By Jonathan S. Tobin
(JNS) — There is no more prominent antisemite in the United States than former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. With a huge audience tuning into his conspiratorial rants about Israel and the Jews on his podcasts, and banking on the credit he earned during an earlier phase of his career when he appeared very much within the conservative mainstream, the political commentator has considerable influence.
His ability to help circulate traditional tropes of antisemitism in the American public square, which has dovetailed with similar messages coming out of the political left, has helped create the impression that his views represent the future of the American right. That assumption, however, is being challenged by a person with far more clout with Republicans. And his name is Donald Trump.
With recent statements and social-media posts, the president has made it clear to his followers and the party he leads that, though they may turn to Carlson and his allies on the far right for internet entertainment, he opposes Carlson’s brand of antisemitism and crackpot views on foreign policy.
Carlson may have thought Trump’s courageous decision to attack Iran was the opening he needed to help hijack conservatism. But with polls showing that most Republicans, and especially the so-called MAGA base, overwhelmingly back Trump on Israel and Iran, the notion that Carlson’s views represent majority opinion on the right has been exposed as being as myth.
His efforts to blame the Jewish state and its supporters for the current war with Iran are seconded by even more extreme voices on the far right. Others with a claim to a slightly more mainstream following, like fellow Fox News alumni Megyn Kelly, run interference for them in an effort to push their anti-Zionism and toxic myths about Jews.
These podcasters are aligned with marginal figures within the Republican Party. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, was willing to defend Carlson and denounce his critics. But it brought to light the fact that some conservatives, along with many young people on the right, were avid followers of Carlson.
More ominously, Vice President JD Vance’s decision to take a stand of public neutrality on Carlson’s antisemitism seemed a harbinger of a sea change in Republican politics. It indicated that the politician would take the GOP in a very different direction.
Some of Carlson’s friends also found jobs in the Trump 2.0 administration. One such person was Joe Kent, the director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, who publicly resigned this week in protest of the Iran war. His resignation letter was a collection of false claims Jewish influence on the administration. Kent’s resignation was celebrated by fellow antisemites, like Owens, while being welcomed by most Republicans, who wondered how and why such a person had managed to be put in such a position in the first place.
Anyone assuming that such views are on the verge of taking over the GOP is jumping to conclusions that are more the product of internet than actual political clout.
And the person who is making that crystal clear to Carlson, Kelly, Greene and perhaps even Vance is still the one individual in the conservative ecosphere whose opinion matters more than anyone else.
As anger about Carlson’s growing hate-mongering grew, Trump remained largely above the fray. His pro-Israel policies were a standing rebuke to Carlson and the groypers. He even went so far as to label the podcaster as “kooky” after he criticized America’s participation in last summer’s 12-day air campaign against Iran.
In the weeks after Vance declined to side with the critique by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro of Carlson’s stands on Israel and the Jews, Trump specifically stated in a New York Times interview that antisemites had no place in the Republican Party. While reminding the country that he has a Jewish daughter and grandchildren, the president in speaking of Jew-haters, declared that “we don’t like them” and “we don’t need them.”
Carlson was still welcomed at the White House and seemed to retain his perch, even as administration sources and others have claimed that at a meeting in January, the president warned the podcaster to tone down his anti-Israel and anti-Jewish act. Photos of the podcaster at a meeting in the executive mansion seemed to signal that he had retained his perch as a friend of Vance and Donald Trump Jr., who is also his business partner.
But after Carlson called the current campaign against Iran “evil,” Trump didn’t mince words about his former supporter. Declaring that he had “lost his way,” the president read Carlson out of his “Make America Great Again” movement last week, saying: “I knew that a long time ago, and he’s not MAGA.”
While the Iran war is generally unpopular, with a strong plurality opposing it, the president’s own party and the majority of GOP voters who identify as MAGA support it. A YouGov America poll reported that 76% of Republicans approve of the war, while 85% of MAGA Republicans back it. And though Trump’s personal favorability ratings are down in the second year of his current term, he’s still supported by more than 81% of Republicans.
This isn’t surprising. Despite the claims from both left-wing and right-wing Trump critics that he is betraying his pre-election foreign-policy pledges, there was never any doubt about his stand on Iran and its mullahs. Throughout his political career, including during his first term, the president was an ardent critic of the Democrats’ appeasement of Tehran and, as was the case with his predecessors, had declared that he would never allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. The only difference is, as he has done on other issues, Trump aims to keep his promise on that score, even if it means the use of force. And most Republicans, MAGA and non-MAGA alike, support that stand while recognizing that the current campaign alongside America’s Israeli ally bears no resemblance to past misadventures in the Middle East that they oppose.
This adds to a political equation in which the idea of a conservative crack-up in which Trump’s far-right critics are in a position to contest Trump’s control of the GOP, let alone become a dominant faction, remains a fantasy.
But until proven otherwise, the groyper wing of the GOP remains largely a function of the internet and social media, rather than an actual electoral movement with grassroots activists.
Unlike the situation in the Democratic Party, where pro-Israel figures have become not merely a minority but actual outliers, the GOP caucuses in the House and Senate remain nearly unanimous in their support for the Jewish state. And there’s little evidence of anti-Israel candidates in the mold of Carlson or the groypers seeking to oust pro-Israel Republicans, let alone a protest movement against Trump.
Indeed, the groyper rebellion is very bad news for Carlson’s friend Vance. The vice president still holds a huge lead in the early polling for the 2028 Republican nomination. But his disappearing act since the war began and the president’s apparent recent preference for U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio bode ill for the vice president’s ability to remain the frontrunner in the two years until the voting begins.
If Vance remains low-key or invisible when it comes to support for the administration’s decision to go to war while his allies descend down a rabbit hole of opposition to Trump and antisemitism, there will be consequences. It will make it less likely that he will be in a position to claim the president’s endorsement in 2028 — and that of Trump’s followers — or succeed him as commander in chief.
A blunder, not an opening
Contrary to the hopes of left-wing and far-right Trump critics, what we are seeing isn’t a widening GOP schism. Far from signaling a sea change on the right, the decision of Carlson to challenge a president with a devoted following that dwarfs his fan base was a blunder, not a political opening.
Carlson’s ability to inject his poisonous views into the country’s discourse is real. Still, there is a difference between internet popularity and a viable electoral coalition, even within a political party. Those who tune in to his show — or to that of other antisemitic and antisemitic-adjacent celebrities to hear them spin conspiracy theories — do so for entertainment more than political inspiration. In picking a fight with Trump over Iran and Israel, the podcaster isn’t as much on shaky ground with Republican voters as he is tilting at windmills.
In a party whose voters remain devoted to Trump, while still solidly supportive of Israel and opposed to Islamist regimes like Iran, vitriol against Jews may generate clicks, but not votes. Rather than demonstrating their ability to take over a party in much the same way that progressive Israel-bashers and antisemites did with the Democrats, the faction of right-wing Jew-haters led by Carlson is crashing into a political dead end.