Amb. Huckabee: I hope Israeli President Herzog sues Tucker Carlson for falsely accusing him of visiting Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile island

WASHINGTON, DC — This morning I interviewed Mike Huckabee, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, by phone for 19 minutes.

Always diplomatic, and ever the Christian gentleman, Huckabee nevertheless made it crystal clear he believes that in their podcast interview last week Tucker Carlson has crossed several redlines.

He was outraged by Tucker’s repeated attacks against President Trump’s character and policies during the nearly 2 1/2 hour conversation.

More on that soon.

Huckabee was also outraged by Tucker’s repeated assertions that Israeli President Isaac Herzog was connected to the late Jeffrey Epstein and that Herzog visited Epstein’s infamous island in the Caribbean where all manner of sexual crimes — including sexual trafficking and pedophilia — are said to have occurred.

As ALL ISRAEL NEWS reported over the weekend, Herzog’s office fiercely and fully denied such allegations and wrote to Tucker threatening to sue him for libel and defamation of character.

“Tucker is attacking Israel as a country that harbors the sickest form of sexual predators, and saying that the President of Israel himself was directly linked to the life and crimes of the worst sexual trafficker and predator that we've ever heard of, Jeffrey Epstein,” I noted, asking the ambassador to comment.

“I feel like President Herzog has grounds for a serious libel and defamation lawsuit, and he very well may pursue that,” Huckabee told me.

“And I, frankly, hope he does, because that was an incredibly bad thing to do to a public official and accuse them of essentially being a pedophile.”

“There’s just nothing that is more disgusting than that, especially without basis.”

“It was reckless on Tucker's part” to make such accusations against President Herzog, Huckabee added, since Tucker had absolutely no proof.

Huckabee noted that during the podcast, Tucker repeatedly pressed him to confront Herzog on why he had visited Epstein’s island, “Well, why don't you ask him? Are you going to ask him?”

Huckabee — who told Tucker he’d never heard of such allegations and couldn’t imagine that being the case — agreed to ask Herzog.

“The very next morning I did,” Huckabee told me. “I have regular conversations with President Herzog. He is a very close friend.”

The ambassador said Herzog “was appalled by such a scurrilous accusation.”

Herzog’s office then immediately issued a statement denying any visit, any contact, any conversation, any association with Epstein whatsoever.

And threatening legal action.

“The allegations are entirely unfounded and are unequivocally denied,” the statement on Saturday began.

“There has never been any contact or connection, directly or indirectly, between Isaac Herzog and Jeffrey Epstein.”

“There was never any acquaintance or personal relationship of any kind between them.”

“The President was never invited to, never visited, and was never present at the location in question. Any claim suggesting otherwise is false and may constitute libel and defamation.”

Later, President Herzog’s spokesman told reporters this: “We sent a letter to Tucker Carlson detailing the President’s response to the claims Tucker made in the interview with Huckabee.”

“Included in the response was that any statement suggesting a connection between the president and Jeffrey Epstein and his crimes is defamatory and libelous,” the spokesman added.

Tucker then apologized — saying he was just asking questions — and removed that section from the podcast recording.

Will that be enough to prevent a lawsuit?

That’s not clear.

Neither Herzog nor his advisors have yet commented as they carefully review the matter.

The following is the transcript of my phone call with Ambassador Huckabee, lightly edited for clarity.

ROSENBERG: Ambassador, you find yourself in quite a firestorm. One of the most fascinating and, I think, important interviews that I've ever seen you give was to Tucker Carlson. So, I want to begin with his statement in which he says, “I am not against Israel.” And you lean forward and say, “You hide that very well.” Let's just start there. Do you believe him?

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE: It's very difficult for me to believe that he loves Israel.

It would be like saying, “I love my wife, but I'm beating the daylights out of her every night.” Because he didn't have anything really good to say about Israel. And even more troubling than our conversation — which was certainly not one of affection for Israel — was his recorded intro to our interview that he recorded after the interview had happened. He made some very disparaging comments that I found incredibly off-putting.

For example, he said, Israel is the most violent country in the world, right?

That is demonstrably untrue. It is an incredibly peaceful country. I know that would sound strange to some people, because all they hear about is Israel is at war.

Israel has a lot of external conflicts. But Israel does not have conflict so much within Israel. They do have conflicts with people who are out to kill them. They defend themselves as any person would. But the idea that it is a violent society?

As you know, Joel, this is a place where you can walk the streets at night and not feel in any way threatened or intimidated.

ROSENBERG: Absolutely.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE: One can feel far safer walking around in Jerusalem at night than one would feel in New York or Washington or Detroit or Chicago. So, I found that very, very stunning.

And he made the comment about the airport lounge and that it was dirty. Well, actually, that's one of the nicest airport lounges that I've been in — and I’ve been in a bunch of them all over the world. I have often told the management there, this is maybe the nicest one I've ever been in. I don't even know where he would get that because it was absolutely immaculate.

And, as you know, he made comments about how his passport was confiscated.

That wasn't true. He was sitting there eating snacks and having a time to relax. And the way it works in the executive lounge, it's a very expensive process. You pay dearly for this privilege, but they don't confiscate your passport. They take it so that you don’t have to go and stand there [in a long line] and have someone go through it and look at it and make sure that it's okay. Someone does that for you while you can relax, enjoy a snack or a beverage, right?

It was that kind of thing that I found very, very stunning.

He continually talked about how badly Christians are treated in Israel. And all of us who are Christians in Israel are scratching our heads saying, “What is he talking about?” It is not like that.

And I even mentioned to him in the course of the interview that I play my bass guitar in my church band every Sunday.

I'm a Christian.

I get treated very well.

And not just by other Christians. I get treated very well by the Jewish community, by people who are Muslims. And I don't sense any hostility or animosity toward me because I'm a Christian.

ROSENBERG: Not at all. And I say this as an Israeli Evangelical from a Jewish background. That came up, as well, and I appreciated how you refuted one lie and slur and innuendo and allegation after another, after another.

My experience has been that Israel is one of the freest places — actually it is the freest place in the Middle East, bar none — to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Not just in your heart, but in your public practice, and your conversations, and your ministry. So, I agree with you. There seem to be two lanes — two themes — that I found Tucker pursuing during almost two and a half hours of one lie after another.

Tucker is attacking you as being an ineffective and disloyal ambassador. He repeatedly accused you of caring more about protecting Israel than doing your job as a faithful, loyal American citizen, much less ambassador of the American government and representative of President Trump. This came up over and over and over again.

Secondly, Tucker is attacking Israel as a country that harbors the sickest form of sexual predators, and saying that the President of Israel himself was directly linked to the life and crimes of the worst sexual trafficker and predator that we've ever heard of, Jeffrey Epstein.

Let's start with his attacks against President Herzog and against Israeli society on this issue of sexual crimes.

This was a theme early in the podcast. He was supposed to talk to you about Christian Zionism. You guys did get there, but all these accusations regarding sexual criminals was really right up front in the conversation. He kept saying to you, “How do you not know about this? How are you not talking about this? How are you not confronting President Herzog?”

So, let's start on that one, because you rightly expressed incredulity. “This doesn't sound like President Herzog.”

And now Herzog’s office has said it's flat out 100% not true.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE: Well, first of all, it was reckless on Tucker's part to even bring President Herzog into that. First, Tucker had the last name, but not anything else. No indication that it was Isaac Herzog who is the current president [who was on Jeffrey Epstein’s island or connected to Epstein].

ROSENBERG: Right.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE: Secondly, President Herzog, it turns out, was in Tel Aviv, speaking in front of a thousand people that day.

He has never met Epstein, never been in the room with him, never had any dealings with him whatsoever, even so much as a phone call.

In the interview, you may recall that Tucker said, “Well, why don't you ask him? Are you going to ask him?”

And I said, “Yeah, I will.”

And the very next morning I did.

I have regular conversations with President Herzog. He is a very close friend. He was appalled by such a scurrilous accusation.

Turns out that a photo that Tucker apparently referenced or thought was real was an AI-generated photo. And a month ago, the person who put it out there admitted that it was a fake and apologized for it. I feel like President Herzog has grounds for a serious libel and defamation lawsuit, and he very well may pursue that. And I, frankly, hope he does, because that was an incredibly bad thing to do to a public official and accuse them of essentially being a pedophile.

There's just nothing that is more disgusting than that, especially without basis. And Tucker could have found out if he wanted to. He also brought up this person who was arrested in Nevada. I had heard vaguely about the case. Well, I found out later because I checked into it, something Tucker could have done in five minutes if he wanted to.

Why did it even come into our interview? I have no idea. I thought it was a rabbit hole that was totally off the topic. But the reason that I know nothing about it — that wasn’t making a big splash — is because it wasn't a federal charge. It's a local charge against this gentleman. He did not flee to the U.S. to hide in Israel. They (local prosecutors) knew he was coming back to Israel. He paid his bond. He is going to have a hearing in, I think, March and a trial probably in April. If it's necessary, he will go back to the U.S. They know exactly where he is. He went back to Israel with the full permission of the Henderson, Nevada Police Department and the prosecutor.

So there is nothing untoward about how this has been handled. Israel is not shielding him. Israel is not protecting him. The State of Israel has nothing to do with the case. This is an individual. He's been charged. I find it interesting that in Tucker's world — you know, he's all about being Christian, and yet — look, this guy may be guilty. I don't know. He certainly has been charged. But in the American system of jurisprudence, he is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of peers. That has not happened. He has been charged. There are allegations.

Tucker should have said he is an alleged pedophile, not that he is one. And how come I didn't know anything about it? I don’t know about it because, frankly, it has nothing to do with my being Ambassador of the United States to Israel.

ROSENBERG: Right.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE: Let me just mention this one thing, because it's very important. You mentioned how he was saying that I was ineffective. I don't care.

ROSENBERG: Not just ineffective. He is saying that you're being disloyal to the United States and to your role as ambassador.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE: And I think that's, again, demonstrably and provably untrue. But honestly, his opinion of me, I can live with. Here's what I can't live with. I highly take umbrage at the repeated insinuations and inferences, if not outright declarations, that President Trump is so weak that he is being led around by the Israeli government, and that he's not really in charge, that the Israelis are — and that Pete Hegseth is not in charge of the Department of War, that the Israelis are in charge of the US Department of War.

It's one thing to say that he doesn't like the job I'm doing — fine. But for him to make these accusations about President Trump, I find that inexcusable. I find it very damaging to America First movement, of which I feel a part of. It’s damaging to what I believe to be the greatest president not only in my lifetime, but certainly the greatest president that has ever led the US-Israel relationship.

Tucker repeatedly disparaged my president. My boss. And this is hurtful to the movement, the party, and the United States of America.

He recently said that he hates the Republican Party. I'm thinking, “Tucker, you do know that the head of the Republican Party is President Trump, right? So if you hate the Republican Party, and you hate the Justice Department, and you think it isn't doing things that you think they ought to do, and you think that the administration is failing, and that it's wasting money, and not putting forward the right priorities — all those are criticisms of President Trump. I hope they quit letting him into the White House, because, quite frankly, this is a person who is doing serious, significant damage to President Trump and to the administration.

ROSENBERG: I agree. And I have to ask you one more question, because this is part of the firestorm.

Tucker took a different tack than I thought he would on the Israel issue. Rather than spending most of his time on discussing whether Israel has the right to live in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, he widened the aperture to talk about the Biblical grant to the Jewish people to have a much wider land mass than it currently has. And you sort of agreed that, “Yeah, that's that is in the Bible and maybe someday that may in fact happen,” you specifically said that that's not something that's going on right now.

That's not something Israel wants. And you didn't even accept the premise that it would be legitimate for Israel to try to take over the entire Middle East. But nevertheless that has led to a firestorm from Arab countries, including from Saudi Arabia.

Do you want to take just a moment to address that again? Because I think Tucker was trying to, in a sense, entrap you to say that you, as the US ambassador to Israel, are endorsing US foreign policy to support some sort of long term, possibly eschatological, fulfillment of things that didn't have anything to do with what he originally asked you to talk about, which was, Is Israel allowed to live safely in its current borders?”

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE: Yeah. I think what I would do is refer people to the full transcript, or the entire interview, everything that I said in that segment. Because Tucker cut it off and took a portion of it [to post on social media]. And that's like me saying, “Hey, did you see that hockey game that the U.S. played against Canada in the finals of the Olympics,” but then not show the final 30 seconds and present that as having been that hockey game?

Well, if you miss the end of it, you miss the whole thing.

ROSENBERG: Right.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE: And I would say that if people missed the full context of what I said, they missed the whole thing and therefore they might not understand.

So, I would refer people to the transcript itself or to the tape, but not just to the portion that he played to get the point [and understand] the full context. I'm very comfortable with what was said and how it was said. But that's one of the things that was very troubling about the way Tucker conducted the conversation.

And, you know, he even acknowledged that he and I have known each other for 33 years or 34 years. And we worked together at Fox for six and a half years in New York. And I tell you, the guy that I talked to the other day is a very different person than the person I knew since ’93 and that I worked with several years ago at Fox.

It's not the same person. And it was troubling. And I say this with sincerity — I'm concerned for him. I really am.

ROSENBERG: Me, too.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE: I am concerned for him because I did not see a person who was comfortable in his own skin.

He had come not to have a thoughtful conversation.

And if you think about it, Joel, there's been some analysis of how much time he talked — versus how much time he let me talk — versus some of the most ridiculous people that he has had on his show.

He would turn them loose and give them 60% or 65% of the time. He gave me 30-something-percent of the time because he talked over me and interrupted me.

When he had Nick Fuentes on — the little Nazi — he let him roll.

When he had Darrell Cooper on — the guy that said that Winston Churchill really was the bad guy in World War II and Hitler wasn't that bad, right? — he let him talk, right?

When he had the president of Iran on, he would let him roll.

When he had Vladimir Putin on, he didn't correct him or push back.

The only two people that I can think of that he's pushed back on are Ted Cruz and me.

Now, if he loves Israel, then the two people that he had on to talk about Israel, he was argumentative with. He was belligerent. He continually took us on rabbit trails. That really made no sense to the thing. Like, should Jews be DNA tested?

ROSENBERG: Oh my gosh, that was repulsive.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE: I was totally scratching my head. And on that one, I just have to say, DNA testing? Is that his next move, to say that everyone in America has to be tested? Does that mean that, you know, my family needs to go back to England, where our ancestry was, if we can't prove that we're Native Americans? None of that made sense. It just didn’t make sense.

ROSENBERG: It only makes sense when you conclude — and we’ll wrap here, I appreciate your time — but it only makes sense when we conclude the only way to conclude, logically, that he's not interested in learning.

He hates Israel and he has come to hate any Christian person that loves Israel and claims a biblical basis for that love. Because that level of attack — of talking about sexual predators and saying that Israel harbors them, and saying that Israel’s President was close to a sexual predator and trafficker — all of those vicious attacks are not rabbit trails if that's his actual point. And I think that the preponderance of the evidence is that he's making lie after lie to smear Israel and the Jews and Christians who love both.

I love Ted Cruz. But I think you did a better job than he did. You have much more experience in this zone, plus the theology of Israel. But Tucker didn't care. He didn’t come to listen or learn. He came to accuse. And his 17 million people are hearing the lies before they're even hearing your excellent refutations.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE: Well, it's an interesting study of seeing a person sort of disintegrating and go down — spiraling into — the drain. And I hate to see that because he's talented and he's smart. He's not a stupid person, but in this case, it's not about ignorance or stupidity.

This is about a person who has a very fixated agenda that he is upset with Israel. And I don't know if someone, you know — maybe he was here at one time in his life and an Israeli bus bumped him in the backside, and he's never gotten over it. Maybe he didn't get a non-kosher meal on El Al, and he feels very much upset by that.

ROSENBERG: Well, he accused Prime Minister Netanyahu — in his, in his prologue to the podcast — of targeting two of his family members. And he said, “I'm not going to get into that.”

Well, that's the first time I've ever heard a hint of a motive. We'll have to see.

I'm not believing much of anything he says these days. But I want to close with this: I agree with you, Ambassador. I'm worried for him.

You know, people who hate Israel — and hate Christians who love Israel — they come and go throughout history. But we, as Christians, we do need to be praying for Tucker. He is not well. And it's becoming not just obsessive. It’s becoming a sort of Israel Derangement Syndrome. And a Christian Zionist Derangement Syndrome. But it looks pathological and I'm trying not to be angry.

I'm concerned because of his influence. But I'm worried, and I appreciate you saying that, as well. Let’s encourage Christians and others to be praying for him.

Thank you for your time. I appreciate it enormously, and I look forward to seeing you soon when I get back to Israel. It could be a very interesting few weeks ahead of us.

AMBASSADOR MIKE HUCKABEE: I appreciate it. Be careful. Be safe. See you soon.

ROSENBERG: You too. God bless. Bye.

Read more: MIKE HUCKABEE | TUCKER CARLSON | ISAAC HERZOG | JEFFREY EPSTEIN | PRESIDENT TRUMP | CHRISTIAN ZIONISM