“Hitler was really f***ing cool.”
“It’s not enough, being against trannies, you’ve got to be against women’s rights too, against women getting educated.”
“I totally see myself accidentally killing my wife ’cause I just get mad.”
“Blacks need to be imprisoned, for the most part.”
These are just a few among dozens of outlandish statements from Tucker Carlson’s latest podcast guest: Nick Fuentes, the far-right influencer. Interestingly, none of this came up in Carlson’s softball conversation. And it’s not because Carlson doesn’t know how to conduct a challenging interview — just ask Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), whom he recently grilled — but instead because Carlson actively chose to launder Fuentes’s reputation, presenting him as a misunderstood victim to millions rather than as the hateful extremist he truly is.
OPINION: DON’T FALL FOR THE NICK FUENTES SIDESHOW
While Carlson may have succeeded at bringing in millions of views for his sponsorship-stuffed episode, he did this not just at the expense of journalistic integrity, but even at the cost of his own friends’ dignity and reputations. For example, the host recently spoke at the memorial service for slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whom he considered a close friend.
Meanwhile, what does Fuentes think about Kirk?
Before Kirk’s death, Fuentes called him a “little b****” and a “coward,” bragging that he had “f***ed” Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, and “impregnated” it with his alt-right ideas.
After Kirk’s death, Fuentes even attacked his widow, Erika Kirk, calling her “fake” and saying she “looked happy” that her husband was dead.
Meanwhile, Fuentes has attacked Vice President JD Vance, with whom Carlson is close, for having a “brown family” and said he prefers Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “white family.”
None of this was brought up or challenged in Carlson’s interview. Instead, most of the two hours were spent with Carlson asking sympathetic questions about Fuentes’ biography that he could’ve Googled. To be fair, some of the things raised, such as Fuentes being placed on the “no-fly list” for his beliefs and a recent attempt on his life, are absolutely indefensible, horrible, and worthy of discussion. But the net effect of just nodding along in sympathy to a one-sided, factually disputed version of Fuentes’s entire life story without challenging or highlighting any of his own horrifying actions and statements is for Carlson to present him as a misunderstood and even reasonable figure.
Carlson challenged almost nothing Fuentes said, even statements that contradict core beliefs the former Fox News host has held for decades. For example, Carlson has long maintained that Joseph Stalin, the authoritarian Soviet leader who killed millions, specifically persecuting Catholics, is “probably the worst person in human history.” Yet when Fuentes casually mentioned that he was “a fan” and “admirer” of Stalin, the host gave an amused scoff and simply said, “We’ll circle back to that.”
He never did.
The only part of the interview where Carlson offered any pushback was an attempt to get Fuentes to acknowledge that his problem was with “Christian Zionism” and not all Jewish people.
Fuentes repeatedly declined, insisting that “organized Jewry in America” is the problem and that while he does acknowledge not all Jewish people feel the same way, “Jewishness is the common denominator.” Carlson eventually just accepted that extremely antisemitic statement and moved along like nothing happened.
Across the more than two-hour conversation, in between all the sponsorship breaks, Carlson was nothing more than a flannel doormat.
Now, unlike some of Carlson’s critics, I don’t think “platforming” Fuentes is the problem. Whether we like it or not, the effort to gatekeep Fuentes and his brand of alt-right radicalism out of the Republican Party and conservative movement has failed. He is relevant. He is mainstream now. That means that he is absolutely worth interviewing, interrogating, and challenging.
‘CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS’ TED CRUZ AND OTHERS RESPOND TO TUCKER CARLSON CALL-OUT
But that’s not what Carlson just did. No, instead, the former Fox News star just did a softball public relations interview promoting one of the most noxious extremists in U.S. politics.
I hope the attention and ad revenue are worth sacrificing whatever last, tiny shred of credibility he still had.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.
