A massive firestorm has consumed the right since early last week, when Tucker Carlson published a lengthy interview with Nick Fuentes. In that sit-down, Carlson allowed the Holocaust-denying white supremacist streamer, who has said “Hitler is awesome,” to sand down his vile rhetoric for Carlson’s huge audience.
Commentators and politicians on the right have taken sides. Many condemned Carlson’s softball interview — and criticized Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts for defending it. But Fox News, the single most influential outlet in the MAGAsphere and Carlson’s former employer, has remained totally silent on the controversy. No one on Fox has explicitly mentioned Carlson, Fuentes or the surrounding controversy since Carlson posted his interview with Fuentes on Oct. 27, according to a Media Matters review conducted Thursday morning.
Former Fox employees and commentators, including those at other Murdoch-owned publications, have harshly criticized Fuentes, Carlson and Carlson’s allies.
Fox host Mark Levin, who previously jousted with Carlson over Middle East policy, came the closest of anyone on the network to mentioning the dispute. Levin hosts two talk shows: a weekend TV show on Fox and a weekday radio show not affiliated with the network. On the radio, Levin described his former Fox colleague as a “mentally unhinged bigot,” and the Fuentes interview as “unconscionable.”
But on Sunday night’s edition of his Fox broadcast, Levin and conservative British author Douglas Murray only obliquely criticized what Levin termed “this poison that is spreading — anti-Western, antisemitic, anti-Christian — including on the kook right.” The network subsequently published two clips from the broadcast on its website, but this discussion was not one of them.
While Fox has ignored the burgeoning controversy, former Fox employees and commentators, including those at other Murdoch-owned publications, have harshly criticized Fuentes, Carlson and Carlson’s allies.
Ben Shapiro, a former Fox contributor and host and currently a popular podcaster at The Daily Wire, devoted his entire Monday show to the story. He condemned Carlson as “the most virulent super spreader of vile ideas in America,” and Roberts for his “betrayal of the Heritage Foundation’s history and principles.”
“The sane right draws the line on Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes’ bile” was the title of the New York Post’s editorial published the same day. “It’s been heartening these last few days,” wrote the editorial board of the Murdoch-owned publication, “to see the overwhelming majority of the American right dump on low-rent hate-monger Nick Fuentes — and on podcaster Tucker Carlson for credulously promoting him.”
My Media Matters colleagues and I first chronicled Carlson’s unusual support among white nationalists in 2017.
The Post also published blistering pieces from Murray, who accused Carlson of using his interview to “simply launder Fuentes’ reputation and try to give him a veneer of reasonableness and respectability,” and former Fox contributor and current National Review Editor Rich Lowry, who charged Carlson with “playing a long game to make anti-Zionism and hostility to Judaism part of right-wing orthodoxy.” (Lowry’s National Review also published an editorial criticizing the “friendly” Carlson-Fuentes interview and calling for “A Time for Choosing on Antisemitism.”)
The editorial board of the Murdochs’ Wall Street Journal also weighed in: “An old political poison is growing on the new right, led by podcasters and internet opportunists who are preoccupied with the Jews. It is spreading wider and faster than we thought, and it has even found an apologist in Kevin Roberts, president of the venerable Heritage Foundation.”
Even Fox competitor Newsmax, whose hosts usually try to attract an audience by going to the network’s right, is airing segments condemning Carlson.
But Fox’s executives and stars apparently don’t want “a time for choosing on antisemitism” or to address the “old political poison” that is “growing on the new right” or to try to “draw the line” on such bile. They may be worried about angering viewers on either side of the debate, or getting out ahead of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who are close to Carlson and have not weighed in on the interview.
Or, perhaps, they recognize that Carlson’s mainstreaming of Fuentes is not coming out of nowhere — and that it is consistent with his behavior when he enjoyed Fox’s support as the network’s top-rated host.
My Media Matters colleagues and I first chronicled Carlson’s unusual support among white nationalists in 2017 and detailed how he regularly regurgitated their talking points the following year. In 2019, Derek Black, a former white nationalist, told CNN that his family “watches Tucker Carlson’s show once and then watches it on the replay because they feel that he is making the white nationalist talking points better than they have and they’re trying to get some tips on how to advance it.”
In April 2021, Carlson claimed that Democrats want to “replace the current electorate” with “more obedient voters from the Third World.” It was a clear invocation of the “great replacement theory,” a white supremacist conspiracy theory whose adherents include multiple mass shooters. Following widespread outrage about Carlson’s comments, Lachlan Murdoch falsely asserted Carlson had actually “decried and rejected replacement theory.” The following May, The New York Times published a three-part series on how Carlson, with the support of the Murdochs, created “what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news.”
But Fox wasn’t alone in failing. When the network finally parted ways with Carlson in 2023, he went independent and doubled-down on conspiracy theories and explicit attacks on American Jews. Despite this, he received a plum speaking slot at the 2024 Republican National Convention.
For years, right-wing institutions, commentators and politicians have had ample opportunities to distance themselves from Carlson. But they largely refused to take those off-ramps. It is good that some on the right are trying to reinstall some guardrails — and it would be better if Fox would join the effort — but they have only themselves to blame for their current predicament.