I have faithfully followed Tucker Carlson’s descent into the gutter of vile anti-Semitism. The documentation can be found in an admittedly tiresome series of posts here. In my opinion, every writer, public figure, every publication, and every institution that lauded him in years past is obligated to speak out against the figure he has become — deceitful and destructive in his own right and a discredit to everyone with whom he associates.
The September 2025 issue of National Review carries Jamie Kirchick’s long essay “Tucker Carlson’s dark turn” (behind NR’s paywall). Kirchick’s essay is built on many of the items that I have written about on Power Line. In this case, National Review continues in the tradition of William Buckley’s service of maintaining a conservative movement that is worthy of respect by separating anti-Semitism from it.
I therefore thought Charlie Kirk made a mistake when he hosted Carlson at his Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Tampa this past July. In his remarks at the event Carlson ran true to form. He asserted that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent doing his thing on behalf of Israel.
Carlson assured his audience, “There is nothing wrong with saying that, there’s nothing hateful about saying that, there’s nothing anti-Semitic about saying that — there’s nothing even anti-Israel about saying that!” Further, “every single person in Washington, DC” thinks that Epstein was operating on behalf of the Mossad. “I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t think that,” he added.
As for Tucker’s assurances that “there’s nothing anti-Semitic about saying that — there’s nothing even anti-Israel about saying that,” he should be reminded that no man can be a judge in his own case.
By the same token, I also think that Mrs. Kirk and the organizers of the memorial for Charlie Kirk yesterday made a mistake including Carlson in it. Carlson has read himself out of a decent conservative movement. He disgraces it. Among other things, his mission is to alienate evangelical Christians from their support for Israel and the Jewish people.
RealClearPolitics has posted video and text of Carlson’s remarks at the Kirk memorial. Here is Carlson’s account of his “favorite story ever.”
So it’s about 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem, and Jesus shows up, and he starts talking about the people in power, and he starts doing the worst thing that you can do, which is telling the truth about people, and they hate it. And they just go bonkers. They hate it. And they become obsessed with making him stop. “This guy’s got to stop talking. We’ve got to shut this guy up.”
And I can just sort of picture the scene in a lamplit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus, thinking about what do we do about this guy telling the truth about us? “We must make him stop talking.” And there’s always one guy with a bright idea, and I can just hear him say, “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we just kill him? That’ll shut him up. That’ll fix the problem.”
In Carlson’s “favorite story ever” the Romans are perhaps conspicuous by their absence.
At this point Carlson has become one of the anti-Semitic cranks that used to be native on the right at the time Buckley founded National Review. In sophisticated form, he is a throwback to the likes of Charles Coughlin and Charles Coughlin. However, Carlson is more calculating and more cunning, if not more dangerous, than they ever were. He has no place and should have no home in a decent movement of American conservatism that is worthy of respect or support.
