Overly influential right-wing broadcaster Tucker Carlson responded to conservatives who criticized his recent softball interview with neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, saying, “Do your own interview the way that you want to do it. You’re not my editor. Buzz off.”

Carlson issued his response during a recent chat with former Fox News host Megyn Kelly on her SiriusXM show. “You want to go yell at Nick Fuentes? I’ll give you his cell. Call him and go sit and yell at him and feel virtuous or whatever.”

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Fuentes has referred to Black people as n-words, said that “the GOP is run by Jews, atheists, and homosexuals,” described Adolf Hitler as “really fu**ing cool,” has cast doubt that the Holocaust happened, said “perfidious Jews” must “be given the death penalty” after “we take power,” and said, “A lot of women want to be raped… They want a guy to beat the s**t out of them.”

Carlson conducted a softball interview with Fuentes in late October, which has since been viewed over 5.5 million times on YouTube. During his interview, Carlson neither brought up nor challenged any of Fuentes’ past inflammatory statements. Fuentes said he liked ruthless totalitarian leader Joseph Stalin, talked about the threat posed by America’s “organized Jewry,” and Carlson criticized Republican “Christian Zionists” who support Israel as being ”seized by this brain virus.”

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Sen. Ted Cruz (R) and anti-LGBTQ+ conservative commentator Ben Shapiro have both criticized Carlson’s interview with Fuentes.

Cruz accused Carlson of helping “spread a poison that is profoundly dangerous,” adding, “If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool, and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing, then you are [a] coward and you are complicit in that evil.”

At the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention in Washington D.C. on Friday, Cruz added, “My [Republican political] colleagues, almost to a person, think what is happening is horrible, but a great many of them are frightened because [Carlson] has one hell of a big megaphone…. Fuentes and Tucker and the rest of that ilk have a right to say what they are saying. Every one of us has an obligation to stand up and say it is wrong.”

Shapiro said of Carlson’s interview, “Tucker Carlson decided that it was important not only to host Fuentes but to smooth over his views, water them down and make them far more palatable to a normal audience. This is what Tucker Carlson does for a living,” adding, “[Carlson is] the most virulent super spreader of vile ideas in America.” 

In response to such criticisms, Carlson said to Kelly, “[Critics ask] ‘Why aren’t you yelling at him?’ … OK, why? So, I can show that I’m a good person. I care about what my wife thinks, my children think, and God thinks. And that’s it. I don’t need to prove that I am a good person to you.”

“You may think I’m a terrible person. OK, I’m just doing my thing, which is, I want to understand what people think,” Carlson continued. “And I’m committed to that. And if you don’t like it, don’t watch. That’s my view.”

Numerous critics have said that by featuring Fuentes on his massively popular online show, Carlson has reaffirmed Fuentes as a legitimate political thinker whose ideas should be part of mainstream conservative conversation.

Carlson’s interview with Fuentes occurs amid numerous Republican antisemitism scandals, including Young Republican activists proclaiming their love of Hitler in a leaked chat, a MAGA congressman displaying a swastika inside his office, and the Department of Homeland Security featuring an anti-Jewish slur in one of their social media videos.

“I am no longer the radical on the outside,” Fuentes said on his own broadcast following his interview with Carlson. “I’m actually the leader on the inside.”

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