The Tikvah Fund’s War on Tucker Carlson

The battle for the soul of the American Right is no longer fought in whispers. It has erupted into open warfare, with a taxpayer-funded Jewish organization demanding that Tucker Carlson be purged from conservative media and banished from President Donald Trump’s coalition entirely.

Days after the United States and Israel launched military operations against Iran in early March 2026, the Tikvah Fund released a podcast episode that laid bare the neoconservative establishment’s fury at populist opposition to the war. Former CIA Director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that conservatives must “wholeheartedly” reject Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens over their “nuttiness” and “anti-Semitism.” Pompeo insisted the “isolationist” wing of MAGA does not represent “the Trump that I worked for.”

Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Doran went further. “I want to see Tucker Carlson dethroned,” Doran told Tikvah’s Jonathan Silver. “I would like to see him become an embarrassment to JD Vance. I would like to see Donald Trump attack him. Not just call him kooky from now and then but really make him off-limits to everybody in the administration.”

Chris Menahan of Information Liberation called attention to the podcast and how the Tikvah Fund is subsidized by gentile taxpayers: “Keep in mind as you watch that this is Trump admin/US taxpayer-funded cancel culture.”

The organization behind this taxpayer-subsidized campaign to marginalize Carlson has deep roots in neoconservative politics and pro-Israel advocacy. The Tikvah Fund describes itself as an “ideas institution” that is “politically Zionist, economically free-market oriented, culturally traditional, and theologically open-minded.” The organization was founded in 1992 by Zalman C. Bernstein, a Wall Street businessman who created the investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein & Company in 1967. Bernstein devoted most of his fortune to Jewish philanthropic foundations before his death in 1999. All his political donations from 1989 to 1998 went exclusively to Republican candidates.

Elliott Abrams, a prominent neoconservative who served in the Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump administrations, now chairs the organization. Abrams pleaded guilty in 1991 to two misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress during the Iran-Contra affair and has a long history of supporting interventionist U.S. foreign policy. Roger Hertog, Bernstein’s longtime business partner, served as chairman for approximately 20 years and remains chairman emeritus. Eric Cohen serves as CEO, and Jonathan Silver is the Chief Programming Officer and host of the Tikvah Podcast.

Critics have described Tikvah as the hub of a “neoconservative echo chamber,” noting that the organization funds publications like Mosaic, The Jewish Review of Books, and Mida, then promotes articles from these outlets through its network of think tanks and affiliated journalists at major media outlets. Zachary Braiterman, a professor of religion at Syracuse University, characterized Tikvah as exercising control over “a narrow and limiting range of intellectual and ideological content” while maintaining “non-transparence in public mission statements and operating strategies.”

The organization’s board and speaker network reads like a phonebook of American neoconservative and pro-Israel figures. Board members have included William Kristol and Jay Lefkowitz. Faculty and speakers have included John Bolton, Max Boot, Douglas Feith, Robert Kagan, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Norman Podhoretz, Bret Stephens, and Charles Krauthammer. The 2025 Herzl Prize recipients were Ben Shapiro, Bari Weiss, and Dan Senor.

The March 2026 podcast was not an isolated incident. At Tikvah’s November 2025 Jewish Leadership Conference, Chris Menahan noted that the main theme discussed was “the importance of repudiating Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and Candace Owens.” Menahan also highlighted that Ben Shapiro “devoted an entire show to explaining why Tucker Carlson is … the most virulent super-spreader of vile ideas in America,” to roaring applause. At the conference, Bari Weiss complained that JD Vance “has yet to distance himself from Tucker Carlson,” calling it “disconcerting.” The conference topic was titled “Can the Jews Save the West?”

The Tikvah Podcast, now numbering over 445 episodes, has increasingly focused on what it frames as antisemitism on the American right. A February 2026 episode with Rod Dreher was explicitly titled “The American Right’s Anti-Semitism Problem,” centering on Tucker Carlson’s October 2025 interview with Nick Fuentes.

What makes this campaign particularly notable is that it is now partially funded by the American taxpayer. In September 2025, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded Tikvah $10.4 million for its “Jewish Civilization Project,” the largest grant in the agency’s 60-year history. The grant was not awarded through a competitive process. Tikvah was invited to apply by an NEH official, and the agency’s now-defunct scholarly advising council reportedly voted against it, citing concerns that the application was vague and veered into advocacy rather than scholarship. The Trump administration had previously canceled over 1,000 NEH grants approved under the Biden administration, laid off more than half the agency’s staff, and fired the scholarly council that reviewed the grants. A March 2026 lawsuit by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, and the Modern Language Association revealed that DOGE used a flawed ChatGPT process to flag grants as “DEI” for cancellation, and that acting NEH chairman Michael McDonald directed a staffer to solicit Tikvah’s application as a single-source award.

After securing the grant, Tikvah hosted discussions explicitly focused on suppressing what it defines as “anti-Israel” and “anti-Semitic” speech. In a December 2025 episode recorded days after the Bondi Beach shooting, Jonathan Silver asked Rabbi Benjamin Elton, chief minister of Sydney’s Great Synagogue, what he would hope the government would do. Elton responded: “I think there has to be an attempt to defang the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist movement of its anti-Semitism. People shouldn’t be allowed to say things, or have certain placards, or march in certain areas.” Jews definitely do not believe in free speech if the speech is seen as conflicting with their interests.

As an appendage of the broader pro-Israel power configuration, Tikvah has also provided funding to educational programs located in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including El Haprat in Kfar Adumim at $446,833 and the Ein Prat Leadership Academy at $216,661. Three of four Tikvah leadership programs in Israel are located in settlements in the occupied territories, according to Maya Haber, Director of Development and Programming at Partners for Progressive Israel.

The Tikvah Fund’s campaign against Tucker Carlson reflects a deeper schism within American conservatism. On one side stand the neoconservative, pro-Israel interventionists clustered around institutions like Tikvah, the Hudson Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute. On the other side stands a populist nationalist wing associated with figures like Carlson and Candace Owens.

The frantic campaign to purge figures like Tucker Carlson from the American Right reveals the inherent fragility of Jewish influence. By attempting to use the coercive power of the state to suppress rising populist dissent, organized Jewish power inadvertently accelerates the very instability it fears. This escalation into state-sponsored censorship is a desperate bid to maintain control, yet it serves only to deepen the rift with the gentile population. As the ideology of the current establishment begins to turn against its own Jewish architects, this current conflict represents merely the latest chapter in an unavoidable and predictable civilization struggle between gentiles and Jews for civilizational primacy.