Fox News pundit Brett Cooper dances around condemnation of white nationalist Nick Fuentes

Popular conservative podcaster Brett Cooper went out of her way to avoid criticizing notorious white nationalist Nick Fuentes in a recent interview with NPR, saying that while she did not “agree with Nick Fuentes on everything” she still doesn’t “think I need to sit here and condemn anyone either way.”

Cooper’s repeated deflections when asked if Fuentes’ antisemitic and racist views should be condemned comes a month after she accused Texas Senator Ted Cruz of hypocrisy for calling Fuentes a Nazi, prompting the Republican senator to fire back and call Cooper an “angry lady.”

Cooper, a former Daily Wire star who recently joined Fox News as a paid contributor, sat down for a wide-ranging interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep this week that saw her express her disagreements with President Donald Trump while insisting that she “makes up her own mind” when it comes to her viewpoints.

For instance, she disagreed with the president recently saying that the United States needed high-skilled immigrants because Americans lacked certain talents. “I think my disappointment and concern was shared by my audience and people who are like me,” the 24-year-old YouTuber told NPR. “This is like the worst thing for a president to say.”

She also knocked Trump for repeatedly calling the affordability crisis a Democratic “hoax” and dismissing Americans’ concerns about rising costs, pointing out that she uses her show to reflect what younger people are thinking.

“I want my audience to know that if you’re coming to watch the Brett Cooper Show, she doesn’t have a senator in her ear saying, ‘Hey, these are my opinions, could you share them?’” she stated. “But if I see what’s going on X, Ted Cruz saying something, I want to talk about it.”

Eventually, Inskeep brought up the growing rift within the American conservative movement over the rising influence of Fuentes, which exploded and sparked a MAGA “civil war” after former Fox News star Tucker Carlson gave the leader of the “Groyper Army” an extremely chummy interview.

In the aftermath of Carlson’s warm embrace of Fuentes, which saw the hard-right provocateur rage about the “organized Jewry” controlling America, the prominent conservative think tank Heritage Foundation was thrust into turmoil after its president defended Carlson’s platforming of Fuentes. Cruz, meanwhile, has sought to use the split within the right over Fuentes – who just this week declared that Adolf Hitler is “f***ing cool” – to launch a prospective 2028 presidential bid.

Amid the conservative uproar over the Carlson/Fuentes sitdown, Cooper took aim at Cruz’s fiery reaction, which included him decrying the ex-Fox star while calling Fuentes a Nazi.

“You’re doing this out of blind rage because you’re so angry that the conservative base’s attitudes are rapidly changing, that Nick Fuentes is getting national attention,” Cooper reacted on her show last month, claiming Cruz was a hypocrite since he’d previously bashed liberals for accusing conservatives of being Nazis.

Fuentes, who had previously been a critic of Cooper when she was at the Daily Wire, immediately celebrated her response to the Texas senator. “She took a break from the celebrity gossip to take the mask off and go full redpill. I admire her,” he declared, claiming that she’d also gone “groyper from the top rope” when she urged another GOP lawmaker to move to Israel.

During her interview with Inskeep, Cooper defended her position on Fuentes, saying that everyone has a “right to say whatever they want” and that conservatives going out of their way to criticize the far-right extremist were guilty of “the Streisand effect” and merely drawing more attention to him.

“For Gen Z, what people on both sides of the aisle need to realize is, the more that you tell my generation not to watch something, not to look into something, not to listen to something, that something is bad, or censor somebody, we’re going to go look for that content,” Cooper insisted.

However, when further pressed on whether she agrees with what Fuentes says and promotes, Cooper appeared to demur.

“You know, I don’t agree with Nick Fuentes on everything. I don’t agree with anybody on everything,” she asserted. “I think what older generations need to learn about Nick Fuentes is, and he’s said it himself, he’s an edgelord. He says things that are intentionally inflammatory. He knows that a lot of people aren’t going to agree with him… and honestly, I don’t pay much attention to it.”

Inskeep, meanwhile, pressed Cooper on Fuentes’ recent claim that “Jewish gangsters” are running the country, wondering if she agreed with that notion. “No, not really,” she replied, before adding: “I am concerned about the impact of Israel in our country. I think a lot of young people are.”

Asked why Fuentes had gained such a massive following, Cooper went on to quote a “Zionist” friend of hers who purportedly told her that Fuentes was “funny,” adding that the Holocaust-denying podcaster had become a “meme” for younger Americans.

In the end, when confronted with Cruz’s call to choose between condemning Fuentes or being complicit in his hateful rhetoric, Cooper said it wasn’t her place to tell Americans who they should listen to.

“I don’t think I need to sit here and condemn anyone either way,” she concluded. “There are things that Nick says that I don’t agree with. There are things that Ted Cruz says that I don’t agree with. I’m not going to sit here and condemn either of them.”