Tucker Carlson’s interview with antisemite Nick Fuentes exposes rift among Republicans

Amna Nawaz:

This week, a task force dedicated to fighting antisemitism reportedly decided to sever ties with the conservative Heritage Foundation. It comes after the think tank's president, Kevin Roberts, defended Tucker Carlson's interview with a far right antisemitic activist.

This infighting has laid bare a growing schism within conservative circles over how to address antisemitism.

William Brangham reports.

Tucker Carlson, Conservative Commentator:

Nick Fuentes, thank you for doing this.

Nick Fuentes, Far Right Influencer:

Yes, thank you for having me.

Tucker Carlson:

I have wanted to meet you.

William Brangham:

The interview, which lasted over two hours, was posted late last month and has been seen over 20 million times, the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson interviewing Nick Fuentes, the 27-year-old hard-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, like when he wrote, "Your body, my choice," after the 2024 election.

Nick Fuentes:

The whole political system is just based around women never being accountable for any of their choices.

William Brangham:

And his overt antisemitism, ranging from Holocaust denial to his belief in a global Jewish conspiracy.

Nick Fuentes:

The big challenge to that is organized Jewry in America.

William Brangham:

The interview with Carlson drew quick, sharp condemnation from many in the conservative movement.

Ben Shapiro, editor of the conservative Daily Wire, wrote: "No to the Groypers, no to the cowards like Tucker Carlson who normalized their trash."

Kevin Roberts, President, Heritage Foundation:

Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic.

William Brangham:

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

Kevin Roberts:

The venomous coalition attacking him are sowing division. Their attempt to cancel him will fail. Most importantly, the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right.

William Brangham:

Roberts faced a strong backlash, including from staffers within Heritage, and calls for his resignation. He later apologized and denounced Nick Fuentes specifically.

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

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm William Brangham.

Amna Nawaz:

For more on this, we're joined by Arno Rosenfeld. He's an enterprise reporter with The Forward. That's a Jewish news outlet, where he writes the Antisemitism Decoded newsletter.

Thanks for being here, Arno.

Arno Rosenfeld, Enterprise Reporter, The Forward:

Thanks for having me.

Amna Nawaz:

So, this interview, for Tucker Carlson, who's a former FOX host and mainstay of conservative media, to invite a known Holocaust denier, a white supremacist in Nick Fuentes onto his show for an objectively friendly interview, what does that moment represent? Why would he do that?

Arno Rosenfeld:

So, I think a few things are going on here, because in addition to being all the things that you described about Nick Fuentes, he's also an incredibly influential pundit in a certain corner of the conservative movement.

He has many — hundreds of thousands of people tune into his livestreams. He has millions of followers online. And I think Carlson recognized that Fuentes is growing in influence, and Carlson wanted to harness that influence. In this case, he was really trying to get Fuentes to align with him on trying to get the MAGA movement to withdraw support for Israel.

And, as part of that, he was trying to convince Fuentes to back away from some of his more inflammatory rhetoric around Jews, because Carlson thought that was bad for the larger goal that they shared of trying to reduce American support for Israel.

So that's why Carlson had Fuentes on. It wasn't just about giving him a platform, but it was about trying to sort of win him over or build an alliance. And I think that's what worried a lot of people, because Carlson has a lot more mainstream credibility than Fuentes does. And so, if they're joining forces, that's concerning to a lot of people.

Amna Nawaz:

Is that shift, is that illustrative of a larger split or divide within conservatives?

Arno Rosenfeld:

Absolutely.

I mean, Trump has historically supported Israel. But there is a real dividing line there. And we're starting to see some breakaways in Congress too, folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene becoming more hostile to American aid for Israel, but, on the right, especially folks like Carlson, certainly people like Fuentes, join that hostility toward support for Israel with just overt antisemitism, tropes, conspiracy theories about Jews.

Amna Nawaz:

So then you have the statement from the president of The Heritage Foundation, right, stepping in to defend Carlson. What do you make of that?

Arno Rosenfeld:

So I think it was sort of, in some respects, an unforced error on the part of The Heritage Foundation. Nobody was actually asking them to weigh in 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 alarmed a lot of people, because I think there are folks who recognize that Fuentes might be growing in influence, but he's on these dark corners of the Internet.

And you can't really police those very well. Carlson was booted from FOX News. He's also independent right now. But Heritage is still a very influential gatekeeper and policy voice within the MAGA movement in Washington, D.C.

And so if it's not just Carlson as a more mainstream voice than Fuentes bringing Fuentes along, but then it's Heritage giving their stamp of approval to Carlson, I think that's what scared a lot of people. They started thinking, oh, my gosh, where are the gatekeepers? Who's going to stop this open antisemitism and animosity toward Jews from entering the political mainstream?

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

So what about that? What about the keepers of that firewall, as it were? Because you have seen people like Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro come out against Nick Fuentes unequivocally. But now you have him being hosted on a show with Tucker Carlson. Is he existing in the dark corners or is that force and that voice more ascendant among conservative circles?

Arno Rosenfeld:

You know, I think what Carlson realized, and I think the reason that Carlson — and he said this in the conversation with Fuentes — brought Fuentes on is because those gatekeepers have not been able to stop Fuentes' rise.

One thing that Fuentes talked about in that interview was his longstanding feud with Ben Shapiro, who he said for years has been trying to keep him out of the mainstream. And it hasn't worked. So we did see — I mean, the backlash was strong, and it does seem like Roberts had to apologize. Heritage has walked a little bit of this back. They have certainly been receptive to the criticism.

But the fact that it would even happen in the first place is a sign of how much the discourse has moved.

Amna Nawaz:

I also want to point out President Trump has met with Nick Fuentes before at Mar-a-Lago. He said he didn't know who he was or what he stood for. But he also met with Kanye West, who has been antisemitic and pro-Hitler in some of his remarks.

That was years ago, though. Is there something different about this moment?

Arno Rosenfeld:

I think that is a 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, really called the bluff of a lot of Republican politicians who'd been hinting at various things, but hadn't said them openly about immigrants, for example. And Fuentes, I think, has called the bluff of conservative media, who have hinted at globalists, for example.

And Fuentes just comes out and says, no, we're talking about Jews. And so I think that they're very like-minded in that sense of saying, we don't have to talk around this stuff. We don't have to use euphemisms. We can just say it. And Trump came back to office. Fuentes got a bigger platform. So it's really a culmination more than a shift, I think.

Amna Nawaz:

But what does all the rhetoric mean in the real world? We know there's a connection between what is said when it comes to antisemitism and real-world violence against Jews. How are American Jews looking at this?

Arno Rosenfeld:

I think what's really scary for a lot of American Jews and one thing that American Jews have cared a lot about are the maintenance of liberal democratic norms, not a partisan thing, so much as maintaining gatekeepers of sort of polite society, maintaining the ability to say, this rhetoric is beyond the pale. We can't tolerate this.

And so, as those things break down, it's less that there's a one-to-one, somebody watches that interview and goes out and commits an act of antisemitism. That may happen here or there. It's more the sense that, if you're a young person online a lot, watching folks like Fuentes, you start to think that this rhetoric is OK.

And so I think the idea that this is going to become something that folks in Congress believe, that folks in the more mainstream media believe, I think that's what's most alarming in this moment.

Amna Nawaz:

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

Arno Rosenfeld:

Thank you.