For those of us who have followed the vice president, his actions, and his statements very closely as related to Jews and Israel since his inauguration, the moment was infuriating.
Republican Jewish Coalition Chairman Norm Coleman sat in a closed room with JD Vance, looked the Jewish right in the eye, and made the bid unmistakable from the start: “I wish we could re-endorse you,” he told Buckley Carlson’s former employer.
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That is not hospitality. It’s a horrifying preview. The Republican Jewish Coalition just told every Jew who has spent two years warning about Vance and Tucker Carlson that our fears were a nuisance, our evidence was foolish “opinion,” and that their access to power still beats Jewish survival.
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In reality, a tape obtained by the Daily Wire on Monday confirmed all fears about both the RJC and Vance. Coleman compared Tucker Carlson to Nick Fuentes and asked how a politician draws a line when those platforms carry antisemitism to millions. Vance erased the line. He took grotesque Jew-hatred and recast it as a difference of opinion.
He told the room that people “might disagree with things that Tucker Carlson … has said.” Disagree? This is not disagreement. It is not taste. It is not a policy quarrel. It’s a stab in the neck described as a massage. Vance didn’t even say that he disagreed with Tucker. It was all about us misunderstanding. Call it “Jewsplaining.”
Vance then quickly changed the subject. The very thing that everyone in attendance was there to hear about.
“I think just to hone in on Fuentes and Rogan,” he said. “These are two very, very different categories of people.”
Nick Fuentes and Joe Rogan?
Tucker vanished into polite “disagreement.” Fuentes became the lone monster.
That is not moral clarity, it’s gaslighting. Vance treated Carlson’s antisemitism as a spicy take that Jews were too sensitive to handle.
Vance needs Fuentes so he can look as if he polices the Right. He needs Tucker out of the story because Tucker is family, staff, and the political machinery that he supports. Tucker helped put him on the ticket. Tucker’s son worked in Vance’s press shop. Vance still calls him a friend. After Carlson hosted Fuentes, Vance said, “Friends disagree.” In Las Vegas, he refined it. Jews do not confront Carlson’s Jew-hatred. We merely “disagree” with him.
That framing is as offensive as it is dangerous. Carlson asked Mike Huckabee why Israel should not genetically test who really descends from Abraham. He said Benjamin Netanyahu’s family came from Eastern Europe and that there is “no evidence they ever lived here.” That is the old impostor myth in a lab coat. Vance called it a conversation the Right would need for years.
Carlson put Fuentes on air and let “organized Jewry” hang there. He branded Christian support for Israel a heresy and a “brain virus.” At Charlie Kirk’s memorial, he compared the killing to the crucifixion and sketched men eating hummus, plotting to silence a truth-teller. That is blood libel with better lighting. He has called Israel uniquely violent, replayed 9/11 insinuations, blamed Chabad for a global religious war, and treated Netanyahu as the hidden driver of American bloodshed. Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) told an RJC audience that Carlson is the most dangerous antisemite in America. Mark Levin has echoed that. The nonprofit group StopAntisemitism named Carlson its Antisemite of the Year.
But Vance put Tucker in the “disagreement” pile.
Let’s be clear: There is no meaningful gap between Carlson and Fuentes on the views they promote nor the ends that they seek. One shouts. The other scales. Vance picked the one who scales.
The rest of the Israel talk was varnish. America loves its Jews. Image of God. Blood guilt is ugly. Abdul el Sayed is a disgrace. Then Vance returned to his hedge: American and Israeli interests do not always align. He wants the alliance sold as missile-defense parts because the older language no longer has “purchase” with younger voters. He did not describe two liberal democracies that share Western values and are — just barely — still holding the free world together. He described two governments with different maps. That is the isolation talk he used when he treated Israeli survival as a favor that the United States might stop doing.
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Coleman thanked him for Pete Hegseth, called the administration Israel’s best friend in the White House, and floated the re-endorsement. That sentence truly defined the night. If the Jewish organization that claims to police the Right will honor Carlson’s closest elected partner and hint at 2028 while he shields Carlson, every other conservative shop gets the same license. Heritage Foundation. Turning Point USA. You name it.
Enough is enough. Vance’s telling Jews to call blood libel an opinion must be the last straw. Vance talks around dual loyalty. He talks Israel down when convenient. He treats organic Jewish pushback as an insidious “op.” He calls a genetic-testing ambush a necessary conversation. And he ranks Carlson and their shared agenda above Jewish safety. Monday night proved all of it. And shame on the RJC leadership for lapping it all up.
Jeffrey Lax is a professor of law at the City University of New York and chairman of the Department of Business at Kingsborough Community College. He holds a Juris Doctor from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a master of business administration from Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business, management, and finance from Brooklyn College.
