Jews. How do American Jews view this?

Arno Rosenfeld:

I think what’s really scary for a lot of American Jews and the one thing that American Jews have cared a lot about is maintaining liberal democratic norms, not a partisan thing, as much as maintaining gatekeepers of sorts in polite society, and maintaining the ability to say, this rhetoric goes beyond acceptable limits. We can’t afford this.

And so, when these things break down, there’s less one-on-one, somebody watches that interview and goes out and commits an act of anti-Semitism. This may happen here or there. It’s the feeling that, if you’re a young person who’s online a lot, and you see people like Fuentes, you start to think that this rhetoric is okay.

And so I think the idea that this is going to become something that people in Congress believe, and people in the mainstream media believe, I think that’s the most troubling thing at this moment.

Amna Nawaz:

Arno Rosenfeld from The Forward, thank you so much for joining us tonight.

Arno Rosenfeld:

Thank you.