LAS VEGAS — Ted Cruz warned of rising antisemitism on the right — and a lack of Republican voices calling it out — as he kicked off the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit Thursday night.

The speech reiterated comments he made at a San Antonio megachurch last week, including the core message that he’s recently seen more right-wing antisemitism than ever before.

“In the last six months, I’ve seen more antisemitism on the right than I had in my entire life,” Cruz said.

“This is a poison,” he continued. “And I believe we are facing an existential crisis in our party and our country.”

The RJC’s annual gathering, being held this weekend at the Venetian Resort Las Vegas, comes as a growing number of conservatives are turning against Israel, while right-wing voices who are spreading antisemitic conspiracies are finding mainstream audiences.

Cruz, a longtime supporter of Israel, presented the moment of division on the right as “a time for choosing.”

“And as for me, I choose to stand with you,” Cruz said to the room of about 100 Jewish Republican donors. “I choose to stand with Israel, and I choose to stand with America.”

As at the megachurch, Cruz, who is Christian, did not name names in his criticism of the “anti-Israel right.” But on Thursday he hinted strongly that he was speaking about Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News personality who recently hosted a friendly conversation with the white nationalist livestreamer Nick Fuentes. Carlson said during the interview that GOP supporters of Israel — including Cruz — are infected by a “brain virus.”

“If you sit there and nod adoringly while someone tells you that Winston Churchill was the villain of World War II, if you sit there and nod while someone says, ‘There’s a very good argument America should’ve intervened on behalf of Nazi Germany in World War II,’ 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?” Cruz said. “Then you are a coward and you are complicit in that evil.”

His comments came just hours after Kevin Roberts, the president of leading conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, answered mounting questions about whether he would continue to associate with Carlson after the Fuentes interview — with a resounding defense of Carlson.

RJC CEO Matt Brooks told Jewish Insider that, after working with Heritage over the years, there would be “a reassessment of our relationship with Heritage in light of this.”

Cruz called out the silence of Republican elected officials who’ve not spoken out against increasing right-wing antisemitism.

“I have to say, too many people are scared to confront them,” he said, referring to the “grotesque bigots” who do not plainly see Hitler as “the embodiment of evil.”

“How many elected Republicans do you see standing up and calling this out?” Cruz said. “How many do you see willing to take on the voices on the anti-Israel right?”

One name invoked by Cruz in a positive light was President Donald Trump, whom the Texas senator called “the most pro-Israel president in the history of the United States,” to loud applause.

Cruz affirmed to the RJC’s membership that with Trump in the White House, their interest in assisting Israel in its conflicts would be upheld, and kept away from the skepticism of a growing isolationist faction that would rather the United States not get involved.

(Trump has not publicly weighed in on Carlson hosting Fuentes; Trump once dined with Fuentes and rapper Ye between presidential terms in 2022, later saying that he had not known who Fuentes was.)

But Cruz then pointed to the post-Trump future as a fork in the road moment for the Republican Party.

“When Trump is not in the White House, what then?” Cruz said.

One man called out, “Ted Cruz!”

One potential candidate for Republican leadership in 2028 was not named in Cruz’s speech: JD Vance.

Cruz lauded Trump’s efforts in taking on Hamas and cracking down on campus protests, but did not name Vance as a friend of Jewish Americans.

Vance faced criticism this week after failing to push back on skeptical questions about Israel, including one laced with an antisemitic conspiracy theory, at a Turning Point USA event at Ole Miss. Vance also downplayed the messages sent in the recent Young Republicans leak, saying the text messages sent by early-career GOP activists — which included jokes about gas chambers, racist slurs and praise of Hitler — were simply immature “jokes” and that critics should “grow up.”

Cruz emphasized the need to “engage in college campuses” and “engage in the facts” in order to overcome the “handful of voices that are spreading this garbage,” whom he said were “giving every one of us a time for choosing.”

He thanked the crowd for being “patriots.”

“You love America — although the fact that you are Jewish means that there are idiots who would accuse you of not loving America simply because of it,” he said, invoking the dual loyalties trope to which Fuentes subscribes.

Cruz’s 25-minute speech included celebratory jokes about Israel’s pager operation that killed some and wounded hundreds of members of Hezbollah, condemnations of what he called a growing “pro-Hamas wing” of the Democratic Party, and a reflection on the horrors of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

But its main thrust was that the Republican Party has reached a point where its Jewish and pro-Israel membership must think about how to stave off a growing anti-Israel movement, and quell the proliferation of antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Cruz began his speech by remarking that this was the RJC’s 40th-anniversary summit — a fact that he said poignantly reinforced the weight of this moment.

“Thinking back over the last 40 years, I don’t know that there has been a year in those 40 that the Republican Jewish Coalition was more needed than right now,” Cruz said.

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