There is a time and a place for everything, a lesson that Tucker Carlson would have done well to learn before he spoke at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service.
Carlson made an off-color joke, and it is not sitting well with a lot of people.
Things are now at the point where I have to really wonder if Carlson can ever truly be popular again, as he continues to alienate conservatives with what are being perceived as anti-Semitic comments.
Before we get into Carlson’s comments, I wanted to cover a few important events that took place during the memorial.
The first of which was Erika Kirk forgiving the man who allegedly fired the shot that took her husband’s life. She stated simply, “That young man. I forgive him,” and she did it because that is what she thought Charlie would do.
Erika will take the helm of Turning Point USA, and the organization has already announced its next slate of events, so Charlie’s widow is clearly hitting the ground running as its new CEO.
During the memorial, a video of Donald Trump shaking hands with Elon Musk blew up, and everyone wants to know what the two men said to each other.
Trump was a bit coy, stating, “Well, Elon came over and said hello. I thought it was nice, he came over, we had a little conversation. We had a very good relationship but it was nice that he came over.”
Benny Johnson, a well-known conservative media personality, claims that he heard the conversation, claiming that Musk told Trump, “If we don’t hang together, we will surely hang separately, so let us unite.”
Musk is right, as I believe any hope the GOP has of keeping the House will rely on Musk’s money. Having said that, it is not like Trump to bury the hatchet, as he tends to make grudges a lifetime commitment, so we will have to follow this and see how it all turns out.
Tucker decided that the memorial would be a good time to tell a joke about Jews killing Jesus Christ, stating, “So it’s about 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem, and Jesus shows up and he starts talking about the people in power, and he starts doing the worst thing that you can do, which is telling the truth about people, and they hate it, and they just go bonkers. They hate it, and they become obsessed with making him stop: ‘This guy’s got to stop talking. We’ve got to shut this guy up.'”
He continued, “And I can just sort of picture the scene in a lamp-lit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus, thinking about -- ‘What do we do about this guy telling the truth about us? We must make him stop talking.’ And there’s always one guy with the bright idea, and I can just hear him say, ‘I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we just kill him? That’ll shut him up, that’ll fix the problem.'”
Carlson then broke out in laughter, but Jewish leaders did not find that nearly as funny. First off, hummus was not a thing during that era, so the comment was taken as a shot at modern-day Israel. Former Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy responded, “Complete with a laugh like a cartoon villain, Tucker Carlson uses Charlie Kirk’s funeral to spread an antisemitic blood libel.”
Compact Magazine editor Matthew Schmitz posted, “Once again, Tucker Carlson finds a way to insinuate that Charlie Kirk’s murder had something to do with Jews. No matter what happens, someone, somewhere will find a way to blame it on Jews.”
Since leaving Fox News, Carlson has gone off the rails a bit, so this is not going to help him. To me, it seems like he is bleeding his conservative audience, and I cannot imagine that “joke” will help him get it back. You tell me… are you still listening or watching Carlson, or has he lost your attention?
