David M. Drucker: The GOP must confront its rising antisemitism

This is how winning political coalitions unravel. An unforeseen development roils one of the major political parties.

For the Democratic Party, that development was Donald Trump in 2016. For the Republican Party, that development is growing antisemitism on the right, especially among younger voters.

The smoldering tensions flared into open view with Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with the proudly racist, misogynist and Jew-hating influencer Nick Fuentes. The fallout has opened a rift between the populist right and traditional conservatives that threatens to splinter the remarkable coalition — younger and more racially diverse than previous GOP coalitions — Republicans presumably hope to inherit from Trump.

“The blood and soil nationalism of Israel, it stems from this ethno-religion which is Judaism,” Fuentes said at one point in his interview with Carlson. Carlson’s response: “This is [Black Lives Matter] the new version. This is identity politics.” Later in the interview, Fuentes asserts that “you cannot actually divorce Israel and the neocons from Jewishness … They’re a stateless people, they’re unassimilable.” He then proceeds to insist that American Jews view the U.S. as “not really my home — my ancestral home is in Israel.” Carlson’s response? Crickets.

That a mainstream figure like Carlson would give unchallenged airtime to an antisemite like Fuentes isn’t necessarily shocking. The Anti-Defamation League finds that belief in antisemitic tropes is increasing, especially among the young, and that 15% of Republicans and 11% of Democrats say violence against Jews is justifiable. Over 95% of both Democratic and Republican Jews say antisemitism in America is rising, according to a 2025 Washington Post poll.

Many traditionally conservative Republicans are appalled at Carlson’s antisemitic turn and worried about the rise of Jew-hatred on the populist right being fueled by influencers like Fuentes. This tug-of-war over the GOP’s future was foreshadowed during Trump’s first term, with events like the march of White supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting “Jews will not replace us,” and a mass shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue that left a dozen Jewish worshippers dead. Now, the populist right — a key part of the GOP base under Trump — has also begun to show an increasing hostility toward Israel and toward the diplomatic and military aid the U.S. provides the Jewish State. That’s a clear break from the party’s establishment.

Yet many traditional Republicans remain reluctant to criticize Carlson. The former Fox News host is popular on the populist right and his podcast is among the country’s most influential media platforms. Others fear alienating the populists, concerned Republicans cannot defeat Democrats in national elections without them. That was essentially the argument Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, made to justify the Washington think-tank maintaining its ties with Carlson following the Fuentes interview.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, 54, is not among them. That’s significant because Cruz, a Trump ally whose own political career has been fueled by conservative populism, has designs on running for president again (he was the runner-up for the Republican nomination in 2016, falling to the future 45th and 47th president). Cruz has emerged as a vocal Carlson opponent and among the most prominent GOP figures to warn against letting antisemitism on the right go unchecked.

“I believe now, today, is a time for choosing,” he said Friday, challenging his party to step up during an address to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. As Jewish Insider reported , Cruz was invoking Ronald Reagan’s seminal 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing.”

Of course, as antisemitism has become a thing in American politics, it hasn’t only created an internecine battle on the right. It has also riven the Democratic Party.

Center-left Democrats seeking to preserve their party’s historic support for Israel were (and still are) at odds with their left-wing brethren, despite the U.S.-brokered Gaza ceasefire. The far-left’s opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the war, following the massacre of hundreds of Israeli civilians by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, manifested across the country not only in protests on college campuses. It also took the form of antisemitic violence and the targeting of Jewish-owned businesses.

Jewish voters are, historically, a liberal voting bloc, and many stuck with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, in 2024. But Trump also grew his share of the Jewish vote to record levels for a Republican, according to exit polling collected by the Republican Jewish Coalition.

Trump has been incredibly supportive of Israel. He moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, negotiated the Abraham Accords that led to peace between the Jewish State and its Arab neighbors and supported Netanyahu’s prosecution of the Gaza War (and his decision to strike Iran).

But now, in the fall of 2025, it’s increasingly clear that antisemitism is not simply a problem for the Democratic Party. It has also infected Trump’s GOP.

Matt K. Lewis, a conservative columnist often critical of Trump, told me the president shoulders some of the blame because he has fostered a philosophy of victimhood, framing the struggles of his loyal voters as the result of conspiracies. This sort of rhetoric, Lewis posited, lends itself to one of the world’s oldest and most enduring conspiracy theories: Jew hatred.

“When people feel like the game is rigged against them and they’re being victimized and they’re being told that by the president of the United States, that makes them much more susceptible to all sorts of radical ideas that would be unthinkable,” said Lewis, author of Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections.

Lewis’ argument is plausible. But there’s another factor that Republicans — or anyone on the right — should consider if they’re worried about the GOP being hijacked by right-wing antisemitism.

In the four decades from Reagan to Trump, Republicans generally fought the Democrats using ideas as weapons; and conservative media personalities used whatever ideological authority they possessed to enforce party dogma. But during Obama’s presidency, Republicans and their media allies got it into their heads that the U.S. was on the brink of an irreversible collapse that could only be prevented by permanently blocking the Democrats from power. Ideology became secondary — if that — to defeating the left.

With that in mind, it’s only logical that, as long as their votes are on offer, some Republicans are willing to tolerate antisemites in their midst.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

David M. Drucker is a columnist covering politics and policy. He is also a senior writer for The Dispatch and the author of "In Trump's Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP."