OAN Staff Blake Wolf
9:23 AM – Monday, November 17, 2025
President Donald Trump defended conservative commentator Tucker Carlson following his interview with far-right White nationalist Nick Fuentes, stating that people should be allowed to make up their own minds.
Carlson’s recent interview with Fuentes received major backlash from voices within the conservative party, even being labeled the “most dangerous anti-Semite in America” and the “leader of a modern-day Hitler youth” by GOP Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) for platforming Fuentes in an October 27th episode of “The Tucker Carlson Show.”
Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) also condemned Carlson for platforming 27-year-old Fuentes, stating: “If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool, and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing, then you are [a] coward and you are complicit in that evil.”
“It’s easy right now to denounce Fuentes,” he added. “Are you willing to say Tucker’s name?”
In the interview, Carlson pressed Fuentes for prior racist comments, proclaiming that his “Christian faith” does not allow for collectivist “blood guilt.”
“I don’t really care what the [Anti-Defamation League] thinks of me, but my Christian faith tells me that there’s no such thing as blood guilt, and virtue or sin is not inherited; it’s not a feature of DNA, so every person must be assessed individually as God assesses each person individually. And that’s like a foundational view,” Carlson told Fuentes in the interview.
“So, I always thought it’s great to criticize and question our relationship with Israel because it’s insane and it hurts us, we get nothing out of it, I completely agree with you there, but the second you’re like, ‘It’s the Jews,’ — first of all, it’s against my Christian faith, like I just don’t believe that and I never will, period,” Carlson continued.
“Like we have that kind of thinking, right? Collectivist thinking like that, that’s identity politics,” he added.
In response, Fuentes stated, “I completely agree with you… As a Catholic, I could not agree more with you and what you’re saying. I love all people, even the ones that don’t like us, we have to love them all, and we have to recognize that, especially — [Thomas] Aquinas says the Jews are a witness people and so they actually have special protections under the law, according to Catholic philosophy.”
Fuentes went on to acknowledge that there is “legitimate racial hatred out there, and it’s growing.”
“The people that are detracting from [this movement] need to be called out, and I think there should be no harbor for cruelty, hatred, prejudice, those kinds of things,” he continued. “Some of them see the opening that there is legitimate critique of [Israel] and they see an opening to air out their grievances, they think it’s okay now, and I do think it’s important to differentiate.”
“There is a legitimate need to reassure people… We don’t want to harm anybody, we don’t want to kill anybody, we don’t want to harm anybody, we just want to put America First,” Fuentes added.
In response to the backlash from the interview, President Trump defended Carlson on Sunday night, saying, “Well, I found him to be good. I mean, he said good things about me over the years. He’s, I think he’s good. We’ve had some good interviews. I did an interview with him, we were at 300 million hits, you know that.”
“We’ve had some great interviews with Tucker Carlson, but you can’t tell him who to interview. I mean, if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes — I don’t know much about him — but if he wants to do it, get the word out,” Trump continued. “You know, people have to decide. Ultimately, people have to decide.”
The president was also asked about his Mar-a-Lago dinner with Kanye West and Fuentes in 2022, responding, “Well, I didn’t know he was coming. And he was with, as you know, somebody: Kanye. And Kanye asked if he could have dinner, and he brought Nick. I didn’t know Nick at the time, and he did. He came along with a few other people. He brought a few people with him.”
“Meeting people, talking to people, like, for somebody like Tucker, that’s what they did,” the president added. “You know, people are controversial. Some are, some aren’t. I’m not controversial. So I like it that way.”
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