Tucker Carlson, the populist pundit who led Fox News' evening lineup until his ouster in April 2023, said in an interview this week that the Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro “[doesn’t] “I don’t care about the country at all,” accusing him and other pro-Israel voices of “focusing on a conflict in a foreign country while their own country is becoming dangerously unstable.”
Carlson listed a number of challenges facing the United States – financial instability, insecure borders – and claimed: “They have said nothing about it and are laser-focused on foreign conflicts.”
Carlson compared this perceived apathy to his own concern for the United States: “I have no choice,” he said, “I'm from here, my family has been here for hundreds of years, I plan to stay here – I'm shocked about how.” They care little about the country, including [Shapiro].”
Carlson's comments came during an interview with Saagar Enjeti, the conservative host of the popular web series “Breaking Points.”
Enjeti, who is co-moderating the panel with Krystal Ball, a progressive, asked Carlson: “What explains this … literal fidelity to the Ukraine narrative? [and] about Israel” and claimed that “so many of these people don't seem to have the same level of care for actual American citizens.” Tucker Carlson on the CPAC show floor, 2010 (Source: GAGE SKIDMORE)
In a post to X on Saturday, former American ambassador to Israel David Friedman condemned Carlson's comments and wrote that Shapiro “is an American patriot who cares deeply about our country.” Friedman noted that “Ben has been, among other things, a forceful advocate for closing our southern border and ending the massive influx of fentanyl that is killing our youth,” an apparent reference to Carlson's suggestion that Shapiro neglected those issues. “@TuckerCarlson says that since Ben supports Israel, he doesn't care about America,” Friedman wrote. “I hope he doesn’t really mean it. It’s a shame to say this and he should apologize.”
My friend @benshapiro is an American patriot who cares deeply about our country. Anyone who has listened to him over the last 22 years knows this. Every morning he wakes up thinking about how he can advance America's security and prosperity. Ben was, among other things, a…
— David M Friedman (@DavidM_Friedman) December 31, 2023
Carlson: Wealthy people heard a 'dog whistle telling them to worship Zelensky'
Speaking about Ukraine, Carlson told Enjeti: “Every single person in the top one percent of the population in terms of income and influence heard this strange frequency, this dog whistle, telling them to worship Zelensky, and I'm not entirely sure , what that was.” ”
It wasn't the first time that Carlson, the 53-year-old heir to the Swanson TV dinner fortune, questioned American support for the Ukrainian war leader. In the first episode of his online show after his firing from Fox News, Carlson described Zelensky, a Jew, as “sweaty and rat-like, a comedian turned oligarch, a persecutor of Christians, a friend of Blackrock.”
He also described him as “shady”, “dead-eyed” and as “a person who would enjoy flooding villages or causing a famine”.
“It’s painful to even quote that,” Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group said in response to Carlson’s statements. “These are all anti-Semitic slogans, with a pinch of blood libel, plain and simple.”
The Anti-Defamation League also condemned Carlson's comments about Zelensky as anti-Semitic: “This is exactly the kind of dangerous, hateful content that has no place in the mainstream public square,” the group said.