JTA on the Huckabee-Carlson Interview

Within 24 hours of going online late Friday, Tucker Carlson’s nearly three-hour interview with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee had elicited multiple rebuttals of antisemitic conspiracy theories from Huckabee, prompted Carlson to issue an apology and sparked an international incident.

The foreign ministers of 14 Arab and Muslim governments jointly condemned Huckabee’s comments about Israel’s claim to the Middle East, which they called “dangerous and inflammatory” and a violation of international law.

Carlson had asked Huckabee, the first evangelical Christian ambassador to Israel, what he thought of the Biblical passage in which God grants Abraham’s children the land “from the Euphrates to the Nile, and that would include basically the entire Middle East.”

Huckabee’s answer: “It would be fine if they took it all.”

He elaborated: “They don’t want to take it over. They’re not asking to take it over.” When Carlson asked if such a takeover would be “legitimate,” Huckabee responded, “I’m not sure that it would be.” He added, “If they end up getting attacked by all these places and they win that war and they take that land, then OK, that’s a whole other discussion.”

The comments and backlash, which come as the region braces for a potential U.S. attack on Iran, represented just one explosive element among many during the interview, filmed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport last week.

For Carlson and Huckabee, two powerful Christian conservatives with deeply divergent opinions on Israel who both hold direct channels to the White House, the conversation offered a window into the divide over Israel and antisemitism among conservatives. Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who sees Israel as an important U.S. ally in the Middle East, represents a more traditional Republican outlook, while Carlson, who has amplified antisemitic voices and opposes U.S. support for Israel, represents an ascendant far-right flank.

In recent months, the rift on the right has been flung open, largely following Carlson’s friendly interview last fall with the avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes. He has conducted similarly combative interviews with other pro-Israel conservatives, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has since become one of the right’s loudest voices speaking out against antisemitism among conservatives. While President Donald Trump has expressed distaste for antisemites in the Republican ranks, Vice President JD Vance has said he does not believe right-wing antisemitism is a problem.

Tensions between Huckabee and Carlson — and the question over whose view will win out — were palpable.

“Honestly, I think you’ve probably got more access to the White House sometimes than I do,” Huckabee told Carlson at one point.

At another, Carlson sought to argue that his criticism of Israel reflects only care for Gaza, saying, “I’m not against Israel. I’m against the total destruction—” Huckabee interjected with a zinger: “You hide that very well.”

Indeed, Carlson used the interview to air a host of anti-Israel views, including several associated with antisemitic conspiracies.

He opened with a monologue in which he called Israel “probably the most violent country in the world” and insinuated that he believed the Israeli government could be targeting him.

During the conversation, Carlson pressed Huckabee extensively on the question of whether Ashkenazi Jews including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have a true connection to Israel.

“Why don’t we do genetic testing on everybody in the land and find out who Abram’s descendents are?” he asked at one point, using the name that the patriarch Abraham used before accepting the covenant with God that made him the first Jew. “Bibi’s family, we know they lived in Eastern Europe. There’s no evidence they ever lived here.”

Huckabee later denounced Carlson’s questions on social media as reflecting an antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Khazars, a Turkic minority, rather than from Jews who lived in ancient Israel.

Carlson also claimed that Israel had sheltered a suspected sex offender from consequences after a sting operation in Nevada and that the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whose dealings are roiling governments across the globe, had ties to Israel’s Mossad security service.

Carlson claimed that Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited Epstein’s private island, an allegation that had not previously surfaced and that Herzog categorically rejected. He later apologized for the accusation on X, saying it had been based on a reference to an unspecified “Herzog” in one of Epstein’s emails. (The recently released files have fueled a slew of antisemitic conspiracy theories.)

Carlson also apologized, as he has before, to Christian Zionists for disparaging them over their views about Israel. He repeatedly asserted that Christians in Israel are mistreated, a view that Huckabee has espoused but emphasized in the conversation that he has not personally experienced.

Carlson also accused Huckabee of being more loyal to Israel than to the United States. After Huckabee praised Israel for dropping leaflets on intended targets in Gaza, noting that the U.S. military doesn’t take the same step, Carlson, in a fiery moment, accused him of calling the Israel Defense Forces a more moral military than the United States’.

The pair found one point of unlikely alignment when Huckabee backed a Carlson hypothetical: a freeze of all U.S. funding to Israel unless the country outlaws abortions. “I would be OK with it because I hate abortion. I think it’s horrible,” he told Carlson. (Israel, which recently loosened abortion restrictions as the United States tightened them, has the highest birth rate among industrialized nations.)

The interview proved controversial before it aired, as Carlson asserted that his staff had been detained by Israeli airport security and Huckabee and Israel denied the claims. (The interview was conducted in the Tel Aviv airport, which Carlson never left during his hours-long stay in Israel.)

It remained so after launching, with Yoram Hazony, an Israeli who is an architect of the national conservatism movement, commenting extensively on Carlson’s claim that he had refused to broker a conversation between Carlson and Netanyahu. Saying that Carlson had told him Trump wanted him to end the antisemitism rift on the right, Hazony said he had demurred because he was not the right person to make the ask and did not see how Netanyahu would benefit.

He also said that he sometimes learns in private conversations that people with whom he disagrees are more nuanced in their views but that no such revelation had come in his dealings with Carlson.

“In Tucker’s case, the private person turns out to be exactly who we’ve been seeing in public,” Hazony wrote, adding, “Whatever his motives for turning his podcast into what seems to be a circus of anti-Jewish messaging, right now that project is clearly more important to him than helping the administration keep its coalition together so it can govern effectively and win elections in 2026 and 2028.”

Huckabee and Carlson did not discuss Fuentes, the Hitler apologist and avowed white nationalist whose friendly interview with Carlson last fall broke open the widening rift over antisemitism on the right. But Huckabee did push back on a different interview Carlson had conducted: with Tony Aguilar, a former U.S. Special Forces officer who became a whistleblower against what he said were inhumane conditions at Gaza humanitarian sites.

“Tony Aguilar is a liar,” the ambassador told Carlson. “You platformed a guy. You had him on your show.”

Carlson responded with a brisk articulation of his approach that could have been intended for Huckabee himself. He retorted: “I don’t platform anyone.”