U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance clarified his position on antisemitism in the conservative movement amid a recent backlash to his Dec. 21 speech at Turning Point USA’s America Fest, when he defended the conservative movement’s acceptance of former Fox News host and current podcaster Tucker Carlson.
During a Jan. 6 interview with CNN, Scott Jennings said that “there’s been a lot of conversation in the conservative world about certain kinds of views espoused by certain kinds of people, and they try to drag you into this conversation all the time.”
“Just for the record, does the conservative movement need to warehouse anybody out there espousing antisemitism in any way?” Jennings asked the vice president.
“No, it doesn’t, Scott,” Vance replied. “I think we need to reject all forms of ethnic hatred, whether it’s antisemitism, anti-black hatred, anti-white hatred.”
The vice president said rejecting ethnic hatred is “one of the great things about the conservative coalition,” noting that “we are fundamentally rooted in the Christian principles that founded the United States of America. And one of those very important principles is that we judge people as individuals.”
He continued: “Every person is made in the image of God. You judge them by what they do, not by what ethnic group they belong to. And I think that principle is important. It’s something we’ve got to hold onto in the conservative movement because God knows the left abandoned it a long time ago.”
His answer drew criticism on X for not being specific enough, with many responders comparing it to the way Democrats talk about antisemitism, and others wishing Jennings had asked the vice president about his friendship with Carlson.
Daniel Flesch, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, posted that Vance needs a “better answer on why the conservative movement should not tolerate antisemitism than what is effectively the equivalent of the Democrats’ ‘and Islamaphobia’ response.”
