Tucker Carlson defiantly brushed off the backlash over his extremely friendly chat with Nick Fuentes, telling his pal Megyn Kelly this week that critics can “buzz off” and do their own interview with the notorious white nationalist if they want to “feel virtuous or whatever.”
He also defended his hands-off approach with Fuentes, telling his ex-Fox News colleague that he doesn’t need to “prove that I’m a good person” and he’s “just doing my thing, which is I want to understand what people think.”
Carlson has sparked an internal civil war within the Republican Party over his chummy sitdown with Fuentes. Besides giving the Holocaust-denying Hitler admirer an open platform to largely peddle his antisemitic and racist worldview with very little pushback, Carlson has also come under fire from Jewish conservatives and the Christian right for one moment in particular.
“And then the Christian Zionists who are, well, Christian Zionists. What is that? I can just say for myself, I dislike them more than anybody, because it’s Christian heresy,” Carlson told Fuentes at one point. “And I’m offended by that as a Christian.” (Carlson has since said he’s “sorry that I said that” in a recent podcast interview.)
While Carlson has been pilloried by prominent conservative figures like Ben Shapiro, who labeled the fired Fox News host an “intellectual coward” and “the most virulent super-spreader of vile ideas in America,” Kevin Roberts – the president of the leading right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation – initially rallied to Carlson's defense amid the growing furor over the Fuentes interview.
Roberts’ backing of Carlson, which included him blasting the “venomous coalition” and “globalist class” criticizing the pundit, set off an “open rebellion” at Heritage that Roberts has been desperately struggling to contain. Amid a flood of resignations from the organization, Roberts apologized to irate staffers during a meeting this week.
“I made a mistake, and I let you down, and I let down this institution, and I’m sorry, period, full stop,” Roberts said on Wednesday.
Amid the continued fallout within the conservative movement over his kid-glove treatment of Fuentes, Carlson discussed the matter on Thursday with Kelly – who has repeatedly expressed her “love” for Carlson in recent months, especially as he’s faced increased criticism from the right over his views on Israel and Gaza.
During her sitdown with Carlson for a live broadcast of her SiriusXM show, Kelly gave him several minutes to vehemently defend himself and explain why he felt the need to have an affable chat with Fuentes. Eventually, she stepped in and mildly pressed her one-time Fox cohort on why he failed to challenge Fuentes on his vast history of white supremacy and antisemitism.
“I mean, I personally have watched videos of him questioning the Holocaust,” she stated. “Likening it to baking cookies in the oven and ‘there’s no way you could have gotten to six million’ seems to be his theory. He seems to think that we’ve way overstated the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. He’s ripped on poor Usha Vance in the most offensive terms... So what do you say to those people who say, ‘Why didn’t you raise that?’”
Addressing his critics, Carlson fumed: “You know, do your own interview the way that you want to do it. You’re not my editor. Buzz off.”
Continuing his response, Carlson said that if those criticizing him “want to go yell at Nick Fuentes,” he’ll “give you his cell” so they can “call him and go sit and yell at him and feel virtuous or whatever.”
He went on to refer to the backlash he received for the extremely sympathetic interview he gave Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin, which was deemed a “massive propaganda victory” for Putin.
“That’s up to you. I got the same thing with Putin. ‘Why aren’t you yelling at him?’ Okay, why? So I can show that I’m a good person? I care about what my wife thinks, my children think, and God thinks,” Carlson huffed. “And that’s it. I don’t need to prove that I am a good person to you! You may think I’m a terrible person. Okay, I’m just doing my thing, which is I want to understand what people think. And I’m committed to that. And if you don’t like it, don’t watch. That’s my view.”
Elsewhere in his chat with Kelly, Carlson asserted that despite the friendliness of his sitdown with Fuentes, he does not share the far-right extremist’s views.
“I’m not telling Nazi jokes, obviously. I’m not telling them even in private because I’m not into that at all,” he insisted, though he claimed that the “one thing that did bother me” was Fuentes’ condemnation of Usha Vance, the vice president’s wife. JD Vance is a close friend of Carlson’s, and Fuentes has repeatedly mocked her and accused the Vances of “race mixing” with their marriage.
“I generally make it a practice not to be like, ‘you said this and the internet tells me or the ADL says you said this.’ It’s like, why don’t you just tell me what you do think,” Carlson also declared in his conversation with Kelly. “ Like, why don’t you speak for yourself, because we’re adults. That is my approach with everybody, whether I like him or don’t like him.”
