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Tucker Carlson thinks antisemite Nick Fuentes is the future of MAGA

The uproar over Tucker Carlson’s decision to host Nick Fuentes, a notorious Holocaust denier and white nationalist, for a friendly chat on his popular online talk show last week focused on the need to maintain a firewall between mainstream conservatives and antisemites like Fuentes.

But Carlson sat down with Fuentes — who he’d previously called a “fed” and mocked as a “weird little gay kid” — out of recognition that the firewall is collapsing and a belief that conservatives like himself need to figure out how to harness the movement Fuentes represents to achieve their many shared political goals, including shifting America’s posture toward Israel.

For years, Fuentes has held court on daily livestreams for a dedicated audience of young men, sometimes called the Groyper Army, drawn to his obsessive focus on defending white America from immigrants, minorities and Jews, and his willingness to troll and agitate mainstream Republicans.

That dynamic made him anathema to GOP leaders and even to other influencers like Charlie Kirk, who supported many of the same political positions as Fuentes, but avoided his most inflammatory rhetoric about women and minorities (“Your body, my choice,” Fuentes famously posted online after the 2024 election). And yet Fuentes grew more popular, and, in the months before his murder, Kirk had started to adopt some of his talking points.

Carlson, meanwhile, has had one foot in the political wilderness since he was pushed out of his primetime slot on Fox News two years ago. He relaunched his show on X and, unmoored from any editorial oversight, began embracing various conspiracy theories — UFOs, false flag attacks, 9/11 trutherism. But he has also maintained a close relationship with President Donald Trump, and spoke during primetime at the Republican National Convention last year.

Carlson started to turn against Israel in the past year, a shift he has framed in isolationist terms but which coincided with his willingness to interview figures like Darryl Cooper, an amateur historian and Holocaust revisionist, and Candace Owens, who shares Fuentes’s open antipathy toward Jews.

Fuentes is already aligned with mainstream Republicans on immigration, but Carlson is seeking to enlist the Groyper Army in his uphill political project of turning the MAGA movement against Israel.

“I feel like going on about ‘the Jews’ helps” Israel’s supporters, he told Fuentes at one point in their conversation. He begged Fuentes not to judge people simply for being born Jewish — an incredibly narrow understanding of antisemitism — but even that was a struggle for the 27-year-old streamer, who repeatedly reaffirmed his most extreme views.

“As far as the Jews are concerned, you cannot actually divorce Israel and the neocons from Jewishness,” Fuentes said. He went on to expound on the theory that Jews are rootless cosmopolitans (“They’re unassimilatable”) and obsessed with their historic persecution such that they prioritize Israel’s interests (“We don’t think like that as Americans and white people”).

***

At several points, Carlson tried to push back and suggest that appeals to identity politics in the United States could only lead to division and even political violence, but this only prompted Fuentes to argue that “a big challenge” to social harmony is “organized Jewry in America.”

Crucially, Carlson never rebuked Fuentes. The disagreement over how much to blame “the Jews” was framed instead as an earnest difference of opinion between two figures working toward a shared goal of limited immigration and an isolationist foreign policy.

The pair eventually moved on to discuss pornography (“It seems like it’s making a lot of people gay,” Carlson observed) and traditional gender roles, where Carlson’s earlier insistence that you can’t treat people differently based on how they are born seemed to evaporate. There was a bit of an odd couple dynamic between the two, including a surreal digression about Joseph Stalin (“I’m a fan,” Fuentes told an incredulous Carlson, “always an admirer.”).

But the crucial thing that Carlson understands, like Kirk did before him, is that Fuentes represents the vanguard of the conservative movement and that whatever forces were once able to shape the contours of this movement by setting priorities and enforcing norms against people like Fuentes — the Mitch McConnells and Fox Newses — are losing power.

This poses a unique threat to Jews because, as a small minority, they have historically relied on one of two different strategies to maintain their safety and status in society. The first is to build a coalition with other minorities who, by joining together, have more leverage to demand equal rights. And the second model is to maintain a close relationship with those in power who can carve out special protections for Jews.

The second model has been the preferred approach to working with an increasingly authoritarian Trump administration hostile toward minority rights, and it’s found some success as, for example, the White House has demanded colleges end their diversity programs while simultaneously demanding they tailor special services to help Jewish students.

And yet as the power of conservative gatekeepers like McConnell and Rupert Murdoch erodes, this contradiction can only be maintained if MAGA leaders are able to genuinely convince their base that Jews are an important part of their coalition.

That is challenging when Carlson, Fuentes and Kirk have all accurately pointed out that Jews are overwhelmingly liberal and opposed to Trump — to say nothing of the antisemitic tropes and conspiracies that often animate these complaints.

***

Of special concern to many Jewish conservatives was that the Heritage Foundation, an influential think tank that has been cranking out policy blueprints for the White House, including on antisemitism, rushed to Carlson’s defense after his conversation with Fuentes. President Kevin Roberts insisted that “Christians can critique the State of Israel.” Some staff and antisemitism task force members resigned in response this week.

Several right-wing Jewish groups associated with the Heritage Foundation’s antisemitism task force, including the Zionist Organization of America, threatened to cut ties with the organization. And Ted Cruz, who Carlson hammered over his support for Israel in a June interview, called him a “coward” who was complicit in evil during remarks at the Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas this past weekend.

But the politicians and organizations rushing to condemn Carlson and Fuentes mostly came onto the scene before Trump upended national politics, and their understanding of the political landscape does not seem to have caught up.

There is little indication they are capable of reclaiming control of a Republican party whose youth wing was just consumed by a scandal involving several of its leaders making explicitly antisemitic comments about Jews and praising Nazis in a leaked group chat, only to be defended by Vice President JD Vance.

Nearly 500,000 people tuned in to watch Fuentes, streaming from his basement studio Monday night, mock the Jewish leaders who were seeking to ostracize him. He was frustrated but also triumphant. The sudden outrage at his interview with Carlson seemed like a last gasp of the previous “cancel culture” that Trump’s reelection had otherwise wiped out.

Fuentes and his ilk have been unbanned from social platforms, he dined with the president at Mar-a-Lago three years ago — “This guy’s hardcore,” Fuentes claims Trump said, “I like this guy” — and Carlson went from mocking him to enlisting him as a political ally.

Carlson and Heritage seem to recognize that the wind is at Fuentes’s back, and are responding accordingly.

“People are simply catching up, they’re waking up to what has always been going on — which is that we’ve been fighting these people’s wars for generations,” Fuentes told his audience, referring to Jews. “We want our fucking country back.”

The post Tucker Carlson thinks antisemite Nick Fuentes is the future of MAGA appeared first on The Forward.

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Israel, Argentina Strengthen Ties as Milei Plans to Open Embassy in Jerusalem, Saar Leads Diplomatic Mission

Argentine President Javier Milei meets with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar in Buenos Aires during Saar’s diplomatic and economic visit to strengthen ties between the two countries. Photo: Screenshot

Israel expects Argentine President Javier Milei to open his country’s embassy in Jerusalem next year, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Tuesday, as the two allies continue to strengthen their bilateral ties.

“We hope to have the president in April or May to open Argentina’s embassy in Jerusalem, DC — David’s Capital,” the top Israeli diplomat said during a speech at the Israel-Argentina Business Forum in Buenos Aires. 

Earlier this year, the Argentine leader announced during his visit to Israel that his country plans to open its embassy in Jerusalem in 2026.

As part of his diplomatic trip this week, Saar traveled to Paraguay and Argentina, leading a business and economic delegation that included senior government officials, company representatives, and key economic leaders to promote expanded cooperation between the countries.

“The president of Argentina [Milei] is one of the world’s boldest and most impressive leaders. It was a true honor to meet him in Buenos Aires and discuss our extraordinary bilateral relations,” the Israeli diplomat said in a social media post on X. 

“The economic delegation accompanying me today is an expression of our belief in the president’s bold economic reforms and Argentina’s economy under his leadership,” he continued.

During his visit, Saar announced that Israel will open an Economic Attaché Office in Buenos Aires next year, emphasizing the country’s goal to “dramatically increase” investments in its partner nation.

“I thanked the president for standing consistently by Israel on the international stage,” Saar said. “Argentina, under President Milei’s leadership, is one of Israel’s best friends in the world. We’ll continue strengthening these extraordinary relations!”

He also met with Argentina’s Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno, who is scheduled to visit Israel in February, and with Defense Minister Luis Petri to discuss ways to strengthen both security and economic ties between the two countries.

“We appreciate the minister’s friendship and crucial role in Argentina’s designation of Hamas and Hezbollah as terror organizations,” Saar wrote in a post on X. 

“Argentina, under President Milei’s leadership, is clearly on the right path!” he added. 

Israel’s top diplomat was scheduled to attend memorial events honoring the victims of the 1992 Israeli Embassy bombing and the 1994 attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires — two of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the country, which claimed 29 and 85 lives, respectively.

Saar will also address the 90th anniversary celebration of the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the umbrella organization representing Jewish institutions in Argentina.

Earlier this week, Saar kicked off his diplomatic trip in Paraguay, signing a security cooperation memorandum and meeting with President Santiago Peña, whom he praised as “one of the most impressive leaders on the international stage today.”

“Paraguay is developing major defense capabilities. Israel’s defense industry has experience and capabilities that we want to share with you,” the Israeli official said during a press conference with Paraguay’s Foreign Minister Rubén Ramírez Lezcano.

Saar also praised Peña for moving the country’s embassy to Jerusalem, honoring his predecessor’s promise from 2018, and for formally designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as the political wings of Hamas and Hezbollah, as terrorist organizations. Paraguay had previously proscribed just the military wings of the two Iran-backed Islamist groups, both of which have been internationally designated as terrorist organizations.

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Harvard Law Professor Takes Plea Deal for Shooting Incident Near Synagogue

April 20, 2025, Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University and Harvard Square scenes with students and pedestrians. Photo: Kenneth Martin/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect.

A Harvard Law School visiting professor has accepted a plea agreement which absolves him of a slew of criminal charges he incurred for firing a pellet gun near a synagogue in Greater Boston on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, last month.

Carlos Portugal Gouvea, 43, has insisted he was “hunting rats” when his pumping two shots of non-lethal ammunition through a car window and across the property of Temple Beth Zion in the town of Brookline while worshippers attended service inside forced the synagogue into lockdown. According to multiple reports, the institution’s private security team found Gouvea behind a tree while searching the area for the source of the disturbance.

Upon being approached by the men, Gouvea voluntarily disarmed, putting his gun down, but he then reportedly used force to prevent being detained and thereafter absconded from the scene. Law enforcement officers later arrested him at home.

Since the incident, Gouvea, whose wife and children are Jewish, has maintained that antisemitism did not motivate his conduct, a contention that is believed by Temple Beth Zion and local Jewish leaders. He was charged in the Brookline District Court with one felony — vandalizing property — and three misdemeanors: disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, and illegally firing a pellet gun.

Under the plea deal, three of the charges were dismissed, according to the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office. For the remaining charge, illegally discharging a pellet gun, The Harvard Crimson reported that Gouvea must pay $386.59 in restitution to the individual whose car window he broke with a pellet. He also agreed to six months of pre-trial probation.

To this day, the professor has neither been accused of nor charged with committing a hate and maintains that he was not even aware that he had entered the grounds of a synagogue when he fired the shots which have upended his life.

“This man is married to a Jewish woman and has Jewish children, and it’s absolutely nothing to do with targeting the Jewish community,” Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi proclaimed during an Oct. 7 vigil held at Harvard earlier this year. “If it adds a measure of comfort and reassurance to our community, I thought it’s appropriate to just share that, so we can all take a sigh of relief.”

However, Harvard University placed Gouvea on administrative leave pending the outcome of criminal proceedings, a decision made amid widespread concern from prominent donors, Jewish leaders, and the federal government that the school’s attitude toward antisemitism on campus has been cavalier. Harvard is currently fighting a lawsuit which alleges that it declined to punish two students who led an anti-Israel mob which surrounded a Jewish classmate and screamed “Shame!” at him to protest Israel.

It is not clear when Gouvea will return to campus.

Harvard’s relationship with the Jewish community became a staple of American news coverage ever since some of its students cheered Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, in which Palestinian terrorists indiscriminately murdered Israelis while sexually assaulting both women and men. Later, students stormed academic buildings chanting “globalize the intifada”; a faculty group posted an antisemitic cartoon on its social media page; and the Harvard Law School student government passed a resolution that falsely accused Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Since US President Donald Trump’s election in November 2024, Harvard has attempted to turn over a new leaf, settling lawsuits which stipulate its adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) widely used definition of antisemitism and even shuttering far-left initiatives which were adjacent to extreme anti-Zionist viewpoints.

In July, the university announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions, saying it will establish a new study abroad program, in partnership with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, for undergraduate students and a postdoctoral fellowship in which Harvard Medical School faculty will mentor and train newly credentialed Israeli scientists in biomedical research as preparation for the next stages of their careers.

Speaking to The Harvard Crimson — which has endorsed boycotting Israel — Harvard vice provost for international affairs Mark Elliot trumpeted the announcement as a positive development and, notably, as a continuation, not a beginning, of Harvard’s “engagement with institutions of higher education across Israel.” Elliot added that Harvard is planning “increased academic collaboration across the region in the coming years.”

Meanwhile, Harvard continues to see outbursts of antisemitic activity — most recently from its far-right students.

In September, a conservative student magazine, The Harvard Salient, at Harvard University published an article which echoed the words of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Written by David F.X. Army, the article chillingly echoed a January 1939 Reichstag speech in which Hitler portended mass killings of Jews as the outcome of Germany’s inexorable march toward war with France and Great Britain. Whereas Hitler said, “France to the French, England to the English, America to the Americans, and Germany to the Germans,” Army wrote, “Germany belongs to the Germans, France to the French, Britain to the British, America to the Americans.”

Army also called for the adoption of notions of “blood, soil, language, and love of one’s own” in response to concerns over large-scale migration of Muslims into Europe.

In Nazi ideology, “blood and soil,” or Blut und Boden, encapsulated the party’s belief in eugenics and racial purity; the German “Aryans’” right to expand into Eastern Europe to amass new Lebensraum, or “living space”; and the transformation of the German peasantry into an agricultural class which stood in contrasts to Jews, many of whom lived in cities.

Last month, the magazine’s board announced that the publication would temporarily halt its operations pending an investigation.

The Salient said that Army has not consumed Nazi literature and that no one who reviewed his contribution recognized its Nazi tropes. Denouncing scrutiny of the Salient as a political conspiracy on a campus in which students say promoting conservative viewpoints is a social crime, magazine editor Richard Y. Rodgers said The Harvard Crimson, the main campus newspaper, converted the “resemblance” into a “headline.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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Tidbits: The first female Orthodox Jewish mayor in the U.S

Tidbits is a Forverts feature of easy news briefs in Yiddish that you can listen to or read, or both! If you read the article and don’t know a word, just click on it and the translation appears. You’ll also find the link to the article in English after each news brief.


צום ערשטן מאָל אין דער אַמעריקאַנער געשיכטע האָט אַ פֿרומע ייִדישע פֿרוי דערגרייכט דעם אַמט פֿון בירגער־מײַסטער.

מישעל ווײַס, אַ רעפּובליקאַנערין וואָס האָט במשך פֿון די פֿאַרגאַנגענע 15 יאָר געדינט ווי אַ מיטגליד פֿונעם שטאָטראַט פֿון יוניווערסיטי הײַטס, אָהײַאָ — אַ פֿאָרשטאָט פֿון קליוולאַנד — האָט געוווּנען די וואַלן, נישט געקוקט אויף דעם וואָס די שטאָט איז טיף דעמאָקראַטיש־געשטימט.

דערצו האָט זי געוווּנען דעם פֿאַרמעסט מיט אַ ממשותדיקער מערהייט — מער ווי 56%. איר קאָנקורענט, דזשיי טשאָנסי האָטאָן, פֿון דער דעמאָקראַטישער פּאַרטיי, האָט באַקומען 37%. אַ דריטער קאַנדידאַט, פֿיליפּ אַטקין, וואָס געהערט נישט צו קיין פּאַרטיי, האָט באַקומען 6%.

אין יוניווערסיטי הײַטס וווינען בערך 13,000 מענטשן.

ווײַס, אַ מאַמע און אַ באָבע וואָס וווינט אין דער שטאָט שוין 29 יאָר, האָט אָנגעהויבן איר פּאָליטישע טעטיקייט ווי אַ וואָלונטיר און האָט זיך אַרויפֿגעאַרבעט צו וויצע־בירגערמײַסטערין. במשך פֿון די יאָרן איז איר שם געוואַקסן אַ דאַנק איר פֿינאַנץ־דיסציפּלין, איר שטיצע פֿאַר אָפּהיטן די סבֿיבֿה און איר פֿאָקוס אויף פֿאַרבעסערן די אינפֿראַסטרוקטור.

ווײַס האָט געזאָגט אַז איר ערשטע פּריאָריטעט וועט זײַן צו היילן די פּאָליטישע שפּאַלטונג אין דער שטאָט־רעגירונג. זי האָט קריטיקירט די פֿריִערדיקע אַדמיניסטראַציע פֿאַרן שאַפֿן אַ שפּאַנונג צווישן דעמאָקראַטן און רעפּובליקאַנער און האָט געזאָגט, אַז זי האָפֿט אויפֿצוריכטן אַ געפֿיל פֿון צוזאַמענאַרבעט, בעת זי נעמט זיך אונטער עטלעכע גרויסע אינפֿראַסטרוקטור־פּראָיעקטן.

אין אַ צײַט פֿון שטײַגנדיקן אַנטיסעמיטיזם אין די פֿאַראייניקטע שטאַטן, האָט ווײַס באַטאָנט אַז מע מוז פֿאַרבעסערן די קאָאָפּעראַציע צווישן דער פּאָליציי און דער זיכערהייט־דינסט בײַ קליוולאַנדס ייִדישער פֿעדעראַציע. זי האָט אויך געזאָגט אַז ס׳איז וויכטיק צו באַשיצן די פֿאַרשידנאַרטיקייט פֿון דער שטאָט־באַפֿעלקערונג. אין איין ראַיאָן פֿון צוויי קוואַדראַט־מײַל געפֿינען זיך נישט ווייניקער ווי 17 עטנישע גרופּעס.

ווײַס האָפֿט אַז איר דערוויילט ווערן וועט אינספּירירן אַנדערע פֿרומע ייִדישע פֿרויען צו קאַנדידירן אויף אַ פּאָליטישן אַמט. „איר קענט ווײַטער לעבן לויט אײַערע ווערטן בשעת איר דינט די רעגירונג,“ האָט זי געזאָגט.

כּדי צו לייענען דעם אַרטיקל אויף ענגליש גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.

In order to read this article in English, click here.

The post Tidbits: The first female Orthodox Jewish mayor in the U.S appeared first on The Forward.

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