Calling U.S. President Donald Trump’s defense of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson “disgusting,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced on the Senate floor on Thursday that he would introduce a resolution condemning antisemitism and white supremacy.
The highest-ranking Jewish official in Congress, the senator said that his resolution also would call out Carlson for giving a platform to Holocaust denier and white supremacist Nick Fuentes. He called on his Republican colleagues to “take a clear stand against hatred and antisemitism” by supporting his proposal.
Trump told reporters over the weekend that he had no problem with Carlson’s interview with Fuentes, who has dined with the president and Ye, the former Kanye West, who also has expressed antisemitic views.
“You can’t tell him who to interview,” Trump said.
Trump also offered some kind words for Carlson, who received a prime-time speaking role at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“He said good things about me over the years,” Trump said. “I think he’s good. We’ve had some good interviews.”
Schumer called Trump’s comments about Carlson’s interview “disgusting.”
“For Donald Trump to excuse and protect the spread of Nick Fuentes’s ideology confirms what many of us have long said: White supremacy and antisemitism are taking deep roots, unfortunately, within the Republican Party,” Schumer said in his Senate floor speech.
Outrage over Carlson’s friendly interview with Fuentes is bipartisan. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has emerged as a sharp critic of Carlson, doubled down on his critical comments during a live town hall on SiriusXM on Wednesday.
“I think Tucker is dangerous,” Cruz said. “I think what he’s saying is wrong, and I’m calling him out, and I’m calling him out over and over and over again.”
Cruz also voiced those concerns at the start of last month’s Republican Jewish Coalition annual legislative conference, and they wound up dominating the discussion all weekend.
Before then, texts by Young Republicans leaked in October were shown to be full of racist and antisemitic language.
“In the last six months, I’ve seen more antisemitism on the right than any time in my life,” Cruz said on SiriusXM. “It is wrong, and from my perspective, I’m going to do everything I can to stop it.”
The Democratic Party has had its own problem with antisemitism.
After Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) resurrected the ages-old canard that Jews are not 100% loyal citizens, the House, then controlled by Democrats, voted overwhelmingly in March 2019 to reject “the perpetuation of antisemitic stereotypes in the United States and around the world, including the pernicious myth of dual loyalty and foreign allegiance, especially in the context of support for the United States-Israel alliance.”
The incoming mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, has accused Israel of genocide and initially refused to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which Jews see as a call for violence against them.
In addition, Schumer came under fire last year for refusing to allow a vote on the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would have codified the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) accused Schumer of being “too scared to piss off his base and the pro-Hamas wing” of the Democratic Party.
This time around, Schumer said he hoped Senate Republicans would support his resolution.
“Calling out antisemitism should not be a partisan issue,” he said. “In fact, when we refuse to condemn antisemitism, when we stay silent and fail to reject antisemitic rhetoric, when we normalize hateful figures spewing disgusting antisemitism, that is when antisemitism spreads throughout society like a poisonous wildfire.”
