Right Fumes at Tucker Carlson Over Interview Blasting How Israel Treats Christians: ‘This Is Embarrassing’
Ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson sparked a firestorm of criticism on the right on Wednesday when he dropped the latest episode of his online show, featuring an interview with Palestinian Christian Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac.
“How does the government of Israel treat Christians? In the West, Christian leaders don’t seem interested in knowing the answer. They should be. Here’s the view of a pastor from Bethlehem,” tweeted Carlson on X as he shared the 43-minute interview on Tuesday night.
Carlson began, as he often does, by just asking some leading questions and dropping some controversial historical context. “When there’s a war abroad that the United States is funding, it is Christians who tend to die disproportionately,” Carlson claimed.
“And this goes back a long way, 60 years, really, to Vietnam, where Catholics in that country were massacred. But it’s accelerated. So, for example, during the more than a decade the US government spent occupying Iraq, the Christian, the ancient Christian community of Iraq, was completely devastated. Nine out of ten of them are no longer there. They’re gone,” Carlson claimed, adding:
That was an effect of our foreign policy, but it was almost never noted in the United States and almost never, ever even mentioned by Christian clergy in this country, many of whom supported that war in that occupation. Why is that? Maybe because it wasn’t. Virtually no one in any American church said anything when Christians were killed in Syria, very often by Islamic extremists paid for by the United States. But nobody said anything, and anyone who did was denounced as a kook or a bigot.
After his lengthy screed accusing America of funding the killing of Christians overseas, Carlson turned to Israel and noted the recent bombing of Gaza, which has of course devastated the area’s Christians as well.
“And you may be asking yourself, well, wait a second. If Christian leaders won’t stand up for the lives of Christians, why have them in the first place? And that’s probably a good question. So you would think that in Congress there were there are many self-professed Christian. Somebody might be piping up on behalf of their brethren in the Holy Land. But no, just the opposite,” Carlson fumed.
The interview was met with criticism from many on the right, including Trump’s former ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who made the widely debated claim that Christians have been driven out of Bethlehem by PA rule.
“Tucker, my friend, before the Palestinians took over Bethlehem pursuant to the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990’s, Bethlehem was under Israeli control and its population was 80% Christian. It was one of the centers of the Christian world. Since Oslo and the resulting Palestinian rule, Bethlehem became 80% Muslim and Christians are afraid. But they don’t speak out against the Palestinian Authority because you just can’t and survive,” Friedman wrote in reply to the clip.
Breitbart’s Joel Pollack offered a lengthy reply to Carlson, in which he also contested the way the pastor described Israel’s treatment of Christians.
Pollack also took issue with Carlson platforming Rev. Isaac, who “does not believe Israel should exist, a fact Tucker does not discuss.”
“Rev. Isaac says Israel is “not as free as people say” for Christians, claiming it is tough to register conversions. (Bureaucracy is tough for everyone in Israel, due to laws dating to the Ottoman era.) Tucker extrapolates, falsely, Christians have “fewer rights” in Israel,” added Pollack, noting that Carlson “adds some of the interview’s most incendiary comments” against Israel.
Much of the criticism from the right also focused on Carlson’s motives. Commentator Seth Mandel claimed, “There’s no one in American life who thinks less of Christians than Tucker. He doesn’t like Jews, but he at least doesn’t think we’re stupid. Even Trump’s Bible selling is transparently transactional. Tucker’s entire shtick relies on his belief that Christians are gullible saps.”
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) offered a similar take, accusing Carlson of misleading his audience in order to get clicks. “Tucker will eventually fade into nothingness, because his veneer of faux intellectualism is quickly falling apart and revealing who he truly is: a cowardly, know-nothing elitist who is full of shit,” concluded the Texas Republican.
Hard right Newsweek editor Josh Hammer said of the interview, “Turns out Tucker needed Fox more than Fox needed Tucker. Very sad.” Hammer later bashed Carlson by noting, “PLO officials quite literally endorsing and disseminating Tucker’s propagandist interview. Absolute insanity.”
MAGA activist and close Trump ally, Laura Loomer, also went after Carlson, writing, “The last thing I’ll say about this is the interview is a major L when it comes to helping President Trump get elected.”
“Wait for the media to say “MAGA Influencers side with Iran”. Tucker is basically paving the way for leftist talking points to take heat off of Joe Biden for his disastrous foreign policy. Even @Morning_Joe is calling MAGA the “American Taliban”. This is why,” she concluded.
Carlson did find a very warm welcome with avowed pro-Putin influencer Jackson Hinkle who promoted his isolationist rhetoric, “Tucker Carlson: ‘AMERICA does not exist to protect and stand up for the CITIZENS OF OTHER NATIONS.’” In recent weeks, Carlson has kicked up several controversies as he toured Moscow and marveled at the authoritarian regime’s governance of the city before conducting an interview with Vladimir Putin, which even Putin criticized as too soft.
Below are some additional replies to Carlson:
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