Far-right American pundit Tucker Carlson appeared on Saudi state-owned TV network on Saturday to double down on a myriad of anti-Israel claims he previously made.
The interview aired days after his visit to Israel, during which he grilled US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on prioritizing Israel over the US, civilian casualties during the war in Gaza, and convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, amongst other topics. However, he notably kept his responses lighter on Saudi state network Al Liwan and failed to mention cases of Saudi abuse of human rights, such as the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
During the interview, Carlson hit out at US political leaders, who he claimed were more loyal to Israel than to America.
“What I really object to, what makes me mad, is when American leaders, whose job it is to represent Americans, are more loyal to a foreign country than they are to their own,” he said.
“They [US political leaders] have instead sent billions and billions and billions of dollars to a foreign country. And none of that has helped the United States. In fact, it's hurt the United States.”
He then hit out at the US government for going along with what he interpreted as Israel’s demands to overthrow the Islamic Regime in Iran.
“How is it in America's interest to decapitate the government of Iran on behalf of Israel? Not to rebuild a new Iran, but just to kind of kill the people in charge and hope something better happens. To create chaos in Iran, as we have done at Israel's behest in so many countries in the region, as you well know since you live in the region,” he said. “This is bad for us, this is bad for the surrounding countries, it is bad for the world, I don't think it's good for Israel. Actually, I don't think Israel understands its own long-term interest very well, [but] that's my view.”
Carlson accuses Israel of land grab in Gaza
He also characterized the war in Gaza as a “land grab” by Israel.
“The idea that we had to pretend that the Gaza operation is like a response to October 7, and it's not an effort to expand the territory of Israel, that's insulting to me because that's a lie. That's what it is.”
Carlson also doubled down on previous defamatory comments he made about Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
During the interview, host Abdullah Al Mudaifer played a clip from a separate interview, in which Carlson claimed Netanyahu is “completely evil and completely destructive.”
“He's not the only world leader who's evil and destructive, by the way, again, but he is. and he's hurting the United States, and he's destroying his own country, and I think he imperils the world,” he said. “I think that clearly they're going to try and blow up al-Aqsa mosque, I believe that, on the Temple Mount to build a third temple, and then you've got global war. So like he's a threat. There's no question he's a threat to the Trump administration. No question."
He affirmed that he believed “every word” of his older comments, and did not offer any apologies for them.
Carlson then began to hit out at US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and further accused him
“I watched someone like Mike Huckabee, who's the US ambassador to Israel… betray the United States again and again and again by promoting Jonathan Pollard, who was a spy against the United States, who betrayed the United States, and Mike Huckabee, who's our ambassador, is helping, truly, the most destructive spy in American history.”
Carlson then claimed that the US politicians who helped Israel seemed to be under “a kind of spell, a kind of hypnosis, a kind of haze that people are in, where they're doing things for reasons they don't understand.”
Carlson has recently positioned himself as a leading critic of US policy toward Israel and of Christian Zionism, though his comments can veer in an anti-Israel and sometimes antisemitic direction. Notably, he has hosted Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes on his podcast, along with several other far-right commentators.
While his interview with Huckabee was clearly critical about the US’s policy towards Israel as well as Jerusalem’s actions in the Middle East and alleged war crimes since the start of the war in Gaza, he notably did not comment in detail on Saudi Arabia’s reported state-ordered killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
Khashoggi was a Saudi dissident journalist who was assasinated by at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He was reportedly strangled in the consulate by a Saudi assasination squad, and was then dismembered with a bone saw, according to international reports.
The Saudi government has since announced that he was ordered, but denied that it came at the orders of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salaman’s orders.
Notably, Carlson also claimed that he was detained and “harassed” at Ben-Gurion Airport during his visit to Israel last week.
"Men who identified themselves as airport security took our passports, hauled our executive producer into a side room, and then demanded to know what we discussed with Ambassador Huckabee," Carlson stated in his interview with The Daily Mail.
A spokesperson for the US Embassy in Israel told The Daily Mail that Carlson's claims were inaccurate and clarified that he only received the same passport-control questions that many visitors to Israel encounter.
According to The Jerusalem Post, Carlson did not leave Ben-Gurion Airport during his visit and conducted the interview with Huckabee there. Leaked security camera footage showed Carlson hugging and taking pictures with airport staff, unaccompanied by the security guards he claimed to have with him.
He left Israel at around 3 p.m. that same day, concluding a trip that only lasted a few hours.