Senator Ted Cruz blasted Tucker Carlson after the conservative podcaster’s friendly interview with Holocaust-denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
Cruz and Carlson have been openly feuding for months, but the lawmaker’s comment adds fuel to the fire as the right faces infighting over the antisemitism-laced interview.
“If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very very cool and that their mission is to combat and defeat ‘global Jewry,’ and you say nothing, then you are a coward, and you are complicit in that evil,” Cruz said.
Cruz was speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition Leadership Summit on Thursday evening in Las Vegas.
His remarks came just hours after Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts backed the former Fox News host despite his chummy two-hour sit-down with Fuentes.
Roberts posted a video of himself defending Carlson on X in which he denounced the “venomous coalition” criticizing the podcaster, claimed attempts to cancel him would fail and called him a “close friend.”
The Heritage Foundation president’s public support of Carlson comes as the podcaster faced intense backlash over his interview.
Cruz has been the latest and perhaps the most prominent to date in a series of conservatives sounding the alarm.
During the livestream interview, Fuentes said the “big challenge” to unifying the country was “organized Jewry.”
Carlson also criticized Christian Zionism and said GOP supporters of Israel suffer from a “brain virus.” He specifically named Cruz, U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, President George W. Bush, and others.
The criticism of the interview was fast and fierce on the right as MAGA world grapples with a series of recent antisemitic incidents, including praise for Hitler by young Republicans in leaked private messages and a Trump nominee saying he had a “Nazi streak.”
At the same time, there is also a growing rift in the party over GOP support for Israel.
Breitbart’s Joel Pollack wrote that Carlson was nodding along and “accepts the premise that Jews put their own and Israel’s interests ahead of America. This is the foundation of Nazism.”
Both Huckabee and Cruz tweeted about Carlson’s interview with Fuentes. However, Roberts went the other way on Thursday.
“I disagree with and even abhor things Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer either,” Roberts said.
The Heritage Foundation leader said instead that when someone disagrees with an idea, they should challenge it through debate.
But Cruz called what Carlson did as “complicit.” He argued on Thursday that “now is the time for choosing, now is the time for courage.”
The Texas senator warned in the last six months, “I’ve seen more antisemitism on the right than I have in my entire life.”
“This is a poison, and I believe we are facing an existential crisis in our party and in our country,” Cruz argued.
