House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) joined other Republican leaders in criticizing Tucker Carlson for his interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, saying it was a “big mistake.”

Johnson’s comments, made in an interview with The Hill published Tuesday, were a stronger condemnation of the interview than he had made weeks earlier.

“I spoke to Tucker briefly about it and I think he’s a liability. He has a lot of listeners and I think giving Nick Fuentes that platform is a big mistake,” Johnson said.

“We shouldn’t give a platform to amplify those views. And I think it’s important that we say that,” he continued, describing Fuentes’ rhetoric as “something vile and terrible. I mean, it’s not just anti-Semitic, it’s openly racist, it’s violent, things that can’t even be repeated in the House of Representatives.”

Johnson expressed some concerns about Carlson’s interview with Fuentes earlier this month in an interview with The National Review.

“I don’t think, whether it’s Tucker or anyone else, that we shouldn’t give a platform to that kind of speech,” the House speaker said, adding, “He has a First Amendment right, but we should never expand on it.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, speaks after the final vote to end the longest government shutdown in history, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, speaks after the final vote to end the longest government shutdown in history, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025.

via News

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also spoke out about Fuentes’ interview with Carlson, who let many of the white nationalist’s most egregious comments go unanswered.

“Last time I checked, ‘conservatives should not feel obligated’ to carry water to anti-Semites and apologists for America-hating autocrats,” McConnell said last month, borrowing words from Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ defense of Carlson. Roberts has since said it was a “mistake” to defend Carlson over the interview.

Cruz had harsher words.

“If you sit down with someone who says that Adolf Hitler was very, very great and that his mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing. Then you are a coward and you are complicit in that evil,” the Texas senator said at the time.

He later said that his Republican colleagues, even if they objected to Carlson’s interview with Fuentes, were too “scared” to speak out “because he has a tremendously big megaphone.”

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump dismissed criticism of Carlson earlier this month, saying that the ousted News host has “said good things about me over the years” and that people should make their own decisions about Fuentes, a person who has repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler.

“If you want to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if you want to do it, spread the word,” Trump said. “People have to decide.”