Vance Says He Won’t Throw Carlson Under the Bus Despite Disagreements

Vice President JD Vance held his ground twice this week against those who want him to jettison longtime friend Tucker Carlson. He also defended appearing on podcasts that some view as “antisemitic.”

At a White House news conference yesterday, Vance pooh-poohed the idea that he should shun Carlson. Yes, Vance said, Carlson is wrong on some issues. But so what, the veep essentially said. One should not abandon friends over political disagreements.

During his closed-door speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition on Monday, Vance said much the same thing about other podcasters — including Megyn Kelly and Joe Rogan — who have been accused “platforming antisemites.”

Vance’s refusing to exile Carlson is at odds with his boss. President Trump threw the podcaster under the bus months ago because he criticized Trump’s attacking Iran on behalf of Israel.

Defending Tucker

Noting that Carlson has called for Trump’s impeachment and that he was accused of trying to poison U.S.-Israeli relations at the White House presser, a reporter asked what Vance says to those who accuse him of not tackling a divisive issue for the GOP.

“I’m not avoiding addressing anything,” Vance said, adding that “everybody knows Tucker Carlson and I are friends.” And yes, “it’s very obvious” people know Carlson says things with which Vance disagrees, including things about President Trump that are “just wrong.” Vance added that someone sent him a clip of Carlson’s announcement that he would vote for Democratic Socialist Abdul El-Sayed over Israel-First GOP Representative Mike Rogers in the race for Michigan’s open Senate seat.

El-Sayed is a “crazy person,” Vance continued, and “I’d like to have a non-crazy person, like Mike Rogers, representing Michigan.” But then Vance explained how abandoning friends over political views undermines intelligent political discourse.

As for Carlson, “my attitude towards this and I try to practice what I preach, and I remember when I became the vice presidential nominee, one of the hardest things for me personally is not when people attacked me,” he said,

but when people attacked my wife, including friends of hers, who knew her heart, who knew what a good person she was, and I remember thinking to myself, what a travesty it is that in the United States of America we let political disagreements define who our friends are going to be and not going to be. So yeah, Tucker is a friend of mine. Tucker is a friend despite the fact that we disagree on a number of things, and I’m not going to play the game where I throw friends under the bus because I have political disagreements with them. I think that is a terrible place for the United States to go, and if you have a disagreement with somebody politically, even over a deeply held issue, you should still be friends with that person because the whole republic depends on people of different perspectives being able to talk to one another. That’s how I try to live my life. And I encourage everybody else to do the same.

Won’t Avoid Rogan

Vance answered a similar question at the RJC event. Vance only appeared “with the caveat” that the media was barred from attending, as The Washington Post reported. The Post obtained a copy of Vance’s speech, snippets of which are appearing on social media.

Audio posted to Rumble features an attendee’s asking Vance why he appears on podcasts such as Carlson’s that had “platformed antisemites.”

“One area where I really do draw the line is on people who engage in what I call this blood guilt attitude, and I recognize a lot of people in this room may disagree with things that Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly or Joe Rogan have said,” Vance said.

Rogan and Nick Fuentes, however, are “two very different categories of people,” he continued, explaining Rogan’s importance to reaching potential voters.

“I do not think that Joe Rogan and Nick Fuentes are the same substantively, but as a political matter, I think that we have got to be willing to go everywhere and bring our message anywhere to any person, and that means sometimes going into a podcast … to meet people where they are and make the arguments as best as you can,” Vance said:

And that is, I think, ultimately how you win a political debate. It’s not by shunning people. And that’s the approach that I’ve tried to take, is talk to as many people as possible. But obviously I’m not going to go talk to a guy who’s attacked my wife or who said Hitler was a good guy. But outside of some three bright lines, I try to talk to as many people as I can.

Vance did not address “the Carlson question [that has emerged as a 2028 test for a number of well-known GOP Jewish leaders], even as Vance has maintained he is not interested in ‘canceling’ conservatives who see things differently from him — and especially not doing so in response to pressure,” the Post noted, pointing a remark from Israel-First radio talker and Trump cultist Sid Rosenberg before Vance appeared at RJC.

“There’s no question with the Jewish people whether or not [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio loves us. A lot of questions about JD,” Rosenberg said:

The bottom line is, if you’re close to Tucker Carlson, the real Jews, they want no part of you.

Trump: Carlson Is “Low IQ”

For his part, Trump denounced Carlson after the podcaster criticized the president for writing on April 7 that he would destroy a “whole civilization,” meaning Iran. He also attacked every other conservative podcaster who has criticized him.

“Tucker’s a low IQ person that has absolutely no idea what’s going on,” the president told the New York Post:

He calls me all the time; I don’t respond to his calls. I don’t deal with him. I like dealing with smart people, not fools.

“I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years, especially by the fact that they think it is wonderful for Iran, the Number One State Sponsor of Terror, to have a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump wrote on Truth Social two days later. Trump said the group is “low IQ.”

“They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too!” Trump fumed.

Trump called Carlson a “hand flailing” fool “who couldn’t even finish college” and “a broken man when he got fired from Fox” who needs a psychiatrist.