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.