Tucker Carlson, amid Fuentes fallout, asks Nikki Haley’s son about ‘Israel question’

Right-wing US commentator Tucker Carlson, in the wake of controversy over an earlier episode with extremist Nick Fuentes, published an interview Wednesday with 24-year-old Nalin Haley, in which the two blasted dual-citizenship, legal immigration and alleged Israeli “control” of US politics.

In the interview, Carlson and Haley — whose mother Nikki Haley, a former governor and ambassador to the UN, who ran against US President Donald Trump in 2024 — lambasted what they called an “obsession” with Israel in American politics, calling it “weird” and “unhealthy.”

Carlson, who raised the topic, has been criticized and accused of antisemitism in recent months over videos in which he suggested there were covered-up Israeli links to the 9/11 attacks and the activities of Jeffrey Epstein, accused Israel of waging war in Gaza based on belief in “blood-guilt,” and assailed Jerusalem for allegedly mistreating Christians amid its conflict with the Palestinians.

Echoing classic antisemitic tropes, he has also repeatedly claimed that conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro — an Orthodox Jew who is vocally pro-Israel — is loyal to the Jewish state and disloyal to the US, and recently accused him of failing to oppose “usury.”

The discussion of Israel with Haley came after an exchange about foreign policy, in which Carlson asked the 24-year-old what he thought about the push for “another regime change war, in whatever country” — presumably alluding to a potential second war with Iran, after US President Donald Trump supported and even joined Israel’s campaign against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Carlson was harshly critical of the US strikes, prompting Trump to denounce him as “kooky.”

“I don’t think they’re advocating for it just because they’re advocating for it, I think there’s interest groups that are pushing them to advocate for it,” Haley said, to which Carlson responded: “Clearly there are, we’ve learned a lot about that recently.”

Carlson went on to raise what he called “the Israel question,” which Haley in turn dubbed “the question no one wants to ask,” prompting Carlson to respond: “I never felt it was as central as it turned out to be.”

Referring to Nick Fuentes, Carlson said the far-right podcaster “is famous for saying naughty things, but also saying a pretty straightforward critique of the control that Israel has over the United States. Is that view widely shared, do you think?”

Fuentes, whom Carlson interviewed earlier this month, is explicitly agnostic about whether the Holocaust happened, but has described it as central to Jewish identity, which he has in turn characterized as anti-white. Carlson, at the start of the episode, attributed Fuentes’s popularity to racism and discrimination against white people.

Haley declined to address Fuentes’s views specifically, but agreed with Carlson’s characterization of young people’s attitudes toward Israel as “increasingly skeptical, if not hostile.”

“I don’t think it’s anything we’ve done. I think it’s all reliant on Israel. That’s on them, actually not us,” Haley said.

“The reality is, they’re just another country,” he continued, saying he doesn’t think Israel is “evil,” but that “if they want a better relationship with the United States, they need to stop interfering in our politics.”

The 24-year-old noted that he wasn’t talking exclusively about Israel, and that he wanted all foreign aid and all foreign lobbying stopped, adding, “It is a lot of other countries that do that. And it’s just as much a problem.”

Though Israel has historically enjoyed broad support in the US, including that of domestic lobbying groups that advocate a US-Israel alliance, other countries spend more money in Washington. Among them is Hamas-backer Qatar, which has registered lobbyists with close ties to senior officials in both parties, including to a firm that arranged Carlson’s interview earlier this year with the Qatari premier, according to a foreign registration act filing with the US Justice Department.

Carlson then asked Haley about his views on immigration, prompting the latter to declare his opposition to dual-citizenship and to American citizens serving in foreign militaries. Haley also opined that naturalized citizens should not be allowed to hold public office.

Carlson hosted Haley, he said, as part of an effort to explore why so many young men in the US were attracted to Fuentes. Fallout from Carlson’s earlier sit-down led to a series of outraged resignations from the conservative Heritage Foundation, after the think tank’s leader declined to condemn the interview. The controversy has exposed a broad fissure on the American right around Israel and antisemitism issues.