Today, Explained - Republicans have a Nazi problem

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

An antisemitic influencer went on Tucker Carlson's show. What happened next is fracturing the American right. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Adriene Lilly, and hosted by Noel King. The right-wing podcaster Nick Fuentes greeting supporters. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Only three weeks ago, after the young Republicans' I Love Hitler Group chat, we asked this question. Coming up, do the Republicans have a Nazi problem? Could have ended there, guys. But then Tucker Carlson interviewed Nick Fuentes. I'm sorry I called you gay, by the way. Why aren't people married? Well, I mean, honestly, it's the women. Fuentes, a proud anti-Semite, said stuff that people thought Tucker would disavow.

Tucker didn't. You're a fan of Stalin's. I was an admirer. Next up, the Heritage Foundation hit the bed. Christians can critique the state of Israel without being anti-Semitic. Vice President J.D. Just Kids Vance got weirdly quiet. Ben Shapiro got enraged. Chris Rufo tried to spin it. Nick Fuentes is not a Nazi. He's using the symbols of Nazism to drive controversy

and then to increase his kind of attention and notoriety. Oh, okay. Coming up on today, explained, yeah, Republicans have a Nazi problem. By now, you've probably heard of Bilt where you can earn points on your monthly rent payment. But did you know they make it possible for you to get more outside of your home too? By paying rent through Bilt, you earn flexible points that can be redeemed towards hundreds of hotels and airlines, a future rent payment, your next lift ride, and more. Earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by going to join Bilt.com slash Vox. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-T.com slash Vox. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent to you.

The for-profit health care system in the U.S. has failed. The best answer is a single-payer national health insurance program. That's according to my guest this week on Solutions with Henry Blodget. Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler is a physician and policy expert who has dedicated her career to this issue. Why is this the answer? And how can we actually make it happen? Listen to Solutions with Henry Blodgett wherever you get your podcast. This is Today Explained. I'm Noelle King with Jonah Goldberg.

Jonah writes at The Dispatch. He is famously a never-Trump Republican. He's a Reagan guy. But he remains plugged into conservative circles. So we asked him about the right-on-right violence that erupted after Tucker's interview. And who is involved here? One is an institution, the Heritage Foundation, a storied think tank in Washington that's over a half century old. Second is the president of the Heritage Foundation, a guy named Kevin Roberts, who has moved it in a very populist, very Trump-aligned direction over the last few years.

Illegal immigrants waving their country's flags in our city streets and they're not being arrested and sent home. It's unacceptable. And then there's Tucker Carlson, a guy I've known for more than 30 years, used to be a colleague at Fox, who, after being fired from Fox, has launched his own independent media thing on the web and is doing strange things. It's always the obvious questions that are so vigorously discouraged. And one of the questions that's been the most discouraged over the past 30 years are one of those lines in the sky that you see. trailing jets. What is that? Some people call them chemtrails. And then lastly is this really horrible gargoyle of a human being named Nick Fuentes. Sorry, I just, I try very hard not to think about the guy. He's a leader of a group of mostly alienated, angry young men that in internet

parlance or in social media parlance, people tend to call groipers. He has made a real impact out there for saying the most horrendous things you can say in many respects. We are done with the Jewish oligarchy. We are done with the slavish surrender to Israel, the Holocaust religion and propaganda. You know it. I know it. But he was one of the guys from the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

He does not dispute being called a neo-Nazi. And so maybe, I guess, I have, like, the most Jewy name, this side of Shlomo Obramowitz. You might not be surprised that I don't feel like I can be in the same coalition as someone like a Nick Fuentes. And this is about coalitions. Ultimately, this became about who is in whose camp. Tell us what happened. Tucker Carlson had Nick Fuentes on his web show, Tucker Carlson Tonight or whatever it's called.

Very friendly, very softball. interview, where Carlson basically pushed back on none of Fuentes' past statements and current beliefs or anything like that. I'm going to just shut up, and you tell me what you actually believe. Yeah, well, and listen, I mean, and I appreciate you saying that because it's, that's just the reality of the media environment we're in. So I don't expect you to know all my views. But, I mean, as far as the Jews are concerned, I think that...

And it was appalling. It is particularly appalling because... Because we know that Tucker can ask hard questions. He can grill people. When he disagreed with Ted Cruz about the bombing of Iran, he barely let Ted get awarded edgewise and was constantly quizzing him to knock him off his game. We are commanded as Christians to support the government of Israel. We are commanded to support Israel.

What does that mean? But when he talks to a guy who says he loves Stalin and Hitler and thinks women really want to be raped and all of these sorts of things. He's like, hmm, tell me more. You were a fan of Stalin's. I was an admirer, but we don't need to go into that, I guess. Well, that's, okay, let's get back. We'll circle back to that.

It was weird because, you know, sort of channeling his old Barbara Walters or something like that. And so a lot of people are very cross about this. The Heritage Foundation, which advertises with Tucker Carlson, Tucker is the keynote speaker at their 50th anniversary gala. the Heritage Foundation got a lot of grief for its association with Tucker and so Kevin Roberts came out and issued a video statement

nobody disputes that this video statement was a complete frigging disaster The Heritage Foundation didn't become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians and we won't start doing that now He said we will not disavow Tucker Carlson anyway

We will not cancel Tucker Carlson. We are joined at the hip with Tucker Carlson. And then he said, The venomous coalition attacking him or sowing division. Their attempt to cancel him will fail. Most importantly, the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right. So it was of this serious dog whistle that suggested that, you know,

string-pulling Machiavellian Jews were behind this. we're behind this and we're not going to cave into it. That was definitely the way it was interpreted by a lot of people outside of heritage and a lot of people inside heritage. And so the video utterly backfired and caused a whole firestorm of controversy. And he had this whole very high-minded explanation

about how we shouldn't cancel people, we should engage in their ideas, we should confront them and argue in the, marketplace of ideas, which all sounds great, except that's not what Tucker Carlson had done. What Tucker Carlson had done was basically just give a megaphone to a neo-Nazi. Kevin Roberts had an all-hands meeting at the Heritage Foundation. A big chunk of it was dedicated to warning staffers that they'll be fired if any video or audio or quotes from this meeting leak. And almost before the meeting was over, the full video.

had been leaked it's good to see all of you and thanks for being willing to be here so i have some notes because i want to make so everyone in my world has watched big chunks of it if not all of it one of the things that the video revealed was that there were there are people at heritage young people at heritage who are not neo-nazis but they're they're they liked kevin roberts initial statement they've got some issues with with israel um they've got some issues with people who defend Israel. Gen Z has an increased unfavorable view of Israel, and it's not because millions of Americans are anti-Semitic. It's because we are Catholic and Orthodox and believe that Christian Zionism is a modern heresy. And then there are other people who were like, you guys are

losing your minds. We cannot be associated with anti-Semites and crazy people. If you don't have boundaries on who you regard inside the movement, the movement will destroy itself, and it will create a PR nightmare for everybody in it. You have to explain. Spell the lunatics. Kevin Roberts did not resign as many people wanted him to, and many people thought he was going to be fired, but he did basically throw his chief of staff under the bus. Kevin Roberts' defense was basically that he is the right-wing Ron Burgundy,

and if you put it in a teleprompter, he will read it. When the script was presented to me, I understood from our former colleague that it was approved. It was signed off. So it was not a profile and courage moment. What does all of this mean? Like, what is all of this about? So it's about a lot of different things.

So part of it is just simply an argument about what kind of coalition you're going to have. But it's broader than that. One of the things that the defenders of Tucker Carlson and the defenders of the Heritage Foundation will say, often with a little more paranoia than I think is warranted, is that this is really all a proxy war about J.D. Vance. Huh. I think that's overstated. It is not all a proxy war about J.D. Vance, but J.D. Vance does lurk in the background here because Vance has blazed a path here where he, you know, he's defended young Republican officials who, you know, had these chats about how awesome Auschwitz jokes are and how Nazis are cool. He also would not be vice president, but for the fact that Tucker Carlson, lobbied extensively for him.

And if Tucker becomes radioactive, that's bad for Vance. If this crowd that he is defended and considers part of his coalition is purged, that's bad for him. And so I do think that that's part of what's going on. But I also think that, look, there are a lot of people who don't think that the right should be a popular front, right? historically popular fronts are this thing more common on the left which you know on the left that used to be no enemies to the left and it was like don't don't shoot inside the tent don't pick

them you know so what if we have Stalinists in our coalition we're trying to stop the bad guys right that's the argument that is being used on the right right now is that the right needs to become a popular front needs to be a big tent we need groipers and groipers curious people to be part of our coalition because they bring youth and passion and energy and you yada, yada, yada. I think it's all nonsense. But it's also hypocritical. Because the very people, like J.D. Vance and others who are trying to make the Republican

coalition a safer place for these people, say that, you know, we have to purge the neocons from the conservative movement, that we don't want to hear from the zombie Reaganite crowd. They have no problem silencing and trying to cancel members of the coalition they consider to be rivals. They just use the language of inclusiveness for some of the worst people in the world because they think there's a political advantage to it. And so it's going to be a fight that is going to unfold for a while because Donald Trump, either for actuarial or constitutional reasons, is not going to be a problem. around forever. And so people are already trying to figure out what the post-Trump right looks like. And this is one of these early skirmishes in that longer-term battle. Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch. Coming up, who is Nick Fuentes? And

And why do millions of young men find him so very, very compelling? Support for today, explained comes from Shopify. Shopify believes that one of the most exciting parts of starting a business is when the sales start coming in. That makes sense. If your business is looking to start selling online, Shopify has everything you need. need to create your online store. Shopify says they're the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. And they say 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. from those household names like Mattel and Jim Shark to newer brands with hundreds of ready to use templates.

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And Go makes it affordable with special e-ticket fairs. A one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel across the network on any weekend day or holiday for just $10. And a weekday group pass offers the same weekday travel flexibility from $30 for two people and up to $60 for five. Buy yours at go-transit.com slash tickets. You're listening to Today Explained. We're back with David Gilbert. He's a reporter for Wired who covers disinformation and information. and online extremism. And for those reasons, he has watched a lot of Nick Fuentes' show.

I probably follow him a bit too much. He typically tends to stream for two or three hours every single night, Monday to Friday. He covers a lot of the infighting within the right wing media. It's all these country club Republicans like Megan Kelly. You're not out here. You don't get it. You don't live the lives we live, especially the young people. You're not dealing with the stuff that we're dealing with. He talks about immigration quite a lot. This is a white country. We should deport illegal immigrants to sustain the white demographics. He obviously talks about the Trump administration quite a lot. Something's wrong with him, man, and something's not right in the head. But I suppose one of the main or the main topic he talks about, and it typically comes back

to this every single time, is a deeply anti-Semitic worldview that he has, that he blames Israel and the Jewish people for all the ills of society. The American president has to stand up to this tiny country, but would you like to know why the American president can't do that? The Republican Jewish coalition, APEC, the ADL, it's all going to come down on that president. So there are disparate strands here. There's the anti-Israel sentiment. There's the anti-Semitic sentiment.

There's the anti-immigrant sentiment. How would you describe his worldview? What does he represent? He is a pretty hateful worldview. I think what really is surprising of what we've seen most recently where his profile has risen and he has kind of been embraced by more mainstream members of the right is the fact that they're kind of ignoring the fact

that he has espoused support for Hitler in the past. Mom, dad, Hitler was awesome. Hitler was right and the Holocaust didn't happen. That he has talked about raping women as not being that problematic. A lot of women want to be raped. That sounds bad when I say it like that.

But there's like a lot of women that really want a guy to beat the shit out of him. He has these really hateful views about the world where he feels as if he, as a white male Christian, he's a Catholic, is being attacked

in that his homeland is under attack from all these various, you know, whether it's feminism or the woke mob, as he calls it, the woke mind virus. He believes that he is the one that is under attack that white males and especially white Christian males have been sidelined in their own country. And that's kind of at the crux of what he believes and why he believes it is because he thinks he's under attack

rather than him being the one who's attacking all these other groups. the fuck home. This is America first. I was born in America. This is the only country I've ever known and I will die for America. Can you say the same? He didn't vote for Donald Trump in the election. He didn't tell his followers to vote because he felt that Trump was just not being America first enough. This is one of the most brazen lies to get us into a war that I've ever seen. This is a very thinly veiled pretext for a war with Venezuela, the real object of which is regime change. In terms of J.D. Vantz, it's even worse. He thinks Vance has let down American men by not marrying a white Christian woman. How can someone be expected to really have a nativist interpretation of American identity if their own children are biracial?

He has said that if J.D. Vance decides that he is going to run in 2028, which, looks like he will, and if the GOP nominate him, then Fuentes will unleash a campaign using his supporters to undermine that candidacy. J.D. Vance is a part of replacement migration. How is he going to be sympathetic to the white natives when he is in bed literally with the foreign born? In the past couple of years, there has been a cohort of young conservative men and women who, who have varying relationships with each other and feuds and alliances and whatnot. Talk to me about where he fits in this spectrum of right-wing personalities and what his relationships with them are like. Sure. It's really interesting. And it's not something that is the same as it was, you know, five, six, seven years ago.

When he was coming up after Unite the Right and when he kind of began getting noticed, he was, viewed as this kind of outlier, this fringe figure who was not really taken with any level of seriousness. And so he was not really being discussed in the same terms as figures like Charlie Kirk, you know, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens. More recently, those same figures have had to pay attention to him because his audience has grown, especially in the last six months, he has become incredibly more powerful and he knows it too. So he's able to leverage that to get people to pay attention to him. We saw obviously Tucker Carlson interviewed him recently, which is the most high profile interview he's had to date. We've seen figures like Alex Jones, Candace Owens. They've all

had him on their podcasts and, you know, they're varying levels of arguments between themselves. His main antagonist and the person he fought with most, of course, was Charlie Kirk, dating back to 2019 when they began what Fuentes labeled the Groyper War. Groyper's being the name for the people who support Nick Fuentes. So what he did then was when Charlie Kirk was going around to colleges, speaking and debating with people, he would get his supporters to go there and question Charlie Kirk about his support for Israel, question him on immigration. Question on the things that Fuentes believed Charlie Kirk was not being questioned enough about and where he felt he could be attacked

because he wasn't being, you know, conservative enough. Some caller calls into the Charlie Kirk show and says, why won't you debate Nick Fuentes? He goes, I don't debate bad faith actors and trolls who blame the Jews for everything. Oh, yeah, you just debate communist, socialist, Democrats, the governor of California. He wasn't being America first enough. Tucker Carlson said that, you know,

he was just talking to Nick Fuentes and that he doesn't necessarily agree with all the things he said. But at the same time, he's engaging with him. And I think for Fuentes, that is the win. That's what he wants. He wants people to be able to see him. Why do so many people who seem to disagree with him still invite him on, still talk to him? There is something I assume that they are getting as well.

What is this about? Of course. I think people like Tucker Carlson are afraid of being left behind because they clearly understand that Fuentes has tapped into something. His audience is this young white male audience that is incredibly powerful and people don't want to miss out. So by Tucker Carlson interviewing him, that Tucker Carlson kind of gets a little bit of that aura that Fuentes projects to his supporters. So I think that's the main reason is that they know Fuentes will drive engagement. If you look at the numbers on Tucker's video, it's huge compared to the others that were posted, you know, for the last couple of weeks. What makes him so successful?

I think the fact that he openly talks about the fact that he isn't in a relationship, hasn't really ever had a relationship with a woman, kind of one of them is one of the people he speaks to. These young men who may be struggling to find their identity in the US, who may be struggling to get a job, struggling to find a house, struggling to find a relationship or a community of friends. And Fuentes tapped into that. There's been an evolution of Nick Fuentes in the last six months where he has seen his star rise. He has gained a huge amount of followers online way more people are watching his show every night now he is earning a huge amount of money from that show

and he is in a position now that I don't think he even believed he would be back when say in 2020 when he was kicked off of YouTube and every other platform he is in a position now where he can enforce change I think within the Republican Party from the inside. I want Groyper's to

go to Yale, go to Stanford, go to Harvard, infiltrate the government. He's smart enough to do it by not creating an organization where people can be identified as members of the Nick Fuentes fan club. He tells his followers, don't identify yourself as gropeers. Do it under the radar. Become a member of your local Republican Party. Influence people from the inside, not from the outside. It is incumbent on all adolescent young men They want to save this country. They want to preserve what your ancestors built to get involved in politics. And he says, and it's very hard to verify this completely,

but he says he's got supporters within the administration. He has got supporters all across the country who are infiltrating local political parties. And that he is from the ground up going to try and influence how the Republican Party acts over the next 10 years. and he is doing it really smartly and in a really dangerous way that it's very, very hard

for anyone to know what's happening. David Gilbert is a reporter with Wired. Miles Bryan and Hottie Mugsy produced today's show. Jolie Myers edited. Laura Bullard checks the facts. Patrick Boyd and Adrian Lilly engineered. I'm Noelle King. It's today explained.

Thank you. Thank you. I don't know. Thank you.