Bari Weiss, the founder of The Free Press and a former New York Times opinion editor, wrote a scathing review of the ascendant American far-right, seemingly calling out one pundit in particular: former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
In a Monday speech for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship titled “Against the Vandals,” Weiss, a provocative writer who made a name for herself criticizing mainstream liberal thought in both the media and Washington, now claimed that a group of influential conservative pundits and politicians had “erased the line between good and evil.”
She even made a jab at Carlson, comparing his rhetoric to the “far-left” she has made a career criticizing.
“Like the far-left, this group has no use for history. They judge people living or dead in the ideological light of presentism, or they simply reimagine them entirely from scratch,” Weiss wrote. “Just as the left defaced and desecrated statues of [Winston] Churchill, the vandals on the right desecrate his name and his memory.”
Weiss’ inclusion of Churchill served as an apparent jab at Carlson, who infamously invited Holocaust apologist and internet personality Darryl Cooper on his podcast, where Cooper claimed that the former prime minister of the United Kingdom was the “chief villain” of World War II.
She added: “While the left, long sympathetic with Stalin, today sympathizes with modern-day Nazis in the form of Hamas—this new right eulogizes the original ones. And in rehabilitating Hitler they are not merely demonizing Jews, but demonizing America, Britain, and the millions who fought and died to preserve our freedoms."
Weiss also debunked the notion that Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election was anything but predictable and asked: “So what can we learn from this recent history?” She answered that “one big takeaway is that if a political movement does not police its ranks, does not draw lines, if it neglects to protect its borders, if it does not defend its sacred values, it cannot long endure.”
Despite the apparent compliment, she went on to criticize Trump’s Make America Great Again movement as only interested in “power” rather then principles. Weiss claimed that those unaware of the dangers of this shift in society are naive.
“If that continues without being challenged, we may wind up spending the next few years watching the same story we just lived through on the other side, as the far-right (not the one defined by cable news, which includes most of us here today) devours what remains of the center-right.”
Weiss was hired by The New York Times as an ostensibly conservative voice after Trump’s 2016 election—but left her cushy job on the opinion desk in 2020 in a huff, penning a lengthy resignation letter in which she tore into the storied newspaper’s liberal bias.
After leaving The Times, she cozied up to prominent conservatives and became a regular on Fox News while Carlson worked there as a host. She would later go on to invite a number of prominent conservatives—like Speaker Mike Johnson and Sen. Ted Cruz—to speak with her on the Free Press podcast and during live events.
Weiss’ broadside at Carlson didn’t come out of nowhere.
Carlson last month publicly tore into Weiss for her strident support of Israel and its war in Gaza (and, notably, the United States’ involvement in the conflict‚.
“It’s pretty obvious that the whole purpose of her organization, The Free Press, and her career in journalism is to kind of soften up the right for war with Iran,” Carlson said.
