Vance declines to denounce Carlson after interview with Holocaust revisionist

Sen. JD Vance, the running mate of former President Donald Trump, has declined to denounce right-wing talk-show host Tucker Carlson for praising and airing the views of a Holocaust revisionist who falsely claimed that the Nazis’ destruction of European Jewry was not an intentional act of premeditated genocide.

Vance is scheduled to be interviewed live by Carlson for his social media show Sept. 21 in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Carlson is no stranger to controversy, but his recent interview with Darryl Cooper, whom he described as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” has faced particularly fierce blowback.

The Nazis’ killing of almost 6 million Jews was meticulously planned, documented and pursued even after the tide of World War II had turned and Germany’s defeat was assured. Yet Cooper, in an interview with Carlson shared on the social platform X this week, falsely claimed the Holocaust was an accident of history, perpetrated by a German military overwhelmed with prisoners of war.

After the German army swept through Eastern Europe, he said, “they went in with no plan for that, and they just threw these people into camps. And millions of people ended up dead there.”

Cooper went on to say that Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, “was the chief villain of the Second World War” for declaring war on Germany after the Nazis invaded Poland.

Vance, asked Friday during a campaign stop whether he would still appear with Carlson, said he would. “We believe in free speech and debate,” he said of Republicans, adding, “The Democrats used to be the party where if you had an idea you didn’t like, you pushed back against it, you fought back against it, you criticized it. This whole idea that has taken hold in the far left of this country, that if you see a bad idea, the way to solve it is to censor it, I think it’s ridiculous.”

In a statement shared first with The Jewish Insider, then with The New York Times, a Vance campaign spokesperson wrote, “Senator Vance doesn’t believe in guilt-by-association cancel culture but he obviously does not share the views of the guest interviewed by Tucker Carlson. There are no stronger supporters of our allies in Israel or the Jewish community in America than Senator Vance and President Trump.”

The statement continued, “As Senator Vance and President Trump stand steadfastly in support of our allies in Israel, radical Kamala Harris continues to cater to the antisemitic Hamas wing of her party.”

Carlson was a key advocate in pressing Trump to name Vance as his running mate, ultimately drowning out other voices who wanted a more moderate or seasoned pick. At one point, Carlson suggested that if the former president chose a proponent of military interventionism abroad, such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, U.S. intelligence agencies would have an incentive to assassinate Trump in order to elevate his vice president and get their preferred president.

Jewish voters have found themselves squeezed and courted by both parties, even as antisemitism has been stoked by fringes on the political left and right. Protests against the war in the Gaza Strip have veered into open bigotry at times, and Republicans, led by Trump, have sought to link the angriest anti-Israel voices to the Democratic Party.

“And I say it constantly, if you had them to support and you are Jewish, you have to have your head examined,” Trump said of Democrats on Thursday in a video address to a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas. “They have been very bad to you.”

Republicans, however, have embraced right-wing personalities who have used antisemitic tropes and associated with avowed antisemites. Trump dined two years ago at his Palm Beach, Florida, mansion with a white supremacist, Nick Fuentes, and entertainer Kanye West shortly after West said he was “going to go death con 3 on Jewish people.”

Sohrab Ahmari, a conservative thinker and an ally of Vance, wrote at length on the issue and posted on social media, “I can’t get over this. The claims made. The fact that Tucker saw fit to lend this guy an uncritical platform.” He added, “This sector of the right is sinister. I’ll stop saying, ‘They’ve lost their minds.’ No, it’s worse than that.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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