Tucker Carlson is not your friend

Tucker Carlson is not your friend

Courtesy | The Tucker Carlson Show

December 18 is an important date for Nick Fuentes. During a podcast with Tucker Carlson released in October, Fuentes remarked, “That’s Joseph Stalin’s birthday. I’m a fan.”

“You’re a fan of Stalin’s?” asked Carlson.

“Always an admirer,” Fuentes replied.

“We’ll circle back to that,” Carlson said.

This exchange set the tone for Carlson’s friendly interview with Fuentes, a man who openly defends Stalin and Hitler. Fuentes went on to describe “organized Jewry” as the main obstacle to national unity and blamed “Zionist Jews” for hindering the political progress of the American right.

Many Hillsdale College students, including some of my own friends, regularly listen to Tucker Carlson. They often say they value his willingness to challenge long-standing conservative orthodoxy, including U.S. foreign policy.

Carlson has every right to express his opinions under the protection of the First Amendment, and no conservative I know wants his podcast removed from YouTube. Yet, after this interview, it’s clear he no longer deserves trust or a serious role in modern conservatism.

Bad ideas should be confronted with rigorous questions and stronger reasoning. Carlson, however, did neither. Any good interviewer would have pressed further when a guest claims admiration for a dictator like Stalin. Although Carlson occasionally tried to moderate Fuentes’s tone, his “pushback” instead seemed designed to make Fuentes appear less extreme than he truly is.

Author’s Summary

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes normalized extremist views by failing to challenge Fuentes’s open praise of dictators and antisemitic claims.

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Hillsdale Collegian Hillsdale Collegian — 2025-11-07

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