Notorious white nationalist Nick Fuentes sarcastically tore into Tucker Carlson this week for being an “absolute madman” and going “overkill” with the antisemitism at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, claiming that Carlson’s remarks were “a little far even for me.”
Fuentes was referencing the former Fox News star’s eulogy of Kirk, which featured Carlson likening the Turning Point USA co-founder’s assassination to the death of Jesus Christ and making comments that have been widely criticized as anti-Jewish.
“Jesus shows up and he starts talking about the people in power and he starts doing the worst thing you can do, which is tell the truth,” Carlson declared. “And they hate it, and they just go bonkers. And they become obsessed with making him stop.”
Carlson went on to say that he could “picture the scene in a lamp-lit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus, thinking about, ‘What do we do about this guy telling the truth about us. We must make him stop talking!’” The Anti-Defamation League condemned Carlson’s comments, stating that they dangerously reinforced the belief that Jews killed Jesus and that Jews have been a malevolent force throughout history.”
During his podcast on Monday, Fuentes – who has been engaged in a months-long feud with Carlson – hyperbolically framed the ex-Fox host’s remarks to make it appear that Carlson had made overtly explicit antisemitic slurs during his speech.
“That was crazy. Dude, when Tucker Carlson got up at Charlie Kirk’s funeral, when they were lowering his coffin into the ground, and he got up on the microphone and said: ‘‘I’m really sick of these f*cking hummus-eating, hook-nose, money-changing, penny-pitching, Christ-killing Jews that poison the wells in the Middle Ages.’ You know, I thought that was overkill!” Fuentes exclaimed.
Laughing and smirking the whole time, the “Groyper” leader continued to needle Carlson over his eulogy. At the same time, Fuentes also suggested that his own personal views are more moderate than Carlson’s.
“I know people are telling me I’ve changed, people are telling me I have pivoted. I know I’m gonna sound like a p****y for saying it. I thought that was a little inappropriate,” Fuentes snarked. “At his funeral, his weeping mother, weeping wife, flanking him on either side, the coffin lowering into the ground. When Tucker started blasting the K-word, he started saying ‘total war’ in German. I was like, dude, time and place, inappropriate. What is wrong with you?!”
Quipping that Carlson’s speech was “a little far even for me,” Fuentes continued to embellish what the right-wing pundit actually said at Kirk’s memorial, all while invoking claims made by far-right provocateur Laura Loomer about Carlson being funded by Muslim interests.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into him lately. Maybe it’s the Qatari money or something, but it was a little extreme,” he added. “The ranting, the raving. It was like, oh boy, that’s a little hot even. And they say I’m the number one anti-Semite. That was a little intense.”
After poking fun at Carlson for doing his “maniacal laugh” on the stage at Kirk’s service, Fuentes then decided to “unironically” discuss Carlson’s speech and his attempt to distance himself from any implication that Jewish people had anything to do with Kirk’s death.
“Then he went, ‘Oh,’ and then they called him out. And he said, ‘I didn’t say that.’ He said, ‘Me? Everyone eats hummus. I like hummus, what do you mean?’ Dude, the absolute madman,” Fuentes proclaimed. “Tucker is like the GOAT of gaslighting. But unironically, he goes up at the memorial and said, ‘Charlie Kirk told the truth. You know who else told the truth? Jesus. And you know what happened? He got killed by Jews.’”
He continued: “And people said, ‘So are you saying that the Jews killed Charlie Kirk in the way that they killed Jesus for telling the truth, because they hate the truth?’ And Tucker said, ‘I never said that. You’re crazy. I never said that. Everyone eats hummus. What do you mean? Everyone runs Jerusalem.’ And it was like, dude, the king of gaslighting, the GOAT of gaslighting. He got, look, put some respect on his name. The guy’s the GOAT of gaslighting.”
Earlier this summer, Carlson and fellow MAGA podcaster Candace Owens criticized the increasing amount of influence and attention Fuentes has been receiving in the right-wing media ecosystem, especially since the avowed racist had seemingly been permanently exiled to the fringes of the fever swamps.
Complaining that Fuentes – who has been highly critical of Donald Trump and his administration – has largely targeted “people that are sincere, non-crazy, not hateful opponents of neocon politics,” Carlson suggested that Fuentes was a federal agent running a “psyop” against the right. He also described him as a “weird little gay kid in his basement.”
Fuentes, meanwhile, followed up by arguing that it was actually Carlson who was the secret federal agent, adding that it was “pretty cut and dry.” As The Bulwark’s Will Sommer reported at the time, conservative commentators and influencers – and Fuentes’ “groyper” followers – felt that the infamous white nationalist “basement-dweller” got the better of Carlson in the back-and-forth.
Fuentes, meanwhile, was also embroiled in a lengthy conflict with Kirk and his organization, which he referred to as the “Groyper War.” After spending years trolling TPUSA and disrupting their events while mocking Kirk for being insufficiently right-wing, Fuentes declared victory this past June after Kirk and other prominent conservatives called to “ban third-world immigration.”
“And suffice to say, the groypers have won. It’s just not even a question at this point,” Fuentes bragged on his podcast at the time.
Fuentes, whom Republicans and conservatives rushed to disown after it was revealed he attended a dinner with Trump alongside antisemitic rapper Kanye West a few years ago, has suddenly found himself welcomed by mainstream commentators – who have downplayed his lengthy history of hateful rhetoric.
Interviewing Fuentes on his popular podcast last week, Patrick Bet-David repeatedly praised the white supremacist influencer while claiming that his audience would “like” the conversation. Merely saying Fuentes should be more “careful with what you’re saying.”
Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer-winning journalist who has leaned into anti-liberal contrarian punditry in recent years, gushed over the “very impressive” Fuentes in August before inviting him onto his show this week.
During their interview, Greenwald lauded Fuentes for his authenticity, adding that it makes it easy for critics to “demonize and attack you by taking these quotes that can sound not just very racist, but very almost Nazi-like and kind of an extermination rhetoric.”
In fact, it was just three weeks ago that Fuentes got the New York Times profile treatment, which noted the amount of traction that he is gaining within the conservative movement – while also pointing out that Fuentes is now trying to rehabilitate his own image and soften his overt racism and antisemitism.
