Tucker Carlson’s Apology to Christian Zionists? Don’t Be Fooled

On Dave Smith’s podcast this week, Tucker Carlson tried to rewrite his own history.

“But I just want to say at the outset, because this has been weighing on me,” he told Smith. “I did say something that I really regret saying that I didn’t fully mean. I said it because I was mad… I said something to the effect of, ‘I despise Christian Zionists.’ And I’m just sorry that I said that, because I don’t… Some of the nicest people I know are Christian Zionists… I want to be very specific about what I was talking about. In at least a couple of different occasions, the Israeli government bombed churches in Gaza and killed a bunch of Christians. And not an accident, of course.”

Just days earlier, during his Nick Fuentes laundering session, Carlson had said flatly (and quite calmly) that he “hates Christian Zionists more than anybody” and that they must be suffering from a “brain virus,” because Tucker Carlson—the theologian emeritus of Cable News U—had deemed their beliefs “anti-Christian.” All this as Stalin- and Hitler-adoring Nick Fuentes nodded approvingly.

Now Carlson is trying to dilute the venom—excusing his insults because he was “mad,” while pivoting to a new accusation that Israel deliberately bombed churches. In one breath he posed as a penitent Christian; in the next he recycled an antisemitic canard about Jews killing Christians. The juxtaposition was as revealing as it was cynical.

Carlson’s “apology” was not repentance. It was rebranding – provoke outrage, plead misunderstanding, then double down with a new lie that shifts blame to Israel or its supporters.

A Three-Year Descent

Since his April 2023 departure from Fox News, Carlson has become a globe-trotting apologist for autocrats and antisemites. His October 2025 interview with white-nationalist Nick Fuentes—whom he treated with respect rather than revulsion—wasn’t an aberration but the culmination of years of rhetorical decay.

Platforming Extremists

During the Fuentes interview, Carlson let the Holocaust-minimizing influencer rant about “Zionist media control” without challenge, even calling him “enormously talented.” Lawmakers from both parties and Jewish organizations swiftly condemned the broadcast.

This isn’t new. For years Carlson has flattered strongmen from Putin to the Ayatollah, platformed numerous antisemites, and echoed talking points from regimes that regard Jews and liberal democracy as enemies.

The Church-Bombing Lie

There are tragedies in every war, but Carlson’s “not an accident” claim—used to excuse his tirade against Christian Zionists—turns unintended collateral damage into an intentional crime. It mirrors Hamas propaganda: take one image, strip away context, and weaponize it against Israel.

By alleging Israel “bombs churches” and kills Christians deliberately, Carlson revives one of history’s oldest antisemitic tropes—an updated “Christ-killer” story for the social-media age.

In reality, two very different incidents occurred in Gaza. In October 2023, an Israeli airstrike targeting a Hamas command post struck near the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Porphyrius in Gaza City. Hamas terrorists had been operating nearby, and debris from the strike collapsed an adjacent building, killing civilians sheltering there. On July 17, 2025, Israeli tank shrapnel from a Hamas-initiated firefight hit part of the Holy Family Catholic Church in Zeitoun, injuring several. In neither case was the church itself targeted. Israel expressed regret, investigated, and presented evidence of Hamas activity in the area.

This is what happens when a terror group fights from residential blocks, hospitals, schools—and yes, churches. The blame belongs to Hamas, which uses its own civilians as shields, not to Israel.

Such tragedies are not unique. In World War II, U.S. bombers accidentally destroyed a hospital in Amsterdam while aiming for a Gestapo HQ. In 2002, a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan mistakenly hit a wedding, killing dozens. War is chaos. Yet no serious person claimed America deliberately targeted a wedding. Carlson knows this history but pretends Israel—a democracy fighting an enemy that hides among civilians—is somehow uniquely evil.

Why It Matters

Carlson remains one of America’s most watched commentators. If his audience accepts his distortions uncritically, the American right risks mainstreaming antisemitic and conspiratorial worldviews once confined to the fringe.

His rhetoric also undermines the moral coalition—Jews, Christians, and classical liberals—that has long defended the West’s civic foundations. By attacking Christian Zionists, he seeks to weaken one of Israel’s most enduring bastions of support and one of America’s strongest alliances.

The Fake “Apology”

Carlson’s sudden contrition isn’t about truth; it’s about damage control. His Fuentes interview cost him credibility even among loyal viewers. Now he’s trying to cast himself as a misunderstood truth-teller, the man who “asks hard questions.” But he isn’t asking questions—he’s laundering answers written by tyrants and antisemites.

The Larger Pattern

In the past three years Carlson has:

• Dismissed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a NATO provocation;
• Downplayed China’s repression of Uyghurs; and
• Amplified anti-Western narratives from Moscow to Tehran.

He has also conducted softball interviews with Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei, granting them unchallenged platforms to pose as victims of Western aggression. He plainly implied in his eulogy for Charlie Kirk that the “hummus eating Joos” did it. In 2024 he hailed fringe podcaster Darryl Cooper—a conspiracy theorist who claims Hitler was “misunderstood,” the Nazis didn’t intend genocide, and Churchill was the “real villain” of World War II—as “America’s best historian.” Tucker’s choice of “historian” says everything.

Carlson’s attacks on Israel fit the same pattern. Each time he questions the Jewish state’s legitimacy, he advances the same poisonous message: Western democracy is corrupt, its defenders’ hypocrites, and its enemies the real victims.

The Moral Cost

Carlson’s “apology” exploits understandable Christian sympathy for Palestinians while erasing Hamas’s responsibility for Gaza’s misery—and for every casualty caused by the war Hamas started.

Hamas hides among civilians, stores weapons in homes, fires rockets from next to—and even inside—houses of worship, and builds command tunnels beneath hospitals. Its leaders live in Qatari luxury while ordinary Gazans suffer. Yet Carlson never mentions this.

Israel, by contrast, is the only country in the region where Christians worship freely, vote, and serve in public life. The Christians of Gaza whom Carlson claims to champion live under Hamas—a regime that has persecuted them for years, confiscating property, closing churches, and silencing dissent.

Meanwhile, his “church-bombing” narrative perfectly serves Hamas’s propaganda: fracture Christian support for Israel and recast a defensive war as a morality play with Jews as villains. Across the Middle East and North Africa, hundreds of churches have been destroyed and Christian populations decimated—from Iraq to Syria, Egypt to Sudan. In contrast, Israel’s Christian population has grown from about 34,000 in 1949 to over 190,000 today—an increase of nearly 500 percent. Under Palestinian and Hamas rule, Christian communities have withered almost to extinction. Carlson never mentions that.

No Free Pass

Christian Zionists span a spectrum—pastors, philanthropists, activists—united by belief in Israel’s biblical and moral significance. Carlson shouldn’t get to smear them and then claim he simply “misspoke” out of anger. His platforming of Fuentes and his deliberate smears of Israel and its supporters demand accountability, not gaslighting or amnesia.

If America wants to remain anchored in truth, it cannot excuse those who launder lies about “Zionists” and whitewash hate as “just asking questions.” Tucker Carlson’s apology isn’t repentance—it’s rehearsal. And the encore will be worse if people keep applauding.

Micha Danzig served in the Israeli Army and is a former police officer with the NYPD. He is currently an attorney and is very active with numerous Jewish and pro-Israel organizations, including Stand With Us and the FIDF, and is a national board member of Herut North America.