Today, Tucker Carlson gave an interview to Megyn Kelly and she opened the discussion by asking him about the backlash to his decision to have Nick Fuentes on his show for an interview.
This was clearly a damage control effort by Carlson but for the most part he refused to apologize at all. You can watch the whole segment about the Fuentes interview below but briefly here's how it went.
- Carlson said Fuentes had been attacking him and his wife and children behind the scenes. He said in the midst of that he made a comment about Fuentes during an interview with someone else. (He wasn't specific about that but I think he's referring to a Candace Owens interview where he referred to Fuentes as a “weird little gay kid.” Carlson apologized to Fuentes for saying that during his interview with Fuentes.)
- Carlson tried to make clear that he does not support Fuentes' racism and went on a long rant about how treating people as individuals is a Christian heritage which arises from no other culture. He said he tried to be clear with Fuentes that not treating people as members of groups based on their appearance or DNA is why he is against both DEI, anti-Semitism and Nazism.
Just to interject, I agree with Carlson completely on this. The problem with his interview is that Nick Fuentes definitely and provably does not believe this and there's no doubt about that. Fuentes routinely disparages people as groups and does not treat them as individuals.
- Kelly pushed back a bit, noting that Fuentes has said a lot of really extreme and racist things about Jews, black people, Indian people, etc. "So what do you say to those people who say 'Why didn't you raise any of that?'"
- This is where Carlson was most dismissive of his critics, responding "You know, do your own interview the way you want to do it. You're not my editor. Buzz off." He added, "You want to go yell at Nick Fuentes? I'll give you his cell. Call him and go sit and yell at him and feel virtuous or whatever."
Carlson went on to say, "I'm just doing my thing, which is I want to understand what people think and I'm committed to that and if you don't like it don't watch."
After shrugging off the criticism, Carlson then turned a corner saying there was one thing that did bother him. "One thing that did bother me was the Usha Vance thing and I did actually...I generally make it a practice not to be like 'you said this...!' But the Usha Vance thing did upset me because I know Usha Vance and I love Usha Vance and I was really offended by that just personally because I know her" he said. He's referring to this string of repulsive comments by Fuentes about JD Vance and his wife.
White nationalist Nick Fuentes attacks Usha Vance using anti-Indian racial slurs
— Shashank Mattoo (@MattooShashank) November 1, 2025
This is a man who had a private dinner with Trump in 2022 at his resort pic.twitter.com/X0EQe3xhEZ
But after saying the Usha Vance thing really offended him, Carlson added that he never brought that up either during the interview. "I'm just being as honest as I can be. I didn't want to repeat it," he said. Kelly expressed sympathy for his position as an interviewer. The segment ends as Carlson said, "I don't know. I'm sensitive on that. Maybe I made the wrong call."
Maybe?
If someone is using racial slurs about your close personal friend, you should bring it up. You don't have to repeat the slur in order to push someone like Fuentes to apologize. You can say 'You used a slur to refer to a good friend of mine. Do you want to say it again to my face?'
Instead of doing any of that, Carlson let Fuentes go on about how, as a Catholic, he's required to love all people. He completely let Fuentes off the hook.
Here's the interview with Megyn Kelly and below that is his chummy interview with Nick Fuentes. He genuinely seems more ticked off by his critics than he is by the guy calling his dear friend a "jeet." And obviously, that doesn't touch on all the other obnoxious and racist things Fuentes has said about entire groups of people.