Cruz says other Republicans are afraid to criticize Tucker Carlson
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Friday that some of his Republican colleagues are too “scared” to join him in criticizing Tucker Carlson’s interview with white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
Cruz made the comments at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention in Washington, D.C., saying other Republicans quietly agree with him that Carlson should be reprimanded for his podcast interview with the Holocaust denier, but are afraid to ruffle the feathers of such an influential voice in right-wing media.
“It’s easy now to denounce Nick Fuentes. That’s pretty sure. Are you willing to say Tucker’s name?” -Cruz asked.
“I can now tell you, my colleagues, almost verbatim, that what is happening is appalling,” he continued. “But a lot of them are scared because he has a tremendously big megaphone.”
Carlson, who hosted a wildly popular show on News until his ouster in 2023, regularly has millions of views on the YouTube version of “The Tucker Carlson Show.” Apple also revealed it was its most popular new podcast in 2024.
Tom Williams via Getty Images
Cruz said he didn’t think it was a problem that Carlson “used” Fuentes, but rather that he did little to challenge his guest during the interview.
“Last time I checked, Tucker really knows how to interrogate someone,” Cruz said.
“If you want to question him and challenge him, that’s fine,” he continued. “But he didn’t. He looked at him fawningly, even when Mr. Fuentes said he loved Stalin and that he celebrated Joseph Stalin’s birthday every year.”
Admittedly, Carlson did little to rebuff Fuentes at the time, other than saying he would “get back to it.” He never did.
Cruz began speaking out against Carlson because of Fuentes’ interview last week.
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“If you sit down with someone who says that Adolf Hitler was very, very great and that his mission is to fight and defeat the Jews all over the world, and you say nothing,
then you are a coward and you are complicit in that evil,” Cruz said, referring to Fuentes lamenting the problems with “organized Jews in the United States” during the interview.
He was joined by former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who took aim at the right-wing Heritage Foundation for saying it would not distance itself from Carlson over the interview.
“The ‘intellectual backbone of the conservative movement’ is only as strong as the values it espouses,” McConnell wrote on social media last week, citing a statement from Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts. “Last time I checked, ‘conservatives should not feel obligated’ to help anti-Semites and apologists for America-hating autocrats.”