Guardrails, not gatekeepers: Tucker’s Hitler talk crosses the line

Less than a month ago, I dedicated an entire segment of my show to make it clear that some moments or ideas, like anti-Semitism, are so vile that they must be confronted and addressed immediately. Failing to do so will undermine our side’s ability to win on any front, as the impact of associating with such ideas is deeply contaminating.

Although I’m used to disappointment — something every conservative learns quickly — I never expected to see “retconning Hitler” on my 2024 election bingo card of regrets. This discussion has now reached a level where even Tucker Carlson, perhaps the most influential voice in our movement since Rush Limbaugh’s passing, is engaging with it.

Even insurgencies need guardrails to avoid becoming what they initially opposed — a warning central to everything Orwell ever wrote.

Let me be clear: I like and admire Tucker personally and professionally. I pushed hard for him to host the Leadership Summit for the presidential candidates in Iowa in 2023. We spoke at the same event in 2022, and he’s one of the few peers in this industry with whom I’ve ever made a point to take a picture. He’s also the only prime-time personality on Fox News who has ever featured me on his show, and he’s the reason my 2021 book, “Faucian Bargain,” hit No. 1 overall on Amazon for a second time.

But I have no idea why he would choose to entertain a discussion suggesting that “Churchill was the real villain” — implying that Hitler was merely misunderstood — just eight weeks before a crucial election, especially when our opponents have spent the last eight years trying to label our candidate as “literally Hitler.”

What possible good could an “ackshually Hitler” conversation do ever, especially amid a must-win election on the largest platform in our movement?

It's one thing to host the conversation, but playing along with it is entirely different. Tucker never really challenged the easily debunked claims made by the dime-store “historian” he featured as the voice for this discussion. The conversation included one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever heard in my career, from the so-called historian Darryl Cooper: “[Churchill] didn’t kill the most people or commit the most atrocities, but …”

Stop. Do not continue. Just ... stop.

Do you know what is a pretty good rule of thumb to determine the villain of the story? Typically, that would be the one who commits the most atrocities!

So this “historian” Cooper can’t even stand up to his own cross-examination, let alone someone else’s. George W. Bush, who once made the cosmically self-refuting claim “I am suspending free market principles to save the free market” called, and he wants whatever remains of his motor function back.

Many of us first discovered the brilliant historian Victor Davis Hanson through his numerous appearances on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show before Tucker was unfairly fired. You know things are bad when Hanson takes the extraordinary step of writing a detailed rebuttal of a conversation hosted by Tucker. Citing the massive audience Tucker introduced Cooper to, Hanson felt compelled to confront the “surprising number of flawed theories” Cooper presented without challenge. Hanson did just that, thoroughly and in great detail.

I understand — we don’t want to replace old gatekeepers with new ones. But we all need guardrails, which are not the same as gatekeepers. I’m sure Tucker, like the rest of us in this business, wouldn’t host a conversation that “just asks questions” about mainstreaming pedophilia or “ackshually child porn.” This shows that some guardrails already exist, and for good reason.

The question then becomes what are they, and who gets to decide what they should be?

Do I think Tucker is a wink-and-nod anti-Semite? No. Do I think he is checking boxes of things, no matter how incendiary, that he feels like mainstream media won’t allow through their increasingly narrow and culturally Marxist Overton window as a middle finger to the establishment? Yes. And for that, he has earned all the popularity he currently has.

Even insurgencies need guardrails to avoid becoming what they initially opposed — a warning central to everything Orwell ever wrote. Tucker risks playing into the negative branding (e.g., racist, anti-Semite, fascist, Nazi) that his and our detractors are eager to use against his critical voice.

I would like to make the following public proposal to Tucker, who, again, is a man I like and admire:

One great way to demonstrate you’re just a skeptic of the postwar consensus and the decades-long pro-Zionist foreign policy bent of the United States, and not an actual anti-Semite, is to host “just asking questions” dialogues both ways. Might I suggest multi-best-selling author Jonathan Cahn? He is a Messianic Jew, one of the most successful Christian authors in the country, and someone who is also immersed in the topic of spiritual warfare Tucker has highlighted in recent years. Jonathan is also very pro-Israel and obviously very Jewish himself.

I would love to hear these two great minds go back and forth for an hour; wouldn’t you? I think it’s perfectly fair to debate whether a still relatively new (in ecclesiastical terms) eschatological theory should play a role in influencing American foreign policy, which Cahn’s view does. And I think that can be done without needing to retcon Hitler and thus open our entire movement up to the possibility of confirming our enemies’ worst smears.

Platforms such as iTunes are already skittish enough about hosting right-wing content as it is, despite our massive audiences. No need to further fuel the censorship frenzy.

If we’re really just “asking questions,” then let’s ask questions from multiple sides. After all, the Overton window doesn’t like an outspoken Messianic Jew like Cahn any more than it wants to entertain “ackshually Hitler.”