MAGA Fight Intensifies Over Tucker Carlson Interview

An intense civil war of sorts is percolating within the MAGA movement, and a number of outlets are piecing together the fragments. Two of the biggest players pitted against each other are Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro, both of whom hold major sway with millions of followers and podcast listeners. Details on the fight, which revolves around antisemitism:

• This all began when Carlson hosted white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes on his podcast last week. As Politico explains, Carlson has been taking heavy flak for allowing Fuentes to air his views with little or no pushback from the host.
• Shapiro entered the fray in a big way on Monday via his own podcast by describing Carlson as "the most virulent superspreader of vile ideas in America," per the New York Times. "This is how Tucker Carlson's ideological laundering works," he said. "You bring your dirty, ugly ideologies to Tucker Carlson's rhetorical car wash. He mixes it with some of the vestigial respect Americans have for him, from his Fox News days. And, voilà: Hideous ideas suddenly become mainstream."

• But Carlson has gotten support from the influential right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank, whose president, Kevin Roberts, defended the interview and blasted the "venomous coalition" out to "cancel" Carlson, per the Hill. Shapiro rejects that characterization, however. "It is not cancellation to draw moral lines between viewpoints," he said. "In fact, we used to call that one of the key aspects of conservatism." At least one top Heritage Foundation staffer has resigned to protest Roberts' stance.
• A sign of the split: While the Heritage Foundation defended the interview, the conservative editorial page of the Wall Street Journal condemned it, along with "the new right's new antisemites."
• Major lawmakers allied with MAGA have been responding as well. "It's a handful of voices that are spreading this garbage," said Ted Cruz, who has previously sparred with Carlson, "and it is giving every one of us a time for choosing." Others sought to shift focus away from the right. "There's already the Democratic Party that is anti-Israel, and is OK with antisemitism," Sen. Rick Scott tells the Times. "We've got to be very clear we don't support antisemitism and we do support Israel."
• In parsing all this, an Axios analysis observes that "many feared the assassination of Charlie Kirk would tear apart the country. Instead, it's ripping apart some of MAGA's biggest celebrities." How the fight unfolds "holds huge stakes for the post-Trump trajectory of America's most muscular political movement."