Conspiracy kook Tucker Carlson is no patriot, no conservative and no friend to Charlie Kirk and JD Vance

Tucker Carlson is not a good friend.

Just a few years ago, when the podcaster was pretending to be friends with President Trump, Carlson was caught privately saying of Trump: “I hate him passionately.”

In September another person that Carlson claimed to be friends with — Charlie Kirk — was shot dead. Carlson used the aftermath of his friend’s assassination not to demand that the suspect in the shooting be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. He didn’t seize the moment to insist that perhaps the radical left dial down their hateful rhetoric against conservatives and Republicans. Nor did he keep attention focused on the trans-extremist links of the alleged shooter.

No — Carlson chose to use the occasion to deflect attention from the perpetrator seized by the FBI and return to his pet obsession. The Jews.

In the wake of the assassination, Carlson was one of a number of kooky online influencers who suggested that Kirk’s views on Israel had been changing and that perhaps for this reason the state of Israel had something to do with his murder.

It was a crazy conspiracy theory, but Carlson was happy to push it. What a way to honor a friend.

Then this past week Carlson proved again what an appalling person he has become. He invited onto his show an avowed Holocaust denier and racist, Nick Fuentes.

We don’t need to linger here over all the horrifying and trolling bile that Fuentes has spewed out to his online followers. It is enough to say that he is so toxic that he could almost have been invented by the radical left as a way to delegitimize the political right in this country.

Any normal person would want to keep a million miles away from such a snarling, ugly actor. But if anyone was to sit down and give Fuentes one of the largest audiences of his career you would have thought that there would be some hostile questions. The kind of relentlessly hostile questioning Carlson can do — such as in his recent astoundingly hostile interview with Ted Cruz.

Carlson previously claimed Israel had something to do with Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The Tucker Carlson Show

But no — Carlson used his hours with Fuentes to simply launder Fuentes’s reputation and try to give him a veneer of reasonableness and respectability.

Which brings me back to what an appalling friend Tucker Carlson is.

Carlson might have used the opportunity to put to Fuentes some of the disgusting things Fuentes had said about the assassinated Kirk. He might have raised the way in which Fuentes and his “groyper” followers promised to hound and torment Kirk while he was alive. Carlson might also have asked Fuentes why he had seen fit to use the weeks after Kirk’s assassination not only to push the claim that the Jews murdered Kirk, but to also attack Kirk’s widow.

In a recent online rant Fuentes said: “Erika Kirk is a spook. Erika is a plant. We all know that. That is a fact. That is basically established. She was shopping around for a political husband. God knows where she comes from. She found one in Charlie Kirk. Charlie is not a good-looking guy.”

Fuentes went on to suggest that Kirk’s mourning widow is just acting.

It’s a heck of a thing to claim to be friends with someone and then bring a guest onto your show who not only hounded your friend in life but mocks and smears his widow after his death. But then that’s the sort of friend Tucker Carlson is.

And there is worse.

Because Carlson also claims to be friends with Vice President JD Vance. He has appeared on stage with him and warmed up for him and President Trump at rallies.

Most of us think friendship includes defending your friends and defending their wives. Not Carlson.

Here is just some of what Fuentes has said recently about JD Vance and his beautiful and impressive wife Usha.

During one recent rant Fuentes described JD Vance as “A fat race-mixer who’s married to a jeet, who named his son Vivek.” For anyone not up on their racist cesspool terms, a “jeet” turns out to be a racist term used to smear people of South Asian (especially Indian) ancestry.

Carlson’s guest Nick Fuentes has said disgusting things about Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance. The Tucker Carlson Show

Fuentes went on to claim that Vance was mentored by “a Jewish neocon and a gay fed” and again called Vance: “A fat, gay race-traitor who married a jeet.” Elsewhere he has attacked people for supporting Vance because of the ethnicity of Vance’s wife and the fact that the couple have produced children who Fuentes calls “non-white.” Elsewhere Fuentes has attacked Vance because “his kids are brown.”

These are vile things to say about anyone. Most of us wouldn’t want to be anywhere near someone who said such things about total strangers. But if you had somebody in front of you who had said that about your own “friend,” his wife and children, wouldn’t you bring it up?

Putting aside for a moment why you would platform such a toxic toad in the first place, why then allow him to normalize himself in front of a worldwide audience without even bringing up all the disgusting things he has said about people you claim to know and love?

At the end of last week the president of the Heritage Foundation in Washington tied himself into a completely avoidable political mess by issuing a video defending Carlson. Goodness knows why Kevin Roberts chose to do that. It wasn’t as though the nation was desperate to hear from him. But I suppose Roberts did it — like other people who have stood up for Tucker during his recent downwards spiral — because he values loyalty and friendship.

If that is the case, then Roberts — like Trump, JD and others in the Republican movement — should reflect on what a “friend” they really have in Tucker Carlson. A man who seems intent on normalizing Holocaust-deniers and on destroying the MAGA movement from within.

Some patriot. Some conservative. Some friend.