Politics
Ted Cruz accuses GOP senators of being ‘frightened’ to call out Tucker Carlson
Sen. Ted Cruz blasted fellow Republicans for failing to criticize Tucker Carlson, saying the conservative pundit has “spread a poison that is profoundly dangerous.”
“My colleagues, almost to a person, think what is happening is horrible, but a great many of them are frightened because he has one hell of a big megaphone,” Cruz (R-Texas) said Friday during a speech at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention in Washington.
Carlson upended the conservative movement after he hosted avowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes on his podcast last week. The incident — and the subsequent backlash — overshadowed last weekend’s Republican Jewish Coalition annual summit and sparked internal turmoil at The Heritage Foundation, leading to the resignation of multiple staff members.
Cruz, a self-described “Christian Zionist,” was among the earliest and most forceful critics of Carlson and Fuentes’ podcast episode. At the RJC last week, he said he has “seen more antisemitism on the right” in the past six months “than I have in my entire life.”
“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,” Cruz said.
But Cruz was more forceful Friday in criticizing fellow conservatives for not forcefully condemning Carlson.
“Fuentes and Tucker and the rest of that ilk have a right to say what they are saying,” Cruz said at the Federalist Society convention. “Every one of us has an obligation to stand up and say it is wrong.”
“It’s easy right now to denounce Fuentes,” Cruz added. “Are you willing to say Tucker’s name?”
Carlson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cruz, who sparred with Carlson in a feisty podcast episode in June, clarified that his complaint was not that Carlson platformed Fuentes, but that he didn’t push back on any of his antisemitic or bigoted claims. Among other things, Fuentes on the podcast claimed the “big challenge” to unifying America was “organized Jewry.”
“The last I checked, Tucker actually knows how to cross-examine,” Cruz said.
Ken Burns on Trump’s America 250: ‘Washington needed no monuments’
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The scorer of the opening American goal against Bosnia, Folarin Balogun, is eligible to play for the United States only because airline employees in New York kept his pregnant mother from returning to London until her son was born.
As our Riya Misra wrote recently, it makes Balogun not only the leader of a reinvigorated U.S. attack but a poster child for a cause validated yesterday by the U.S. Supreme Court: that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution guarantees citizenship to anyone born within its orders.
Read Riya’s story about Balogun and the debate over birthright citizenship here.
Spotted at World Cup matches so far: King Felipe VI from Spain, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima from the Netherlands, and Norway’s Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus. The European royals have been out in force supporting their national teams.
Hardly spotted yet: Europe’s elected leaders.
European heads of government only tend to make appearances at matches in person during later stages of the tournament. For example, Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, attended the 2018 final in Moscow and traveled to Qatar in 2022 for the semifinals and finals.
This is perhaps because a monarch attending the national team’s match is viewed as apolitical, whereas a prime minister making the same trip can invite criticism over priorities and use of public funds.
Indeed, this year, Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney had to reject opposition claims that his trip to Massachusetts to watch his country play Haiti was a taxpayer-funded “World Cup jolly.” Portuguese President António José Seguro also attended the Colombia vs. Portugal game in Miami last Saturday evening.
As the tournament heads toward the quarterfinals and beyond, expect more European politicians, whose countries remain in contention, to start appearing in the stands. So no Friedrich Merz or Rob Jetten…
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