Scott Jennings addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition Leadership Summit on Saturday. The CNN analyst and Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year’s remarks came two days after Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts planted the organization’s flag—in dramatic fashion—with the podcast host Tucker Carlson days after Carlson conducted a friendly interview with Hitler and Stalin fan Nick Fuentes.
Jennings was in Israel when the war with Iran began and watched the Iron Dome intercept Iranian missiles. “The resolve of the Israeli people to defeat once and for all the head of the terror octopus—Iran—is something I’ll never forget,” he said.
Jennings continued: “And that’s why I need to speak out today, plainly and with no reservation, to condemn—in no uncertain terms—the attempts by some to hijack the conservative cause and even storied conservative organizations for their vile purposes.
“I am baffled and frankly shocked at the attempts by some on the right to side against the Jews after October 7 and to blame the Jews for every bad thing that has happened in our country since,” Jennings said. “When tragic acts of terrorism and murder have occurred on our own soil—even the murder of Charlie Kirk—we have heard some voices on the right rush to insert the latest Jewish conspiracy theory to explain it.
“For our leaders, let me make a suggestion: do not pussyfoot around this,” he continued. “Do not play footsie with it. Do not look the other way. Do not fear losing the support of a hateful band of brain-addled anti-Semites. You don’t want them anyway.
“What good is our movement if we can’t act any better than the radical left, which refuses to purge itself of the same kind of hate? This nation led the free world against the forces of darkness not that long ago, relegating the ideology of anti-Semitism to the dustbin of history. I humbly submit to all conservatives: it’s time we once again took out the trash.”
You can find Jennings’s remarks below. They are worth reading or watching in full.
Scott Jennings Addresses the Republican Jewish Coalition
Thank you for having me here. I am beyond humbled to be among all of you. Some of you know me from my work at CNN. Most nights, I’m the lone voice in the wilderness—or as Bill Maher calls me, “Lonely Scott.” I am not used to speaking uninterrupted for more than six or seven seconds at a time… I will do my best to make it through this uncharted territory.
Tonight, I want to talk to you all about what I believe our calling to be: it is my sincerest belief that everyone in this room is fighting for the future of Western Civilization.
I’ve been involved in politics for a long time now—25 years. I just turned 48. Over half my life I’ve spent in service to the conservative cause. Candidates have come and gone. The issues of the day have evolved over the years. And goodness knows our opponents have changed.
We now face the most radical, anti-American political opposition any of us could imagine. It’s scary, really—just how much the liberal movement has been hijacked by the enemies of the West. By those who believe the American Founding to be rotten at its core and that it should be ripped out root and branch.
But our politics—now more than ever—is a fight for the future of Western Civilization. Every time I step into the arena over at CNN, I feel like a gladiator fighting for the West—sometimes against people who very much would like to tear it down.
And one thing I know: We cannot quit. We cannot stop. We cannot tire. We cannot fail. And in this fight, we cannot concede any ground. Not in politics. Not in business. Education. Culture. And especially in the media.
We are on the front lines of a fight that will determine whether our children and grandchildren grow up in a world where the values of Western Civilization persevere… or whether they will grow up in a world shrouded in darkness, under ideologies and belief systems that are the enemies of human liberty.
To say we are defending Western Civilization is to say we are standing up for the values that built the free world—faith, reason, liberty, and the inherent worth of every human being.
The “West” is not just a place on a map; it’s a set of ideas born in Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome, and carried forward by generations who believed in truth, individual responsibility, and the rule of law. It’s the civilization that produced the Bible, the university, and the Constitution—that taught us that freedom is sacred because it flows from God, not government.
To defend the West is to defend the right to speak freely, to worship freely, to raise our families in peace, and to live by moral conviction rather than mob coercion.
This past June, I traveled to Israel—the birthplace of so much of what we call Western Civilization. As a Christian, walking in the footsteps of Jesus was both a physical and a spiritual journey. To step foot in the City of David. To walk the pilgrimage road. To stand in the very place where Christ stood and taught among the Jewish people of his day.
There is an inextricable link between Christianity and Judaism. We all trace our origins to the covenant God made with Abraham. Jesus was a Jew. And we all share the same core values: justice, compassion, charity, and the pursuit of peace… the very fundamentals of Western Civilization are traced to our Judeo-Christian heritage.
My trip to Israel refreshed my faith and strengthened my resolve to defend the West against its sworn enemies like never before.
And while I was there—as I stood on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, in fact—the war with Iran started. I witnessed firsthand the Iron Dome in action—missiles being intercepted directly over my head. The country I was standing in was literally under attack, and yet life continued. The resolve of the Israeli people to defeat once and for all the head of the terror octopus—Iran—is something I’ll never forget. Their resilience. Their courage. Ladies and gentlemen… that’s civilization refusing to bow to barbarism.
I visited Kibbutz Nir Oz near the Gaza border—one of the communities ravaged on October 7th. I walked through what remained of homes where families were murdered. Blood still on the walls. The echoes of shattered lives still hanging in the air. I stood at the site of the Nova music festival, where young people at the doorstep of their adulthood were hunted down and slaughtered.
Unspeakable atrocities were visited upon defenseless people—the full truth of which is hidden from most in the West. There is no rationalizing this barbarism. There is no justifying it. What they did to those people. To the girls. It is hard to fathom the pain and suffering… and the glee of those who inflicted it.
I spoke to survivors. People who lost everything—friends, family, their sense of security. People who hid for hours as terrorists went door to door. And you know what struck me? The disconnect between what I was seeing with my own eyes and what I’d see in Western media.
The victims told their truth. The evidence was undeniable. The barbarism was absolute. The people of Israel—the Jewish people—were treated in ways that would, or should, offend anyone with a single shred of human decency. Yet when I returned home, I watched as that truth was twisted, minimized, or simply ignored.
I watched as the victims became the villains in a grotesque inversion of reality. I watched a full-blown propaganda campaign unfold with the full weight of one political party and nearly the entire corporate media establishment.
Some of you may know I wore my yellow ribbon on TV every night for two years. I had a simple message to send: that at least one person on your television is capable of telling the difference between right and wrong.
And that’s why I need to speak out today, plainly and with no reservation, to condemn—in no uncertain terms—the attempts by some to hijack the conservative cause and even storied conservative organizations for their vile purposes.
I am baffled and frankly shocked at the attempts by some on the right to side against the Jews after October 7 and to blame the Jews for every bad thing that has happened in our country since.
When tragic acts of terrorism and murder have occurred on our own soil—even the murder of Charlie Kirk—we have heard some voices on the right rush to insert the latest Jewish conspiracy theory to explain it.
For our leaders, let me make a suggestion: do not pussyfoot around this. Do not play footsie with it. Do not look the other way. Do not fear losing the support of a hateful band of brain-addled anti-Semites. You don’t want them anyway.
What good is our movement if we can’t act any better than the radical left, which refuses to purge itself of the same kind of hate? This nation led the free world against the forces of darkness not that long ago, relegating the ideology of anti-Semitism to the dustbin of history. I humbly submit to all conservatives: it’s time we once again took out the trash.
This has nothing to do with free speech, but everything to do with deciding what sort of speech we want to be associated with. I’d hope that our movement can tell the difference between right and wrong when our political opposition has obviously failed to do so, at a time when the stakes could not be higher.
October 7th wasn’t just an attack on Israel. It was an attack on Western Civilization itself—on those very values born in Jerusalem that we hold dear.
When Hamas terrorists crossed that border, they didn’t just bring weapons. They brought with them a worldview that rejects everything the West stands for—freedom, pluralism, the basic right of Jews to exist in their ancestral homeland.
They filmed their atrocities. They called their mothers to brag about murdering Jews. They took hostages—including Americans—and paraded them through the streets as crowds—supposed civilians—cheered.
This wasn’t warfare. This was savagery. This was barbarism at war with civilization itself.
And the world’s response? Within weeks, we saw protests—not against Hamas, but against Israel’s right to defend itself.
We saw deranged anti-Semites tearing down posters of the hostages in city after city. We saw university campuses—supposedly bastions of enlightenment and reason—become hotbeds of anti-Semitic hatred.
We saw Jewish students barricaded in libraries while mobs pounded on the doors. We saw entire portions of campuses occupied and marked off limits to Jewish students. We heard professors teaching their students to hate the Jews and throw off the yoke of the true oppressors—Israel, the U.S. … the West.
Education without virtue leads to chaos. Truth without courage dies in silence. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen on too many campuses.
This past May, two Israeli embassy employees were murdered on the streets of Washington, DC. On Passover, a radical burned the Pennsylvania Governor’s mansion while the Jewish governor and his family slept inside. And in Colorado, as my friend Guy Benson put it, the Free Palestine movement transitioned from burning American flags to simply burning Americans.
The message from these enemies of the West is clear: silence yourselves, or we will do it for you.
And in New York City—home to more Jews than any city outside Tel Aviv—we have Zohran Mamdani running for mayor. He won’t condemn Hamas. He won’t say they should disarm. He calls Israel’s self-defense “genocide.”
He says the trouble with 9/11 is Islamophobia and some subway inconveniences for an aunt who isn’t really his aunt.
This man wants to run a city where over one million Jews live, and he can’t bring himself to condemn the terrorists who filmed themselves butchering Jewish families. Think about that.
The would-be mayor of New York City refuses to condemn baby killers because it might upset his base. He says he opposes any state with “religious hierarchy.” Really? Name one Islamic nation he’s questioned. I’ll wait.
It’s only the Jewish state he has a problem with. Only Israel that shouldn’t exist. Only Jewish self-determination that’s illegitimate.
He learned it from his father, Mahmood Mamdani—the Columbia University professor who says we’re thinking about it all wrong. That it’s the Israeli people who are the oppressors and that we need to think differently—about, get this, suicide bombers!
Rather than stigmatize suicide bombing as a “mark of barbarism,” he says we need to think of the bombers as “soldiers.”
In short, the Mamdani family legitimizes terrorists while seeking to delegitimize the state of Israel. And they don’t stop there. They believe America is rotten.
Mahmood Mamdani wrote—quote—”The United States is the outcome of a history of genocide, ethnic cleansing, official racism, and concentration camps.” Mahmood Mamdani argues that “for the Nazis,” America and President Abraham Lincoln were “the inspiration” for their genocide.
You can boo. You should boo. And you should fear what comes next. Zohran Mamdani says his dad has played a quote “massive role” in the way he sees the world.
Lord, help us. And pray for the people of New York City.
This isn’t simply progressive politics. It’s the world’s oldest hatred dressed up in a new suit. When terrorists murder Jews, he hems and haws. When Israel defends itself, he finds his voice.
That’s not leadership. That’s cowardice. When given a choice between civilization and barbarism, he chose barbarism. When given a choice between New York’s Jewish constituents and the hateful mob, he chose the mob.
These are the people who want to tear down the moral and spiritual inheritance of the West—who see Jerusalem not as the wellspring of our values but as the source of all oppression.
During my trip, I visited the Western Wall. I stood where millions have stood before me—Jews and Christians alike—at this sacred site that represents thousands of years of faith, persecution, survival, and triumph.
Jerusalem. Athens. Rome. The three pillars of Western Civilization. And there I was, standing at the heart of it all.
I thought about the miracle of Israel itself. A nation reborn after 2,000 years. A democracy surrounded by autocracies. A country that turns deserts into gardens while its neighbors turn gardens into deserts… or worse.
And I thought about America’s role as Israel’s indispensable ally—not just because of shared interests, but because of shared values—and those values that teach us freedom is sacred not because it comes from government, but because it comes from God.
Israel is the tip of the spear defending Western Civilization in the Middle East. It is the willing and necessary fighter against radical Islamic terrorism.
Protesting Israel? Give me a break. We should be thanking Israel with all our heart—every single day.
The same people trying to destroy Israel would gladly and willingly destroy the United States in a heartbeat. When we abandon Israel, we abandon our own principles.
The West now faces a choice. We can stand with those who build—or with those who destroy. We can stand with those who protect life—or those who celebrate death. We can stand with those who protect and celebrate human freedom—or allow the continued march of those who enslave, rape, and murder.
We can stand up for Western Civilization—or watch it crumble.
Much of Europe has, sadly, made its choice. England—overrun. France—overrun. Germany too. Their feckless leaders, cowering in the face of a mass migration crisis of their own making, have brought radical Islam to their very doorsteps. It is truly pathetic. And dangerous.
Despite Europe’s best efforts to the contrary, President Trump did prevail in bringing the hostages home and helping Israel restore peace and security.
My message to Europe: remember your Churchill. “Eat me last” will never work, whether in staving off war or the loss of your culture.
America is the last best hope for the West. It is obvious. And the Republican Party has always understood this fundamental truth: America and Israel stand together because we are both inheritors and defenders of the Western tradition.
Those who hate Israel hate America. Those who want to destroy the Jewish state want to destroy the West itself.
That’s why President Trump moved our embassy to Jerusalem. That’s why he recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. That’s why he stood up to Iran instead of appeasing it.
The decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities was a righteous decision from which you can draw a direct line to the hostages being released and the possibility of peace in the Middle East.
Our President understood that in this fight for Western Civilization, we cannot cede any ground—or allow the forces of darkness to possess any weapon that could lead to our demise.
Give. This. Man. The. Nobel. Peace. Prize. Already.
I have four boys—16, 12, 10, and 8. Three are here with me this weekend. When I think about their future, I don’t just want them to grow up in a prosperous country. I want them to grow up in a good country.
A country that believes in truth, individual responsibility, and the rule of law. A country that knows the difference between good and evil. A country that stands with its friends—especially when the spirit of the age demands otherwise.
A country that inspires us to live boldly for something greater than ourselves. A country that says “Never Again” and means it.
We’re not just fighting for policy positions. We’re fighting for the soul—for the very existence—of Western Civilization.
We’re fighting for the radical proposition that free people can govern themselves, worship as they choose, and live in peace. We’re fighting for the idea that a Jewish state has the right to exist and defend itself. That Jewish children should be able to wear their yarmulkes to school without fear. That “Zionist” isn’t a slur but a statement of belief in the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.
So as I close tonight, let us remember that defending Western Civilization is not an act of nostalgia—it is an act of stewardship.
We are heirs to a legacy purchased by the courage of those who came before us—men and women who believed that truth was worth dying for, and that freedom was worth defending.
The Jewish people know this better than anyone. For millennia, you have been the keepers of the flame—preserving not just your own traditions but the moral foundation upon which all of Western Civilization rests.
Through exile and persecution, through pogroms and the Holocaust, that flame never went out. As Churchill said… it flickered at times, but it never died. And in 1948, it blazed forth again with the rebirth of Israel.
That flame burns brightly today—in the courage of Israeli soldiers defending their homeland, in the faith of those who still pray at the Western Wall and at the Shabbat table… and in the determination of every person in this room who refuses to be silent in the face of old hatred that has once again reared its disgusting head.
Our charge is to keep that flame alive—to carry it into a confused world that desperately needs clarity… into a divided culture that needs courage… and into a dark age that still longs for the light.
Because if we remain faithful to God and to the truths that built this great civilization, then our best days—and the world’s—are still ahead.
And you have my word: I will never—NEVER—stop fighting for you, for America, for Israel’s right to exist, and for the West… in every debate I ever have.
Every time I sit down at that CNN desk to debate these issues, I think of the survivors I met at Nir Oz and at Nova. I think of the families still waiting for their hostages to come home, God rest their souls. I think of the Jewish students who are still afraid to walk across their own campuses.
I think of Edit Ohel—who I met this summer—a mother waiting for her boy Alon to be returned to her. I think of how broken she was. And today I think of the video of her family as they welcomed their son back home.
And I think of our President, Donald J. Trump. For without his intervention, his unique talents, and his unwavering moral clarity when it comes to telling the difference between the good guys and the bad… Alon would still be trapped in a Gaza terror tunnel today.
And I think of all of you—the guardians of Western Civilization, the defenders of the covenant between America and Israel. We all now have a responsibility to carry the torch into the future.
To stand up when others sit down. To speak truth when others spread lies. To defend civilization at a time when the barbarians are quite literally at the gates.
Failure is not an option. History will judge us not by our words but by our courage. Not by what we said we believed… but by what we were willing to fight for.
Twenty-five years ago, when I started in politics, I couldn’t have imagined we’d be here—fighting not just for electoral victories but for civilization itself.
Of course that changed on 9/11. And sometimes I fear we’ve forgotten the lessons of that day—that there is evil in this world and that moral clarity, principle, and backbone are required to defeat it.
But here we are. And here we must stand. The enemies of civilization are counting on us to grow weary. To grow silent. To abandon Israel in its hour of need.
They’re wrong. Because in this room sits the living embodiment of resilience. Together, we will ensure that the light of Western Civilization continues to shine.
That America remains Israel’s unshakeable ally. And that our children inherit a world where freedom triumphs over tyranny, where good defeats evil, and where the Jewish people live in peace and security in their eternal homeland.
Thank you, Republican Jewish Coalition. God bless you, God bless Israel… and GOD BLESS the United States of America.
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