Vance denies rising antisemitism in Republican ranks, expresses admiration for Mamdani

US Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that he does not believe antisemitism is surging inside the Republican Party, pushing back on prominent conservatives who have raised alarms about hostility toward Jews among young right-wing activists.

“I do think it’s important to call this stuff out when I see it. I also, when I talk to young conservatives, I don’t see some simmering antisemitism that’s exploding,” Vance told NBC News in an interview marking his first year in office.

Vance said antisemitism is wrong, stating that “judging anybody based on their skin color or immutable characteristics, I think, is fundamentally anti-American and anti-Christian.” (Vance himself is a convert to Catholicism who recently said he hopes his Hindu wife chooses to become a Christian in the future.)

Vance added, “In any bunch of apples, you have bad people. But my attitude on this is we should be firm in saying antisemitism and racism are wrong. … I think it’s kind of slanderous to say that the Republican Party, the conservative movement, is extremely antisemitic.”

These remarks amount to Vance’s most direct response to Senator Ted Cruz and other prominent figures on the right who have, in recent weeks, warned of rising antisemitism among conservatives, especially after Tucker Carlson, a Vance ally, hosted Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes on his podcast.

Vance’s comments land amid a larger, unresolved debate inside Republican circles over how seriously to treat the rise of explicitly antisemitic figures such as Fuentes, whose online “groyper” movement has attracted a following among young GOP staffers and activists. Jewish conservatives and other right-leaning commentators have expressed alarm at Fuentes’ influence, estimating that significant numbers of junior Republican staffers consume his content. Fuentes has described “organized Jewry” as a threat to American unity.

Vance’s silence on antisemitism was a prominent topic of conversation at a recent confab for Jewish conservatives, where speakers questioned his close association with Carlson.

US President Donald Trump recently defended Carlson after the podcast host interviewed Fuentes, saying, “You can’t tell him who to interview.” Carlson campaigned for Trump in 2024 and remains influential within the administration. Trump himself met with Fuentes and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, later claiming he did not know who Fuentes was.

Vance has taken a similarly restrained approach. He defended Carlson’s son, Buckley, from accusations of antisemitism without addressing Carlson’s interview with Fuentes. In October, he was criticized for responding to a college student’s question about Jews and Israel without acknowledging its antisemitic framing.

In the NBC interview, Vance also volunteered the names of the progressive politicians he has come to respect for various reasons: Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Ro Khanna and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

Vance described Mamdani, who had a friendly meeting with US President Donald Trump in the White House last month, as “fascinating.” Nearly two-thirds of American Jews view Mamdani as both anti-Israel and antisemitic, according to a recent poll.

“Obviously, I’m not a communist, but the fact that he focuses so aggressively on the affordability question in New York City, which does have one of the worst affordability crises anywhere in the world, is smart, and he’s at least listening to people,” Vance said.

“Most politicians, it’s a very low bar, but they don’t even listen to people. I would put Mamdani, Bernie and Ro Khanna in the category of those who, at least sometimes, they are,” he added.