Gerald Posner
@geraldposner
Six years ago Tucker Carlson said, "Gerald Posner may be the best known and most thorough investigative reporter in this country."
I wish I could still recognize the man who said it.
I first met him in 1995, when I was writing a biography of Ross Perot and he was a 26-year-old staff writer at the newly launched Weekly Standard.
Decades later I was a guest on his FOX primetime show — on the JFK assassination, the opioid crisis, the CIA, once for a full hour for his FOX Nation show. I got to know him as provocative and smart, often pushing on things I agreed with: the government's refusal to fully release the JFK files, the Sacklers' lack of accountability, McKinsey's role in the opioid crisis.
I never saw a glimpse of the person who has emerged since he left FOX— someone who finds a byzantine conspiracy behind every major story, who has turned "America First" into cover for old antisemitic tropes and an anti-Israel fervor that at times makes him a modern-day Father Coughlin — the radio priest whose 1930s broadcasts to tens of millions of Americans made him the most notorious antisemitic demagogue in U.S. media history.
@trishaposner and I wrote about this in May, in "The New Normal for Antisemitism": Carlson has suggested using genetic testing to determine "who Abraham's descendants are," and has questioned whether Netanyahu has any real connection to Israel because his family is "from Poland" — an echo of the discredited Khazar theory that casts Ashkenazi Jews as impostors. He also gave an uncritical two-hour platform to Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust-denying, authoritarian-praising antisemite, without any meaningful pushing back.
He has often gone further still but this latest seems the last step off the precipice of sanity. Suggesting that Trump and members of Congress who back the U.S.-Israel defense alliance in the National Defense Authorization Act should face Nuremberg-style treason charges is beyond the pale.
I do not believe this is about money — he has plenty. It isn't a hunger for the spotlight — he's had that for decades. This is ideological. I believe we are finally seeing the real Tucker Carlson.
I'd once have said "for better or worse" — there is no "better" in this version of him. He is one of the most prominent voices stoking anti-Jewish fervor at a moment when antisemitic violence is at record levels. In some ways he's far more dangerous than Candace Owens, because he's a sharper, a more practiced debater, someone who can twist facts into a narrative that millions of his followers find compelling.
The Tucker I sat across from in that studio is gone. What's left is something the GOP will have to reckon with. By 2028, serious candidates will need to put visible distance between themselves and Carlson. The one most exposed is JD Vance, who has long counted him as a close friend. The rest of the party would be wise to start distancing itself now, before Carlson decides who they have to answer for.
10:29 AM · Jul 25, 2026
