By Morton A. Klein
(January 3, 2026 / JNS) Tucker Carlson is not a patriot. In fact, he’s an enemy of America.
Why? Because American patriots don’t side with sworn enemies, such as the Iranian regime that daily plots and calls for death to the United States, and has murdered thousands of Americans. American patriots don’t give aid and comfort to terrorists, radical Islam, neo-Nazis and white supremacists. American patriots don’t persistently defame and disparage Washington’s closest ally, and all of its Christian and Jewish supporters. But the former Fox News host and current podcaster does all those things that true American patriots abhor.
Let’s examine a few of the many examples of Carlson’s enmity and utter lack of American patriotism. In a recent interview, he absurdly declared: “I don’t know anyone in the United States in the last 24 years who’s been killed by radical Islam.”
What about the radical Islamist murder of nearly 3,000 Americans and others on U.S. soil on Sept. 11, 2001? And the vehicle-ramming attack in New Orleans last January, in which a Muslim ISIS member, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, murdered 14 Americans and injured another 57 others to “focus on the war between the believers and the disbelievers”?
What about the infamous murderous attacks perpetrated by radical Islamic terrorists, such as the 2019 shooting attack at Naval Air Station Pensacola (Florida), in which jihadist Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani murdered three American sailors and wounded eight others; the 2017 Lower Manhattan bike path truck-ramming attack (eight murdered and six injured by radical Islamist Sayfullo Saipov); the nightclub massacre in Orlando, Fla., in 2016 (49 Americans murdered by ISIS radical Omar Mateen); the 2016 Chelsea bombing (30 Americans injured by radical Islamist Ahmad Khan Rahimi); the 2014 San Bernadino Christmas party massacre (14 Americans murdered by Pakistani Islamist couple Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik); the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing (three Americans murdered and more than 500 wounded by the radical Islamist Tsarnaevs); the Sept. 11, 2011 Waltham throat-slitting murders (three Jewish Americans murdered by the same Islamist terrorists who later perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombing); the 2009 Fort Hood, Texas rampage (in which Islamist Maj. Nidal Hasan murdered 13 U.S. soldiers and wounded another 31 Americans, while screaming Allahu Akbar! to carry out his “jihad duty” to kill as many as possible)?
Islamic terrorists have continued their long history of attacking American civilians and troops abroad, including killing fans of Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande; injuring or killing 190 U.S. troops since Oct. 7, 2023, including killing three U.S. soldiers in Jordan in 2024: an Iranian living in Massachusetts was arrested for providing the drone technology used to kill them. And very recently, ISIS terrorists in Syria killed three Americans, including a civilian. With Iranian involvement, Islamists also murdered hundreds of Americans in bombings of American embassies in Africa and Lebanon, the U.S.S. Cole, Khobar Towers, the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon and more.
But Carlson defends radical Islam terrorists by denying the well-known record of radical Islamists killing Americans, and instead asserted that Turning Point USA’s poll finding that radical Islam is the greatest threat to America was “deranged” and resulted from an “op” (operation) that “comes from the Israeli government and its many defenders and informal employees in the United States.”
He added that “if you convince them that radical Islam was their No. 1 problem, then you are the most effective propagandist in history. I mean, that’s an unbelievable feat.” During the same interview, Carlson accused Israel’s prime minister of “mass murder,” declared that Israel was a “liability” and “not even an ally.”
In the same breath, Carlson also voiced an absurd conspiracy theory, intimating that radical Islam was not behind 9/11 and that instead it was Jewish Americans: Carlson stated that conservative commentator Ben Shapiro hasn’t asked to declassify the 9/11 files because they’re “hiding basic facts about 9/11[that are] not what they told us.” (In fact, as the 9/11 Commission mentioned, and the federal court in the Havlish v. Bin Laden case (Southern District of New York) found and detailed, based on an extensive investigation, Iran helped plan 9/11 with Al-Qaeda, trained 9/11 terrorists on flight simulators in Tehran and facilitated the the 9/11 pepetrators’ travel to the United States.)
There is nothing patriotic about denying Iran’s and other Islamists’ role in the biggest terror attack on American soil, and trying to shift the blame to America’s true friends in the Jewish community.
Carlson moreover promotes Iran’s leaders and agenda, including interviewing Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in July. Foreign disinformation experts and Yorktown Institute’s Turan Research Center explained that Carlson’s interview was “a major victory for Iranian information warfare operations” and that Carlson “allowed Pezeshkian and the Iranian regime a platform—without context or pushback—allowing Tehran to shape the record to Carlson’s viewers and listeners unopposed.” Carlson allowed Iran’s president to falsely claim that Iran wants “peace and tranquility,” and that the Islamic Republic was never involved in killing Americans or carrying out terror attacks against Americans; never issued fatwas (rulings on points of Islamic law) against Americans; and doesn’t mean it literally when they shout “Death to America,” among other things.
Carlson also let Iran’s president blame Israel for “putting into American minds that Iranians might be capable of doing something violent.” In other words, don’t look at the reality of Iran’s 46-year-long war against America since seizing the American embassy in Tehran; it’s all a mirage created by Israel.
And then there was Carlson’s recent interview with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed (bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani) at the Doha Forum on Dec. 7, in which Carlson falsely blamed the United States and Israel for Qatar hosting Hamas; and claimed that “It is widely believed in Washington that Israel will initiate another war against Iran in this coming year, 2026.” (Carlson thus inverted reality. In fact, Israel initiated no wars against Iran; it is Iran that initiated constant wars with barrages of missiles, terror attacks via its proxies, and nuclear-weapons development for the stated purpose of wiping Israel and America off the map.)
Similarly, in a discussion with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Carlson called destroying Islamic, terrorist-supporting Iran’s nuclear-weapons program this past June “an utterly pointless bombing of Iran. … Iran is not even in the top 25 threats to us,” and again falsely claimed that no Americans in this country have been killed by Iranians (again ignoring Iran’s major role in 9/11 and the above-noted terror attacks).
And on June 13 (after Iran had launched 200 ballistic missiles and drones at Israel in October 2024 and was in the midst of launching another 500 missiles at Israel, killing 32 Israelis, injuring 3,000-plus Israelis, and damaging more than 2,300 Israeli homes and universities), Carlson tweeted that those calling for stopping Iran’s nuclear-weapons program and who support Israel were “warmongers” and “people who casually encourage violence.” He also absurdly referred to people who support the Iranian and Palestinian regimes as “those who seek to prevent violence” and “peacemakers.”
Carlson has also displayed his enmity towards American well-being with his fawning interviews of neo-Nazis and antisemites Nick Fuentes, Darryl Cooper, Munther Isaac and Dave Collum. America’s “Greatest Generation” fought the Nazis; encouraging their ideology is anathema to U.S. patriots.
Moreover, in Carlson’s recent interview with Fuentes, a denier of the Holocaust, Carlson stated his own dislike of Christian Zionists “more than anybody,” called Christian Zionism “heresy” and said that Christian Zionists are infected with a “brain virus.”
Apparently, Carlson believes that America’s greatest patriots, including U.S. presidents Abraham Lincoln, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Harry S. Truman, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump; U.S. founding father and inventor Benjamin Franklin; and current U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee all had (or in Huckabee’s case, have) that “brain virus.”
Tucker Carlson is becoming worse every day. It’s time to ostracize him from the ranks of all those who love America.
Morton A. Klein is the national president of the Zionist Organization of America.
This op-ed was originally published in JNS and can be viewed here.