Tucker Carlson, the populist pundit who led Fox News’s evening lineup until his ouster in April 2023, said in an interview this week that Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire “[doesn’t] care about the country at all,” accusing him and other pro-Israel voices of being “focused on a conflict in a foreign country as their own country becomes dangerously unstable.”
Carlson rattled off a series of challenges facing the United States– financial instability, insecure borders– and asserted that “they’ve said nothing about that, and they’re focused with laser intensity on foreign conflicts.”
Carlson contrasted this supposed apathy to his own concern for the US: “I have no choice,” he said, “I’m from here, my family’s been here hundreds of years, I plan to stay here— I’m shocked by how little they care about the country, including [Shapiro].”
Carlson’s comments came during an interview with Saagar Enjeti, the conservative host of the popular web series “Breaking Points.”
Enjeti, who hosts the panel show alongside Krystal Ball, a progressive, asked Carlson “what explains this…literal allegiance to narrative on Ukraine, [and] on Israel,” asserting that “so many of these people don’t seem to have this same level of care about actual American citizens.”
In a post to X on Saturday, former American ambassador to Israel David Friedman condemned Carlson’s comments, writing that Shapiro “is an American patriot who cares deeply about our country.” Friedman noted that “among other issues, Ben has been a forceful advocate for closing our Southern border and ending the massive inflow of Fentanyl that is killing our youth,” an apparent allusion to Carlson’s suggestion that Shapiro was neglecting those topics.
“@TuckerCarlson says that since Ben supports Israel he doesn’t care about America,” Friedman wrote. “I hope he doesn’t really mean that. It’s a shameful thing to say and he should apologize.”
My friend @benshapiro is an American patriot who cares deeply about our country. Anyone who has listened to him over the past 22 years knows that. He wakes up every morning thinking about how he can advance American security and prosperity. Among other issues, Ben has been a…
— David M Friedman (@DavidM_Friedman) December 31, 2023
Carlson: wealthy people heard a ‘dog-whistle that commanded them to worship Zelensky’
Speaking about Ukraine, Carlson told Enjeti that “every single person in the top one percent for income and influence…heard this weird frequency, this dog-whistle, that commanded them to worship Zelensky, and I’m not exactly sure what that was.”
It was not the first time that Carlson, the 53 year old heir to the Swanson TV dinner fortune, had challenged American support for Ukraine’s wartime leader. On the first episode of his online program following his firing from Fox News, Carlson described Zelensky, who is Jewish, as “sweaty and rat-like, a comedian turned oligarch, a persecutor of Christians, a friend of Blackrock.”
He also referred to him as “shifty,” “dead-eyed,” and as “a person who would enjoy flooding villages or starting a famine.”
“It’s painful to even quote that,” said Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia group, in a response to Carlson’s statements. “These are all antisemitic dog-whistles, with a sprinkling of blood libel, plain and simple.”
The Anti-Defamation League also denounced Carlson’s comments about Zelensky as antisemitic: “This is exactly the type of dangerous, hateful content that has no place in mainstream public squares,” the group said.
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