Tucker Carlson — today’s Father Coughlin with a sleek podcast
Tucker Carlson has become one of the most influential voices in American media, with a style and reach that evokes the infamous radio priest of the 1930s, Father Charles Coughlin. Coughlin, known for his populist rhetoric laced with antisemitic and isolationist themes, drew millions of listeners while stoking division. Carlson’s show follows a disturbingly similar pattern, offering selective facts, insinuations, and inflammatory commentary that shape public opinion while avoiding serious, balanced debate.
Carlson brands himself as America’s last fearless truth teller, the only man brave enough to ask “forbidden” questions. But when it comes to Israel and American Jews, Carlson is running the same familiar playbook: tropes about Jewish power, dual loyalty and outsized influence, to rile up his base.
It’s a familiar act: raise questions about the U.S.-Israel alliance, book a roster of anti-Israel guests, smirk at the inevitable pushback, and mock it all with his silly laugh: Why is it that we can never blame Israel for anything in this country?
Carlson is today’s Father Coughlin, the notorious 1930s “radio priest” whose Depression-era broadcasts were the social media juggernaut of their day. Millions tuned in to hear Coughlin blame Jews for the Great Depression, accuse them of controlling politics, and cast them as the hidden hand behind every crisis, until networks and even the Church finally pulled him off the air.
Just look at some of Carlson’s guests:
John Mearsheimer, political scientist and co-author of “The Israel Lobby,” whose controversial 2007 book mainstreamed the antisemitic claim that American Jews secretly run Washington.
Ana Kasparian, formerly co-host of the Young Turks, a progressive online news show known for inflammatory rhetoric about Israel, who recycles the same conspiracy themes from the left.
Munther Isaac, a Palestinian Lutheran pastor who calls Israel a colonial monster while rarely addressing Hamas terror or antisemitic incitement.
Darryl Cooper, the podcaster Carlson has called “the most important historian in America,” who has argued that Nazis killed Jews largely because they would otherwise have starved due to wartime food shortages — and that Churchill, not Hitler, was World War II’s real villain.
Candace Owens, formerly associated with Ben Shapiro’s podcast and now a right-wing commentator, who has made several antisemitic slurs and often emphasizes a conspiracy theory that Israel controls Washington through blackmail.
Masoud Pezeshkian, president of Iran, whose regime funds terror groups and openly calls for Israel’s destruction — yet Carlson gave him a gentle conversation without a single question on Iran’s vow to wipe Israel off the map.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, far-right Republican congresswoman from Georgia, who once claimed “Jewish space lasers” caused wildfires and that Jews invented covid, but on the issue of Israel aligns more with Rep. Ilhan “It’s all about the Benjamins” Omar than with Donald Trump.
And when Carlson does host a pro-Israel voice, it’s often just for a cheap shot. His interview with Senator Ted Cruz began not with Iran’s threats, but with a mocking quiz about the size of Iran’s population, then ridiculing Cruz for not knowing the answer.
Meanwhile, notice who never gets an invite and probably never will: historian Victor Davis Hanson, former Arkansas governor and now U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, former Florida senator and current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, New York congressman Ritchie Torres, journalist Chris Cuomo, or military scholar John W. Spencer, chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point and a leading expert on modern combat in cities. These conservatives and liberals support Israel not because of blackmail or secret files, but because it is a democracy that shares America’s interests and values in a brutal region.
Israel isn’t perfect. Its politics are messy, its leaders fight, its courts jail prime ministers who break the law. But U.S. support has endured for decades, not because of hidden influence, but because Israel is a reliable ally that shares America’s core values.
Carlson ignores this because it doesn’t sell. So he sticks to the formula: blame Israel, blame the Jews, let the guest run wild, smirk at the pushback. It’s easier than finding new material, and it keeps his audience engaged.
Look at what Carlson hasn’t covered: Sudan’s ongoing mass atrocities, Yemen’s catastrophic starvation crisis, Turkey’s ethnic cleansing of the Kurds, Cuba’s repression, Venezuela’s collapse, North Korea’s prison-state horrors, and China’s Uyghur camps. If there’s no Jewish scapegoat to tie it together, Carlson’s camera looks the other way.
You can dislike Israel without being antisemitic. But when outrage only appears with a Jewish hook, and his guests repeat old-school antisemitic tropes, from minimizing the Holocaust to equating Zionism with Nazism, we are far from healthy debate. It’s an echo chamber that fuels dangerous resentments.
Father Coughlin found his audience by feeding resentment in desperate times. Carlson feeds that same resentment by recycling it for attention on his platform. The style is slicker, the reach bigger, but the old bigotry works the same way, and the cost of letting it run is more dangerous than ever.
Stuart Goldberg is the founder of G6 Partners, a family office he leads with an eye toward long-term value and meaningful impact. A dedicated advocate for the Jewish community, he supports organizations that combat antisemitism and strengthen Israel and serves on the board of the Met Council. He and his wife, Ilana, raised their four children in Englewood; two of them now live in Israel.