Pretty much the whole problem is the Carlson problem. He used to be "America First, but America Bad," as Thomas put it here. Now he's just "America Bad." He's not a Christian either, but a neo-pagan.
Carlson has the clickbait and thus exerts the "audience capture" of everyone else on the right, from Charlie Kirk to Meghan Kelly to JD Vance to Domald Trump himself (who can't bring himself to publicly repudiate this crowd, however disdainfully he views them).
There is a civil war for whether MAGA is America First or Israel First. It didn’t start with Fuentes - it started with Charlie Kirk. No doubt it will be damaging for Trump and MAGA. Perhaps if the pro-Israel side would stand down and put America First instead of Israel First, the civil war would end and MAGA would resume as a unified force. I’m not optimistic. Trump has chosen his donors over his voters. MAGA will need to find a new leader. Maybe Vance, maybe not.
This is a false binary choice. America first, sure. But in most cases that’s compatible with Israel first. The Jewish state is a key American ally. Our relationship is mutually beneficial. The arguments against it are proffered in bad faith, as when the odious Tucker Carlson claimed that Israel was tricking America into a war with Iraq in which 100,000 Americans would die. So Trump pulled the trigger and what happened? Iran’s nuclear fangs were drawn and that was that.
It’s not a false binary choice. It’s an easily operable logical choice. America First. That means whenever there is a conflict of interest, Israel loses. As long as we can all agree that principle then there is no problem and no need for any MAGA civil war.
It’s never that simple, of course. An alliance involves tradeoffs and the issues are never cut and dried. They encompass both short-term and long-term considerations. America First has a nice ring to it, but the Devil always lurks in the details.
I’ve known about Fuentes for around five years, since he left either Boston College or Boston University for Auburn as a result of promoting his neo-Nazi beliefs. He’s never been much out of the news since then. If the leader of the Heritage Institute didn’t know about this guy, then he has no idea what’s been going on for years on his own side of the political divide. That’s only slightly less plausible than his excuse that he “mostly watches sports” as the reason he’s supposedly unaware of Fuentes. Neither is plausible; and if he’s telling the truth, he’s at best negligent, given his job.
I watched the post-video meeting at Heritage. Roberts’ apology sounded sincere to me, but he still needs to go, even after he cleans up his own mess (to paraphrase him). Every day he remains discredits the institution, if it’s even worth rescuing.
“A sincere apology? Yeah, I can fake that.” My default assumption in such cases is that what a person says before he’s pressured to apologize is what he really thinks.
“Once again, I find myself contemplating Oscar Wilde’s quip that youth is wasted on the young.” (Thomas Gregg)
Oscar Wilde also famously said “there are but two tragedies in a man’s life; one is not getting what he wants and the other is getting it.”
Jewish supporters of the right who breathed a sigh of relief after the last election may be finding that famous figures on the right who they hoped would be allies are anything but.
We should remember that while Fuentes demonstrated his vitriolic hatred of Jews, Carlson made plain his vitriolic hatred for tens of millions of Christians when he denounced Christian Zionism as a mind virus.
Without opining on the various schools of thought about Christian theology, Carlson’s nasty dismissal of a major Christian theological movement may not be as bad as the views of Fuentes on Jews, but it was remarkably dismissive if not outright hateful.
I must confess that this whole controversy makes me a bit nervous about JD Vance. He’s been remarkably quiet about this whole controversy and it is generally believed that he comes from the hyper-isolationist wing of the conservative movement where Carlson is firmly entrenched.
If you have any thoughts about whether Vance might be associated with the whole mess at least by implication, Thomas, it would be interesting to know your views.
In my never-to-be-humble opinion, Carlson is every bit as much of an antisemite as Fuentes, though more adept at throwing sand in people’s eyes. But his rant about “Christian Zionists” (which I took personally) was a tell. Really, he was slamming the Jews.
As for Vance, he’ll soon be facing a big decision. As a matter of Realpolitik, I get his desire to maintain ties to the natcons. But with the growth of antisemitism among those people, that’s going to be untenable in the long run. And of course, Vance is a member of an administration whose leader, Donald Trump, is the most Zionist American president ever. Of all the ways in which he might distinguish himself from Trump while preserving his claim to be the heir presumptive, bashing Israel and the Jews is at the bottom of the list.
When I was younger, becoming a young man in upstate NY, I did encounter a goodly number of people from NYC metro area with temperaments similar to that of DJT. I was never comfortable with that type. He's such a great President, I no longer become ruffled by his personality traits. I trust him. He's my guy. I don't feel MN the I east bit threatened, angered, or intimidated by him. And, I'm not humiliated by saying in front of anyone, that he is a far greater man than I ever might have been.
Vance faces a dilemma. I think that by instinct he’s an uber-isolationist which is in direct conflict with Trump who obviously believes in the projection of American power. Trump bombed Iran and he played a very active role in directing the negotiations over Gaza. He’s bragged about helping to settle conflicts all over the world including the conflict between India and Pakistan and the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. To suggest that Trump believes in isolationism is obviously wrong. In Trump’s eyes at least, “America First” not only does not mean isolationism, isolationism contradicts putting America first.
Three years from now when the next presidential election beckons, if the Tucker Carlson/Majorie Taylor Greene philosophy is ascendent, MAGA will be relegated to the dustbin of history. Tucker Carlson style anti-Americanism will mean the death knell for MAGA.
I think you’re right, Thomas, Tucker Carlson not only dislikes Jews, he also has animosity towards tens of millions of his fellow Christians.
Not only did Carlson call Christian Zionism a brain virus he called it a “heresy.” Apparently Carlson thinks Roman Catholicism is heretical. After all, since Vatican II, the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church has been that God’s covenant with the Jewish people remains valid and irrevocable. This position was affirmed in the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate (1965), which rejected the notion of supersessionism (the idea that the New Covenant completely replaces the Old) and emphasized the enduring spiritual bond between Christians and Jews.
Pope John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis consistently echoed this view, stating that the Jewish people continue to live within the truth of the Abrahamic covenant and that God remains faithful to them.
You don’t need to be a theologan to understand that the basis of the Abrahamic Covenent is tied to the relation of the Jews to the biblical homeland that the Bible says God gave them.
By calling Christian Zionism heresy, Carlson is calling the position of the Roman Catholic Church heresy.
It’s not just Roman Catholicism that Carlson thinks is heretical. Tens of millions of Evangelical Protestants in the United States (and tens of millions more around the world, especially in South America) take Genesis 12:3 literally. According to the Bible, God told Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse.”
Now there is more than one way to interpret this passage but it is clear that the Evangelical Protestants who believe that this passage necessarily justifies a belief in Christian Zionism have a legitimate point of view. By accusing these Evangelicals of heresy and suggesting that the only possible reason they can believe what they do is because they suffer from a brain virus, Carlson exposes himself for what he is; a bigot.
Carlson said he hates Christian Zionism and despises Christian Zionists like Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee.
If JD Vance doesn’t eventually repudiate Carlson, his chances of being elected President will decline dramatically. There aren’t enough Jews left to have any impact on American elections. The votes of tens of millions of Christian Zionists can make all the difference in the world.
Actually, I believe that Vance is a creation of "Tech bros" such as Peter Thiel and others, cultivated from scratch, at Yale, (just like BHO was cultivated, nurtured and installed). The tech bros. Hope to install Vance, to ensure that they get the legislative outcomes, and future govt. Contracts they crave, in order to become kajillionaires. They're building the surveillance state. That is how my reading informs me.
> The tech bros. Hope to install Vance, to ensure that they get the legislative outcomes, and future govt. Contracts they crave, in order to become kajillionaires.
It's not about the money. The tech bros want to use technology to re-engineer humanity. They can sell their agenda to the woke left as "freeing reproduction from the confines of traditional gender", they can sell their agenda to the woke right as "producing more genetically superior Aryan children".
Their biggest obstacle is religious bio-conservatives like the Heritage foundation, see the IVF fight for a preview, and the taboo against eugenics. Thus from their point of view the Heritage foundation must be either subverted or destroyed.
You know, I don’t take some deep theological view of this issue. To me, it’s simply a question of justice. Why should the Jews, alone among the peoples of the earth, be consigned to perpetual exile? Why should they be denied the tiny sliver of land, their ancestral home, that constitutes the State of Israel? The Palestinian Arabs would lose nothing by giving up their genocidal nationalist fantasies. They could dwell in peace and profit in a state of their own alongside Israel. But since they won’t accept that reality—to hell with them.
It is my opinion that true communication isn't limited to just listening to your own side. That said, Tucker Carlson has interviewed many people with whom he did or does not agree. in 2025, Tucker Carlson interviewed Senator Ted Cruz about U.S. policy toward Iran. The exchange turned hostile: Carlson pressed Cruz on basic facts and then said, “You don’t know anything about Iran!”
Cruz hit back, the clip went viral, and it exposed a sharp policy and personal clash. So Tucker has a history of fighting back with interviewees he disagrees with. Not a large sample, but possibly indicative of whether Tucker agrees with Fuentes or not.
In any case, I'm disappointed in Carlson for not presenting the other side. The fact that Fuentes is a turd should have no bearing on presenting and defending the truth.
Carlson slobbered all over that bastard Fuentes, who’s an outright antisemite and, in my opinion, an authentic fascist. So please, let’s not pretend that Tucker Carlson is interested in an honest exchange of views. He’s that same as Fuentes, albeit too clever to say frankly what he thinks.
I never said Carlson was interested in an honest exchange of views. I said in the past he has history of arguing with those he disagrees with. Probably should have been clearer, but he didn't argue with Fuentes (present the other side), so it seems he agrees with him.
I didn't watch the interview, but I've heard Fuentes on microphone. I heard him taunt Jewish perceptions (at least the perceptions of Jews who remember the suffering of their relatives (mine in both Lithuania and Ukraine). What the little worm spoke, that I heard with my own ears, was to taunt us with mocking reference to the number "6,000,000"! That was one despicable snippet, in a string of many such despicable snippets. Tucker saying nary a word of objection, or a scintilla of even the mildest reprimand, lapped it up like a good little Schweinhunt. Now, if you heard THAT, and you cannot bring yourself to get on board in some manner with those of us who object, then why don't you be honest, and just come out and openly declare that you hate Jews.
OK so you made a BBC style tape in your head that spliced together some Feuntes sound bites and then you imagined he said them in the Tucker interview?
The problem when you keep arguing in bad faith, and just make stuff up or plain lie, instead of dealing in facts, is people eventually just stop listening to you and tune you out as irrelevant. This is a shame because honest dialog is the best way forward.
Pretty much the whole problem is the Carlson problem. He used to be "America First, but America Bad," as Thomas put it here. Now he's just "America Bad." He's not a Christian either, but a neo-pagan.
Carlson has the clickbait and thus exerts the "audience capture" of everyone else on the right, from Charlie Kirk to Meghan Kelly to JD Vance to Domald Trump himself (who can't bring himself to publicly repudiate this crowd, however disdainfully he views them).
https://foreignlocal.substack.com/p/tucker-qatarlson-not-on-the-news?r=2vnoe2
And then there's the stunt Roberts pulled with Ukraine.
https://x.com/JoshKraushaar/status/1987304048056512620
There is a civil war for whether MAGA is America First or Israel First. It didn’t start with Fuentes - it started with Charlie Kirk. No doubt it will be damaging for Trump and MAGA. Perhaps if the pro-Israel side would stand down and put America First instead of Israel First, the civil war would end and MAGA would resume as a unified force. I’m not optimistic. Trump has chosen his donors over his voters. MAGA will need to find a new leader. Maybe Vance, maybe not.
This is a false binary choice. America first, sure. But in most cases that’s compatible with Israel first. The Jewish state is a key American ally. Our relationship is mutually beneficial. The arguments against it are proffered in bad faith, as when the odious Tucker Carlson claimed that Israel was tricking America into a war with Iraq in which 100,000 Americans would die. So Trump pulled the trigger and what happened? Iran’s nuclear fangs were drawn and that was that.
It’s not a false binary choice. It’s an easily operable logical choice. America First. That means whenever there is a conflict of interest, Israel loses. As long as we can all agree that principle then there is no problem and no need for any MAGA civil war.
WHAT is the "conflict of interest"?
****Is it 3.8 bil/yr foreign aid, for which the US receives plenty in return?
If a majority support the policy of the Trump administration, then "America, (represented by Trump), wins"!
Israel doesn't ask for US troops.
Israel creates jobs in the USA
Israel provides the USA with invaluable intel
Israel allows stockpiling of US military supplies in the mideast
Israel shares homegrown hi-tech, both military and non military with the US
All the miitary aid is spent on US weapons systems
I can go on.
SO, where is America "losing"?
It’s never that simple, of course. An alliance involves tradeoffs and the issues are never cut and dried. They encompass both short-term and long-term considerations. America First has a nice ring to it, but the Devil always lurks in the details.
I’ve known about Fuentes for around five years, since he left either Boston College or Boston University for Auburn as a result of promoting his neo-Nazi beliefs. He’s never been much out of the news since then. If the leader of the Heritage Institute didn’t know about this guy, then he has no idea what’s been going on for years on his own side of the political divide. That’s only slightly less plausible than his excuse that he “mostly watches sports” as the reason he’s supposedly unaware of Fuentes. Neither is plausible; and if he’s telling the truth, he’s at best negligent, given his job.
I watched the post-video meeting at Heritage. Roberts’ apology sounded sincere to me, but he still needs to go, even after he cleans up his own mess (to paraphrase him). Every day he remains discredits the institution, if it’s even worth rescuing.
“A sincere apology? Yeah, I can fake that.” My default assumption in such cases is that what a person says before he’s pressured to apologize is what he really thinks.
“Once again, I find myself contemplating Oscar Wilde’s quip that youth is wasted on the young.” (Thomas Gregg)
Oscar Wilde also famously said “there are but two tragedies in a man’s life; one is not getting what he wants and the other is getting it.”
Jewish supporters of the right who breathed a sigh of relief after the last election may be finding that famous figures on the right who they hoped would be allies are anything but.
We should remember that while Fuentes demonstrated his vitriolic hatred of Jews, Carlson made plain his vitriolic hatred for tens of millions of Christians when he denounced Christian Zionism as a mind virus.
Without opining on the various schools of thought about Christian theology, Carlson’s nasty dismissal of a major Christian theological movement may not be as bad as the views of Fuentes on Jews, but it was remarkably dismissive if not outright hateful.
I must confess that this whole controversy makes me a bit nervous about JD Vance. He’s been remarkably quiet about this whole controversy and it is generally believed that he comes from the hyper-isolationist wing of the conservative movement where Carlson is firmly entrenched.
If you have any thoughts about whether Vance might be associated with the whole mess at least by implication, Thomas, it would be interesting to know your views.
In my never-to-be-humble opinion, Carlson is every bit as much of an antisemite as Fuentes, though more adept at throwing sand in people’s eyes. But his rant about “Christian Zionists” (which I took personally) was a tell. Really, he was slamming the Jews.
As for Vance, he’ll soon be facing a big decision. As a matter of Realpolitik, I get his desire to maintain ties to the natcons. But with the growth of antisemitism among those people, that’s going to be untenable in the long run. And of course, Vance is a member of an administration whose leader, Donald Trump, is the most Zionist American president ever. Of all the ways in which he might distinguish himself from Trump while preserving his claim to be the heir presumptive, bashing Israel and the Jews is at the bottom of the list.
That’s how I see it at the moment, anyhow.
I've had the running hunch that Marco Rubio is Trump's guy come 2028.
Well, maybe, but Trump’s mercurial temperament defies prognostication. Well just have to see.
When I was younger, becoming a young man in upstate NY, I did encounter a goodly number of people from NYC metro area with temperaments similar to that of DJT. I was never comfortable with that type. He's such a great President, I no longer become ruffled by his personality traits. I trust him. He's my guy. I don't feel MN the I east bit threatened, angered, or intimidated by him. And, I'm not humiliated by saying in front of anyone, that he is a far greater man than I ever might have been.
Vance faces a dilemma. I think that by instinct he’s an uber-isolationist which is in direct conflict with Trump who obviously believes in the projection of American power. Trump bombed Iran and he played a very active role in directing the negotiations over Gaza. He’s bragged about helping to settle conflicts all over the world including the conflict between India and Pakistan and the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia. To suggest that Trump believes in isolationism is obviously wrong. In Trump’s eyes at least, “America First” not only does not mean isolationism, isolationism contradicts putting America first.
Three years from now when the next presidential election beckons, if the Tucker Carlson/Majorie Taylor Greene philosophy is ascendent, MAGA will be relegated to the dustbin of history. Tucker Carlson style anti-Americanism will mean the death knell for MAGA.
I think you’re right, Thomas, Tucker Carlson not only dislikes Jews, he also has animosity towards tens of millions of his fellow Christians.
Not only did Carlson call Christian Zionism a brain virus he called it a “heresy.” Apparently Carlson thinks Roman Catholicism is heretical. After all, since Vatican II, the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church has been that God’s covenant with the Jewish people remains valid and irrevocable. This position was affirmed in the Second Vatican Council’s declaration Nostra Aetate (1965), which rejected the notion of supersessionism (the idea that the New Covenant completely replaces the Old) and emphasized the enduring spiritual bond between Christians and Jews.
Pope John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis consistently echoed this view, stating that the Jewish people continue to live within the truth of the Abrahamic covenant and that God remains faithful to them.
You don’t need to be a theologan to understand that the basis of the Abrahamic Covenent is tied to the relation of the Jews to the biblical homeland that the Bible says God gave them.
By calling Christian Zionism heresy, Carlson is calling the position of the Roman Catholic Church heresy.
It’s not just Roman Catholicism that Carlson thinks is heretical. Tens of millions of Evangelical Protestants in the United States (and tens of millions more around the world, especially in South America) take Genesis 12:3 literally. According to the Bible, God told Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse.”
Now there is more than one way to interpret this passage but it is clear that the Evangelical Protestants who believe that this passage necessarily justifies a belief in Christian Zionism have a legitimate point of view. By accusing these Evangelicals of heresy and suggesting that the only possible reason they can believe what they do is because they suffer from a brain virus, Carlson exposes himself for what he is; a bigot.
Carlson said he hates Christian Zionism and despises Christian Zionists like Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee.
If JD Vance doesn’t eventually repudiate Carlson, his chances of being elected President will decline dramatically. There aren’t enough Jews left to have any impact on American elections. The votes of tens of millions of Christian Zionists can make all the difference in the world.
Actually, I believe that Vance is a creation of "Tech bros" such as Peter Thiel and others, cultivated from scratch, at Yale, (just like BHO was cultivated, nurtured and installed). The tech bros. Hope to install Vance, to ensure that they get the legislative outcomes, and future govt. Contracts they crave, in order to become kajillionaires. They're building the surveillance state. That is how my reading informs me.
> The tech bros. Hope to install Vance, to ensure that they get the legislative outcomes, and future govt. Contracts they crave, in order to become kajillionaires.
It's not about the money. The tech bros want to use technology to re-engineer humanity. They can sell their agenda to the woke left as "freeing reproduction from the confines of traditional gender", they can sell their agenda to the woke right as "producing more genetically superior Aryan children".
Their biggest obstacle is religious bio-conservatives like the Heritage foundation, see the IVF fight for a preview, and the taboo against eugenics. Thus from their point of view the Heritage foundation must be either subverted or destroyed.
I had not previously heard the take that you just offered. You might be right.
Have you seen the Thiel-Douthat interview where Thiel outright states that the problem with transgenderism is that it doesn't go far enough?
You know, I don’t take some deep theological view of this issue. To me, it’s simply a question of justice. Why should the Jews, alone among the peoples of the earth, be consigned to perpetual exile? Why should they be denied the tiny sliver of land, their ancestral home, that constitutes the State of Israel? The Palestinian Arabs would lose nothing by giving up their genocidal nationalist fantasies. They could dwell in peace and profit in a state of their own alongside Israel. But since they won’t accept that reality—to hell with them.
It is my opinion that true communication isn't limited to just listening to your own side. That said, Tucker Carlson has interviewed many people with whom he did or does not agree. in 2025, Tucker Carlson interviewed Senator Ted Cruz about U.S. policy toward Iran. The exchange turned hostile: Carlson pressed Cruz on basic facts and then said, “You don’t know anything about Iran!”
Cruz hit back, the clip went viral, and it exposed a sharp policy and personal clash. So Tucker has a history of fighting back with interviewees he disagrees with. Not a large sample, but possibly indicative of whether Tucker agrees with Fuentes or not.
In any case, I'm disappointed in Carlson for not presenting the other side. The fact that Fuentes is a turd should have no bearing on presenting and defending the truth.
Carlson slobbered all over that bastard Fuentes, who’s an outright antisemite and, in my opinion, an authentic fascist. So please, let’s not pretend that Tucker Carlson is interested in an honest exchange of views. He’s that same as Fuentes, albeit too clever to say frankly what he thinks.
I never said Carlson was interested in an honest exchange of views. I said in the past he has history of arguing with those he disagrees with. Probably should have been clearer, but he didn't argue with Fuentes (present the other side), so it seems he agrees with him.
Did you actually watch the interview? Doesn’t seem like it.
I didn't watch the interview, but I've heard Fuentes on microphone. I heard him taunt Jewish perceptions (at least the perceptions of Jews who remember the suffering of their relatives (mine in both Lithuania and Ukraine). What the little worm spoke, that I heard with my own ears, was to taunt us with mocking reference to the number "6,000,000"! That was one despicable snippet, in a string of many such despicable snippets. Tucker saying nary a word of objection, or a scintilla of even the mildest reprimand, lapped it up like a good little Schweinhunt. Now, if you heard THAT, and you cannot bring yourself to get on board in some manner with those of us who object, then why don't you be honest, and just come out and openly declare that you hate Jews.
OK so you made a BBC style tape in your head that spliced together some Feuntes sound bites and then you imagined he said them in the Tucker interview?
The problem when you keep arguing in bad faith, and just make stuff up or plain lie, instead of dealing in facts, is people eventually just stop listening to you and tune you out as irrelevant. This is a shame because honest dialog is the best way forward.
I'm ALREADY "irrelevant".
My engagement with the few who know I exist Is straight forward, open, and honest.
Deflection, projection, & pretense, IMHO, constitute 95% of the medium in which humanity is immersed.
You’ve read my mind…
Thanks for carrying about us. I really am grateful for all eternity. I care about you and yours as well.