‘No room for antisemitism’: House Speaker Johnson & Republican leaders condemn Carlson-Fuentes interview

Leading Republicans are distancing their movement from antisemitism as the Republican Party continues to grapple with the fallout of Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes appearing on the show of Tucker Carlson, one of the most popular voices perceived to be part of the American right wing.

“Look, I heard a compilation of some of the worst things that Nick Fuentes has said. It’s absolutely outrageous,” House Speaker and outspoken Evangelical Christian, Mike Johnson, told the National Review.

“Some of the things he’s said are just blatantly antisemitic, racist and anti-American. Anti-Christian, for that matter. I think we have to call out antisemitism wherever it is,” he added.

Last Tuesday, the former Fox News analyst Carlson published an interview with Fuentes, a popular far-right podcaster who has openly engaged in Holocaust denial, praised Hitler and Stalin, and called for Jews and other non-Christians to receive the death penalty, among a litany of other outrageous comments.

The interview so far garnered 17 million views on 𝕏 alone and had caused a raucous internal debate among leading conservatives about their approach to antisemitism in the movement, and whether Fuentes or even Carlson should be disavowed.

Johnson argued that “Whether it’s Tucker or anybody else, I don’t think we should be giving a platform to that kind of speech. He has a First Amendment right, but we shouldn’t ever amplify it. That’s my view.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) also spoke out on the issue on Tuesday, saying that “there are lots of voices, obviously, out there, but I don’t think there ought to be any — there just should be no room at all whatsoever for antisemitism or other forms of discrimination. That’s certainly not what our party is about.” 

“Our party is a party that welcomes all comers,” he added, without explicitly disavowing Carlson.

A major faultline appeared in recent days between those who only disavow antisemitism and, either openly or implicitly, Fuentes; and those who call to condemn Carlson alongside Fuentes for lending him his massive platform for a notably friendly and uncritical interview.

Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told the New York Times he thought conservatives shouldn't discuss whether "platforming" Fuentes was right.

“That’s a term of the left,” he said. “Our issue isn’t so much that Tucker had Nick Fuentes on for an interview. Our issue is that he failed to meet the moment and ask him tough questions about why he admires Adolf Hitler, why he’s a Holocaust denier and hates Jews, why he is pro-Putin and pro-Stalin.”

At the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership summit, Senator Lindsey Graham said, “I’m in the ‘Hitler sucks’ wing of the Republican Party.”

“Here’s what I do know: You can sit in a basement with weird people and say weird things. It’s a free country,” he said, adding, “I want the world to know antisemitism, anti-Israel rhetoric, anti-Israel thought is not the road to being elected as a Republican. You will lose.”

“There’s already the Democratic Party that is anti-Israel, and is OK with antisemitism,” Senator Rick Scott told the New York Times. “We’ve got to be very clear we don’t support antisemitism and we do support Israel.”

Representative Randy Fine of Florida offered some of the most strident criticism aimed directly at Carlson, calling him “the most dangerous antisemite in America.”

“He has chosen to take on the mantle of leader of a modern-day Hitler Youth,” Fine said. “To broadcast and feature those who celebrate the Nazis, those who call for the extermination of Israel, to defend Hamas, to even criticize President Trump for stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Friends, make no mistake: Tucker is not MAGA.”

Senator Ted Cruz, who has clashed with Carlson in the past, told the Republican Jewish Coalition summit, “As for me, I choose to stand with you. I choose to stand with Israel, and I choose to stand with America.”

Much of the online discussion among right-wing leaders in recent days has focused on the influential Heritage Foundation and comments made by its President, Kevin Roberts.

He had said in a response video to Carlson’s interview that “Conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington.”

He also said he “abhorred” Fuentes’s views but described Carlson as a “close friend” of the Heritage Foundation and accused a “venomous coalition attacking him” of “sowing division.”

Roberts’s video caused internal turmoil at the conservative institution.

Despite the controversy, the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism (NTFCA), which is aligned with the Heritage Foundation and co-chaired by prominent Evangelical leaders, vowed to stand by the foundation but urged concrete reforms.

This is important clarification. Thank you @KevinRobertsTX. https://t.co/4Inwea4cxv

— Luke Moon (@lukemoon1) October 31, 2025

The co-chairs are Mario Bramnick, a Florida pastor and president of the Latino Coalition for Israel; Luke Moon, a pastor and executive director of the Philos Project; Victoria Coates, leader of the antisemitism plan “Project Esther” at the Heritage Foundation; and Ellie Cohanim, former deputy antisemitism special envoy in the first Trump administration.

In an email quoted by the Jewish Insider, they called on Roberts to delete the video, saying there are those at NTFCA who believe Roberts called them part of the “venomous coalition” and “implicitly questioned our loyalty to the United States.”

They also asked for an apology “to those Christians and Jews who are steadfast members of the conservative movement and believe that Israel has a special role to play both biblically and politically.”

“If the terms aren’t met, we will take the NTFCA elsewhere,” Moon told Jewish Insider on Tuesday.

In a Monday night speech, Roberts offered an apology to his “Jewish friends” and denounced antisemitism without addressing the controversy over Carlson directly.