‘He is actually making the conservative movement more likely to lose by attacking inside the tent significantly more often than anyone else on the right’
Ben Shapiro will consider a “detente” with Tucker Carlson when the Nazi-adjacent podcast host stops praising communist dictators like Nicolas Maduro, socialist mayors like Zohran Mamdani, and white supremacist influencers like Nick Fuentes, he said Thursday.
Speaking with Megyn Kelly for a live taping of her show in Jacksonville, Fla.—a full audio recording of which can be accessed here—Shapiro said that, while Carlson was once “a great advocate for many things on the right, particularly on the immigration issue,” that’s not the case anymore.
“I do not think he is advocating for right-wing positions. He is not more conservative than I am by any stretch of the imagination on any possible issue,” Shapiro said. “And when it comes to the question as to whether he is actually making the conservative movement more likely to lose by attacking inside the tent significantly more often than anyone else on the right, while simultaneously massaging … the nation’s leading white supremacist, I’m sorry, there’s no detente with those positions.”
Shapiro was addressing Carlson’s chummy Oct. 27 interview with Fuentes, a self-described “fan” of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Carlson did not press Fuentes on his head-turning statements like, “I love Hitler,” “Hitler had aura,” and “I think the Holocaust is exaggerated.” Rather, the pair discussed topics like marriage, masturbation, and “organized Jewry” and took aim at Christian Zionists like Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. Carlson said they suffer from a “brain virus.”
Shapiro savaged Carlson over the interview in a Nov. 3 episode of The Ben Shapiro Show titled, “Tucker Carlson Sabotages America.” But not long before the ordeal—in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination—Shapiro said he shared a “very nice” text exchange with Carlson. Shapiro said he suggested the two do a show together addressing the threat posed by the Democratic Socialists of America. Carlson replied that he would “spend the next week or two thinking about how to be the most effective.”
“He proceeded, in my opinion, to spend the subsequent weeks doing literally nothing to fight the left,” Shapiro said in Jacksonville, noting that Carlson mentioned New York City’s socialist mayoral-elect Zohran Mamdani on just one show after their text exchange—to offer praise for some of his policy proposals.
“The number of times that Tucker Carlson has mentioned Zohran Mamdani since October 5 on his show is once, and it was in the context of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson talking about the appeal of Zohran Mamdani,” he continued. “Just by way of contrast … since October 5, I did 17 separate shows on Zohran Mamdani, including four in the last week before the election. Because when you’re orienting against the left, you really should orient against the left.”
When it came to speaking out against Carlson, Shapiro said he drew the line at hosting Fuentes, who has argued women want to be raped and described Vice President J.D. Vance as a “fat, gay, race traitor that married a jeet.”
“If I see somebody breach basic moral values by having on a Nazi and, in my own view, gloss the Nazi, then I’m going to speak out about that, and I’m going to point out that there is a long pattern of him ideologically laundering terrible ideas over the course of the last two years, ranging from traveling to Russia to sniff the bread and explain why the Russian regime is actually wonderful, to saying last week that the Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro is not that bad because they’re being attacked by, in his words, ‘Globohomo,'” Shapiro said of Carlson.
Carlson responded to criticism of his interview with Fuentes during his own live sitdown with Kelly, which took place in New York on Wednesday. Asked why he didn’t press Fuentes more forcefully, Carlson said, “You know, do your own interview the way that you want to do it. You’re not my editor. Buzz off. I mean, I don’t know. 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.”
Shapiro noted that Carlson is capable of challenging his podcast guests, pointing to the interview he conducted with Cruz in June.
“I know what it looks like when Tucker Carlson decides to be an aggressive interviewer, when he decides to ask difficult questions,” Shapiro said. “Tucker is eminently capable of that, and he did it to Ted Cruz quite thoroughly.”
“But he decided for any number of reasons … that he was going to treat Fuentes with kid gloves, that he was going to not ask him about any of the things that I’ve just mentioned—literally any of them—and essentially normalize Fuentes as a sort of gateway drug,” Shapiro continued.
“When Tucker changes his positions, then sure, if he does not change his positions, then no,” he said of a potential “detente.”
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