Anti-Israel podcaster Tucker Carlson’s decision to leave the Republican Party “can only be seen as a good sign, not just for Republicans but for the future of the American experiment in representative government, tolerance for all and pursuit of peace,” Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told JNS.
“Despite his statements, it is not Israel, America or the Republican Party that has changed but Carlson himself,” Menken said. “Israel was attacked by genocidal enemies 30 years ago, responded with force in order to restore peace and Americans, especially American conservatives, supported Israel in that fight.”
“Carlson’s own past criticism of politicians obsessed with ‘needling the Jews’ applies with equal force to who Carlson has become today,” the rabbi told JNS.
The former Fox News host recently said on his podcast that “there’s no chance I would support the Republican Party” in midterm elections.
“Not gonna support the Democratic Party,” he added. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Menken told JNS that “for decades, mainstream Democrats covered for the explosion of antisemitic extremism in their progressive flank, now represented by members of Congress like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.”
“We saw in figures like Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes a similar danger on the right, especially when the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, threw his organization’s support with Carlson and dismissed his critics,” he said.
The GOP “made a different choice, and it is Carlson himself who, along with President Trump, has made this clear,” Menken said. “Republicans refused to let antisemitism become a tolerated faction within their ranks and reaffirmed that support for Israel, opposition to terrorism and the fight against Jew-hatred are non-negotiable.”
“Tucker Carlson wanted to take the Republican Party down a different and much darker road. He failed,” the rabbi told JNS. “Republicans chose principle over populist grievance, America’s allies over its enemies and moral clarity over moral confusion. Carlson’s departure tells us that the American political system still has a place for those who value American civilization. For this, we are grateful.”
The coalition is a nonprofit, with a rabbinic “circle” of more than 2,500 traditional, Orthodox rabbis, and it “promotes classical Jewish principles in public policy,” per its website.
