RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the opening sentence of Douglas Murray’s current bestseller, On Democracies and Death Cults, Murray writes, “Sometimes a flare goes up and you see exactly where everyone is standing.”

In this case, the flare was the October 7, 2023 pogrom in southern Israel perpetrated by Hamas and hordes of “innocent” Gazan civilians.

And that flare starkly illuminated the unmistakable outline of Tucker Carlson.

On the wrong side of the wire.

For years Carlson offered conservative punditry at outlets like the Weekly Standard, CNN, and MSNBC, until he really took off in 2016 as Fox News’s most popular conservative. In 2019, Michael Anton labeled Carlson “the de facto leader of the conservative movement — assuming any such thing can still be said to exist.”

His nightly monologues fearlessly exposed the debacles of the Russia hoax, COVID, “mostly peaceful” BLM riots, the rigged election, and the Biden administration’s Gestapo tactics towards the J6 protesters.

One could imagine that, once the Left had successfully assassinated Trump, the next worst troublemaker who needed shutting up would be Carlson.

Then the most shocking historical crime of this century happened, and Tucker Carlson had nothing to say. As weeks passed after October 7, his silence implied an unhealthy antipathy towards Israel’s cause.

Then, on November 15, 2023, Carlson interviewed Candace Owens, a frequent guest on Fox News, including Carlson’s former show. At the time of the podcast, Owens was in the middle of a flap with her then co-worker at the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro (an issue of its own that’s not the focus here).

When the conversation turned to Israel, Carlson’s thoughts on October 7 weren’t encouraging.

I’m an American. I was horrified by what happened on Oct. 7. I think it was pretty strange, I don’t understand how it happened, but innocents died and that’s awful. And I hated watching that. And I feel so sorry for the Israelis who were killed. However, there’s an emotional response that is disproportionate, I think, on the part of some commentators. I mean, our country is being invaded right now by millions of young men whose identities we don’t know, who probably don’t even like America, and they’re now living here. Over a 100,000 Americans die every year of fentanyl… These are real tragedies. I’ve never seen anything like the emotion from any commentator around those tragedies as I’m watching about a foreign tragedy. I think that’s odd.

 

 

But Tucker was hardly the lone voice passionate about open borders and fentanyl deaths. These were universally decried across the conservative commentariat, without needing to cast supporting Israel’s survival and border security as mutually exclusive.

And unlike other “foreign tragedies” like Ukraine or Syria, Hamas butchered 40 Americans on October 7, and took hostage an indeterminate number of other Americans, including, after murdering its parents, a three-year-old toddler.

In September 2024, Tucker hosted, as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” podcaster Darryl Cooper.

Tucker was keen on Cooper’s notion that the “chief villain” of World War II was Winston Churchill, who stoked war on behalf of his Jewish financiers. Cooper effectually denied the Holocaust, claiming Nazi plans for Operation Barbarossa inadvertently underestimated how many POWs they’d end up having to feed. That millions of them starved to death was an unintended tragedy.

Then, in December, Tucker hosted a two-hour podcast with Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist, UN-advising globalist, and close associate of George Soros, (which last bit Tucker failed to mention). Sachs, who has “has repeatedly accused Israel of genocide,” spent two largely uninterrupted hours retailing his theory that the “Israel lobby” hijacked American foreign policy 30 years ago, to implement Benjamin Netanyahu’s sinister “’Greater Israel’ agenda that would rule from the Nile to the Euphrates that Israel opposed Palestinian rule over Judea and Samaria, Gaza, and the Golan.”

Sachs said, “’Netanyahu… has engaged the United States so far in six disastrous wars, and he’s aiming to engage us in yet one more.” Carlson saw no need to follow up after Sachs “accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of creating Hamas and Hezbollah to expand the Jewish state’s borders and achieve ‘greater Israel.’”

Following the podcast, Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs and combating antisemitism, tweeted, “Congratulations to Tucker Carlson for becoming the leading platform for fringe Holocaust deniers, conspiracy theorists, and blood libel enthusiasts who oppose the State of Israel.”

But if there was any doubt that this only means Carlson is consistent about opposing American entanglement in foreign wars, his recent appearance on the popular Megyn Kelly Show podcast leaves no room for doubt.

Powerline’s Scott Johnson posted last week a four-minute clip of Tucker responding to charges of antisemitism. According to Tablet podcaster Michael Doran, Tucker’s response managed to hit every note of classic denials of antisemitism. “It’s beautiful!,” Doran exclaims. “It should be taught in schools. It’s a work of art.” (56:34 in the podcast).

Carlson began by telling Kelly he loves both Jews and Israel, but he’s “been attacked in ways that are so crazy, and it’s totally coordinated from Israel,” by “creepy people taking direct orders from a foreign government.”

It’s so bad he called one of his many friends in the Israeli government (an Elder of Zion, perhaps?), to tell them, “Stop this. I am not your enemy… You don’t think you have enough enemies?”

More than enough. The problem is he keeps saying, and favorably showcasing, people who say all the same things Israel’s worst enemies do.

Like the blood libel that the IDF’s conduct of the war is “disproportionate” (read, genocidal), to the “foreign tragedy” of October 7, to which Israel just had to overreact. As a taxpayer, he’s got a right to complain.

“You have a dispute with your neighbor and you want to get, you know, medieval on them, do it on your own dime…”

Israel wanted this war, you see.

And getting medieval is the IDF’s historically unprecedented efforts to protect — and feed — the Gazan civilians Hamas sacrifices as human shields.

Or Carlson’s inflammatory charge Israel is dragging us into an “unwinnable war” — just like the Jews made Churchill drag us into WWII.

Or how he’s being called antisemitic on the “direct orders” of International Jewish Headquarters.

Carlson’s past “just asking questions” or offering a forum to explore alternative views: he’s handing access to his millions of viewers to characters like Sachs and Cooper, while either leaving their wildest theories unchallenged, or indicating avid agreement.

Then tells Megyn Kelly he really doesn’t want a fight about Israel. “At all.”

As Scott Johnson, notes, if Carlson were an obscure crank, “I would be happy to ignore him. But he is far from nobody in the eyes of the Trump administration and the online right.”

Right now, Carlson’s Live Tour features top MAGA notables like Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswamy, Megyn Kelly, Charlie Kirk, RFK, Jr., and VP Vance.

Trump and his supporters have consistently supported Israel, while the Left has loudly endorsed the worst form of Jew hatred.

But if given the chance, they’ll ruthlessly exploit mixed messages from our side.

That’s why Trump — quietly but firmly – must make Tucker Carlson persona non grata.

T.R. Clancy looks at the world from Dearborn, Michigan. You can email him at trclancy@yahoo.com.